How to understand a queue's unanswered calls

This article describes how and when the disconnection causes appear in practice.

Overview

VoipNow offers relevant statistics about the queue traffic and the activity of all the queue members. These metrics help you better understand the call flows, providing important data about the waiting time, the volume of answered and unanswered calls per hour/day/workday, the SLA or the disconnection causes. With such information, you will be able to improve the queue usability by taking the appropriate management measures like increasing the number of agents, modifying the queue behavior or other parameters.

Requirements

To visualize the queue reports, you must have the following:

• VoipNow 3 or higher.
• A fully operational Queue extension, assigned agents and at least several incoming calls.

Unanswered calls

Sometimes Queue agents cannot answer all calls. This may happen for various reasons like queue configuration problems, the big number of simultaneous calls, the agents' availability or the callers' decisions. Therefore, in order to keep you well informed, VoipNow groups all the unanswered calls based on the disconnection cause.

These statistics are displayed using both a table and a graphic to illustrate the percentage of each cause out of the total unanswered calls. The seven disconnection reasons are:

1. Calls dropped due to channel incompatibility.
2. Calls ended due to caller abandon.
3. Calls that exit the queue due to timeout.
4. Calls ended before customers joined the queue because all agents were logged out or paused.
5. Calls ended while customers were in queue because all agents logged out or paused.
6. Calls ended due to queue full.
7. Calls transferred with key.

Calls dropped due to channel incompatibility

This happens when the call is answered by a queue agent, but it is later dropped because the communication channels were not compatible. In this case, the queue settings are not relevant, as this event is not related to the queue behavior but more to telecommunications issues.

Calls ended due to caller abandon

In this case, the caller is the reason for ending the call. Because the agents are busy, the caller is waiting in the queue and decides to drop the call. Again, this event is independent of the queue settings.

Calls that exit the queue due to timeout

You can configure your queue to transfer calls to a specific extension if the caller is on hold for a predefined number of seconds. This way you can avoid missing calls when the flow is high and all agents are busy.

To set up this option, take the following steps: 

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your Queue Management page.
2. In the Queue Behavior section, select the If a caller has been waiting in the queue for {x} seconds, transfer call to extension {ext_no} option.
3. Fill in the timeout limit {x} and the short number of the extension where you want the calls to be transferred after exiting the queue, {ext_no}

Calls ended before customers joined queue because all agents were logged out or paused

These calls were terminated before entering the queue because there were no active agents at that moment. This situation is triggered when the queue is set up in one of the following ways:

In case you want the calls to be ended when the agents assigned to the queue are either logged out or paused:

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your queue's management page.
2. Go to the Queue Behavior section.
3. Set the Allow calls to enter queue when option either to There are agents in queue, even logged out or to At least one agent is logged in, maybe paused.
4. Do NOT enable the When calls are not allowed to enter queue, transfer them to extension {ext_no} option. When this option is disable, the calls that cannot enter the queue will not be transferred to another extension; they will be terminated.
5. Set the Drop existing calls from queue when option to All agents enter into pause or logged out.
6. If you want to transfer the terminated calls to another extension, select the When calls are dropped from queue, transfer them to extension {ext_no} (otherwise the call is hang up) option and choose the number you desire. This way, instead of hanging up, the dropped calls will be redirected to an available extension.

In case you want the calls to be ended when no agents or only a few are assigned to the queue, but they are either logged out or paused:

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your Queue Management page.
2. Go to the Queue Behavior section.
3. Set the Allow calls to enter queue when option to At least one agent is logged in and unpaused.
4. The next option, When calls are not allowed to enter queue, transfer them to extension {ext_no}, can be both enabled or disabled.
5. For the Drop existing calls from queue when option, choose Never.

Calls ended while customers were in queue because all agents logged out or paused

In this situation, the calls were terminated while the customers were already in the queue because all the agents either logged out or paused, leaving no one to pick up the calls.

For example, the following scenario may arise:

1. One agent is logged on to the queue.
2. A customer calls the queue and the agent picks up the call.
3. Another customer calls the queue and the call is put on hold until the agent will finish the first call and will be able to answer.
4. The agent finishes the call and logs out or pauses. The second call will be terminated or will be transferred to an extension, depending on your settings.

To configure the queue behavior as described here, take the following steps: 

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your Queue Management page.
2. Set the Allow calls to enter queue when option to There are agents in queue, even logged out.
3. Enable the When calls are not allowed to enter queue, transfer them to extension {ext_no} option and choose the desired number. You can only select an extension that belongs to the same client as the queue!
4. For the Drop existing calls from queue when option, choose All agents log out.
5. To transfer calls to another extension, enable the When calls are dropped from queue, transfer them to extension {ext_no} (otherwise the call is hang up) option and choose the desired number. This way, instead of hanging up, the dropped calls will be redirected to an available extension. You can select only another extension belonging to the same client as the queue!

Calls ended due to queue full

When the maximum number of simultaneous calls is reached, the following scenario takes place:

• All the agents are busy and other callers are waiting in the queue, up to the value set for the Queue size {x} calls option.
• Another extension calls the queue. This call cannot enter the queue as the maximum limit was reached. Therefore, the call will be ended in one of the following ways:
  1. It will be simply haung up or
  2. If the Play sound {sound_name} on disconnect due to queue full option is enabled, the previously set sound will be played to the caller before hanging up.

To configure the queue behavior as described here, take the following steps: 

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your Queue Management page.
2. Set the maximum Queue size to the desired value. It's important to customize this value depending on the number of agents you can assign to the queue and on the expected call flow.
3. To customize the sound played to the callers before hanging up, go to the Queue Behavior section. Select the Play sound {sound_name} on disconnect due to queue full option and use the available controls.

Calls transferred with key

Callers may decide to transfer their calls to another extension while waiting in the queue. To do so, the caller must press 0 on their keyboard before speaking to an agent. You can set the extension where the caller is redirected as explained below: 

1. Click the Queue settings icon available in your Queue Management page.
2. In the Queue Behavior section, choose the extension number for the Exit to extension on key pressed option.

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