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Call queues – hold callers and share them among agents

A call queue answers callers, plays hold music, and connects each one to the next available agent in the order they called. It suits reception, sales and support lines with more than one person answering. Queue reports show wait times, answered and abandoned calls.

Set up a queue

  1. Log in to the VoIP portal, open the Voice tab and click the number or extension that will run the queue.
  2. From the Incoming Calls menu choose Queue and enable it.
  3. Agents – add the numbers or extensions that answer the queue (up to 30). Agents can also log themselves in and out from their phone: *70XX logs in and *71XX logs out, where XX is the queue’s extension; *71 alone logs out of every queue.
  4. Queue strategy – how calls are offered. Ring All (every agent rings at once) is the usual choice; other strategies, such as ringing agents in turn, suit a team where one person tends to answer fastest.
  5. Limits and timers – maximum callers in the queue, agent timeout (how long an agent rings before the call moves on), retry timer, wrap-up time between calls, and the overall queue timeout.
  6. Announcements – whether to announce the caller’s position and how often, whether to include estimated hold time, and the queue identifier shown in agents’ caller ID.
  7. Busy agents – choose whether calls are still offered to agents already on a call.
  8. Queue exit options – what happens when the queue times out or is full: voicemail, forward to another number, hang up, or offer a call-back request (enter the email addresses that receive call-back requests).
  9. Hold music and announcement – use our royalty-free hold music or upload one MP3 of your own (only the latest upload plays), and optionally a queue announcement recording.
  10. Click Save.

If no agents are logged in the queue does not activate – calls follow the line’s other rules (for example voicemail).

Queue reports

In the portal go to Reports → Queue Reports. You can view weekly or monthly summaries for any period and have daily stats emailed to you: calls received, answered per agent, average talk and wait times, abandoned calls.

Monitoring a queue with a BLF key, and “parking” calls in a queue

At the bottom of the queue settings set BLF monitoring of queues to Yes. A BLF key on a desk phone programmed with the queue’s extension then flashes red while callers are waiting, and pressing it picks up the longest-waiting call. Because extensions are free, many customers create a spare extension as a queue and transfer callers into it instead of using call parking – the call waits with hold music, every phone with the BLF key sees it, and any of them can retrieve it with one press.

Related: Hunt groups · Auto attendant · Programming BLF keys.

Still need help? Email [email protected] or log a ticket in the customer portal.