Inbound Agent Prioritization in Agent Groups

Overview

Our primary goal when handling inbound calls is to ensure that the caller gets connected with someone who can assist them as quickly as possible. But there are a few details under the hood that clients may have questions about, so here's a short guide to the different ways agents stay in the queue to receive inbound calls. Keep in mind that this guide is related to calls that come in to DIDs associated with an Agent Group (or Groups if Failover Groups are used), as opposed to calls to an agent's direct DID.

• Default: Standard Idle Timer
• Using the "Separate Idle Timer for Queue Calls" feature
• Agent Group and Failover Groups
• Inbound Ready
• Summary

Default: Standard Idle Timer

If no other options are selected (listed below), agents will be prioritized based on how long they have been idle. An agent's idle time can be viewed on the Agent Status portion of DS Management, and is reset by either receiving an Inbound phone call or placing an Outbound phone call. When a call comes in to a DID with an Agent Group associated, the agent with the highest idle time will be offered the call first. If they don't answer the call before the Agent Timeout is reached, the next offer will serve to the agent with the next highest idle time, continuing until the call reaches the Hold Timeout. 

Example

Agents are listed with their idle time in parentheses: 

In this example, the call would present to Mia first, Shane second, Brett third, and Mike fourth.

Agent Group and Failover Groups

Agents in the main Agent Group will always be prioritized over agents in the first Failover Group. Likewise, the first Failover Group will be prioritized over the second, which will be prioritized over the third. The system checks the availability of all agents in all groups associated with that DID each time a call is offered and will presented to the first available agent in the list, top down. 

Example

Agents are listed with their idle time in parentheses: 

In this example, the call would present to Mike first, Rory second, Amanda third, and Daniel fourth.

Using the "Separate Idle Timer for Queue Calls" feature

The Separate Idle Timer feature creates a second invisible idle timer. This second time only tracks each user's time between receiving an inbound call via a DID with an associated Agent Group. Placing an Outbound call or receiving an Inbound call through an Agent assigned (personal) DID will therefore not reset the Separate Idle Timer for Queue Calls. The inbound idle timer can only be reset by one action - if an agent receives and answers an inbound call. It will not be reset by disconnecting from the dialer, rejecting a call, or disabling inbound ready. The inbound idle timer works in the same way that the primary idle timer works in the default setup: call offers will serve to the Agent who has the greatest idle time on the inbound idle timer when the call comes in.

When this feature is enabled in conjunction with Call Waiting, two additional Routing Options will become available for Inbound DIDs and Inbound Queues: Prefer Idle Agents and Re-offer Declined Calls:

With Prefer Idle Agents enabled, calls will be routed to Idle Agents first. If the feature is not enabled, calls will be routed to Agents based on their position in the Inbound Queue, even if they are currently on a call.

With Re-Offer Declined Calls enabled, calls will offer again to Agents who have declined the call if the call is offered to all other available Agents and isn't answered before the Hold Timeout is reached. If the feature is not enabled, Agents who decline an Offer will not be presented with that Offer again.

Example

Agents are listed with their standard idle time in parentheses and their separate inbound idle time in square brackets:

The call would route to Shane first, Mia second, Mike third, and Amanda fourth.

Inbound Ready

When using "Inbound Ready," the agent's idle time increments when the flag is enabled, provided they are offline. If the agent was already connected to Denali and idle when they enabled the flag, their idle time will reset when they end their session. Denali doesn't differentiate between Inbound Ready and connected Idle agents - whoever has the highest time will receive the call first.

When using the "Disable Inbound Ready" feature, you can customize the number of "strikes" before an agent is removed from Inbound Ready status. Every time an agent who is in Inbound Ready is presented an offer but does not answer the call, that is considered a strike. When they reach the number of strikes, they will be removed from Inbound Ready. Strikes don't affect an Agent's idle time.

Example

Active Agents are listed with their idle time in parentheses and Inbound Ready Agents are listed with their idle time in braces:

The call would present to Mia first, Brian second, Brett third and Rory fourth.

Summary

Depending on the volume of calls your organization receives, each Agent may not receive an inbound call every day. The features described here interact to determine who is most likely to be available to connect with a caller at the time the call comes in.