Build a call queue
Set up a call queue, rank your team, pick how calls are shared out, and choose the hold experience, wrap-up and what happens when nobody answers.
A call queue holds callers in line until someone on the team is free. Use one whenever calls should reach a group fairly: sales, support, or a busy front desk.
Create a queue
- Open Queues and click New queue.
- Give it a Name, like "Sales" or "Support".
- Pick a Strategy:
- Ring all: everyone available rings at once. The first to answer gets the call.
- Round robin: takes turns, so calls spread out evenly.
- Longest idle: offers the call to whoever has gone longest since their last call.
- Ring group: no waiting line. Members simply ring, and there's no hold music or announcements.
- Set Max wait, Per-agent ring time, and Then go to: where a caller goes if nobody answers in time. That can be voicemail, an extension, another queue, a call flow or an outside number.
- Save.
Add and rank your team
Open the queue and go to Members. Click an extension under Available extensions to add it. Click a member to remove them.
Each member has a Rank from 1 to 9. The default is 5. Higher numbers ring first. The strategy you picked decides the order among people with the same rank.
People are skipped automatically while they're on another call, paused, wrapping up or set to Away. You don't need to take them out of the queue.
Hold experience
In the queue's settings, choose the Hold music and an optional Hold message. Turn on Announce position to tell callers their place in line ("You are caller number 3"), and set the Announcement interval.
Send calls to the queue
- From a number. On Phone numbers, set the number's Routing to Park in a queue and pick the queue.
- From a call flow. Add a Send to queue node and pick the queue. Under Hold experience, choose:
- Queue's hold experience (the default): the caller hears the queue's music and announcements until someone answers or Max wait passes. Then they go to the queue's Then go to. Nothing after this node runs.
- Custom: the flow moves on to the next node right away, so you can play your own audio. When someone answers, the caller is connected from wherever they are in the flow.
Anything you leave blank on the node uses the queue's own setting. Most flows only need to pick the queue.
Wrap-up
Turn on Wrap-up to give people a short break after each queue call, before the queue offers them another. It's off by default. The person sees a countdown and can end it early with I'm ready. Wrap-up only holds back queue calls. A call straight to their extension still rings.
Who can change queues
Owners and admins can create and edit queues. The Supervisor role can also manage queues, members and where numbers ring, without being a full admin. Anyone can pause themselves and set their own availability.
Watch how it's doing
The queue report shows calls answered, abandoned and sent on, average wait, how you're doing against your Service level target, and each member's share of calls. If many callers hang up while waiting, shorten Max wait or add people. See Reports.
Common questions
- Someone on a call isn't being offered queue calls. That's on purpose. Anyone on another call (inbound, outbound, internal or on a desk phone) is skipped.
- Declining a call only skips you for that one call. It doesn't set you to Away.
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