Queues and call routing

What is set where

Your phone numbers, opening hours for callers, IVR menus, announcements and music on hold, voicemail, call recording, queue callbacks and outbound caller ID live on GoDesk Voice. They are changed in your GoDesk Voice administrator panel, or by GoDesk on your behalf.

In GoDesk you manage the queues your team works in: who is in each queue, which channels each person takes, whether they are primary or backup, how a linked phone queue rings its agents, and the targets for queue reports.

Queues that take calls need the Voice & contact centre add-on. Chat queues need the Omnichannel inbox add-on.

Create a queue

In Settings, open Queues under Routing & service levels, then select New Queue. Queues stand for business functions, such as Support, Sales or Billing.

Enter a Name and Description and choose the Assignment Strategy for chats: Least busy (to the agent with the fewest active chats), Round robin (in turn), Everybody (all members see it and the first to reply takes it) or Manual (a supervisor assigns).

Under Chats, tick the channels this queue takes (none ticked means every text channel) and set the timers: Accept within, First reply within, Follow-up alert after, then reassign after, and Alert supervisors after. Add a Message when nobody is free if you want customers told they are waiting.

Keep Active ticked and select Save. To decide which queue each channel's new conversations start in, open After-call work under Calls in Settings and choose a queue per channel. Routing rules can then send particular chats elsewhere.

Choose who works in each queue

Open Queues under Team in the menu. This page is for admins and supervisors whose role can manage queues, and it is part of the Omnichannel inbox add-on.

Use Add an agent to add one person, or Add a whole team and Link team to add a team. People added through a team follow the team from then on: when someone joins or leaves the team, they join or leave the queue too.

For each person, select the channels they handle in this queue. Voice is crossed out for anyone without an extension. Set each person to Primary or Backup, use Move to for moving them to another queue, or Remove.

Open Recent changes at the bottom of a queue to see who was added, moved or removed, and when.

Link a queue to a phone queue

Only admins can link phone queues. On the Queues page, choose a phone queue in Link calls to a phone queue, then select Link & copy members. The phone queue's current members are copied into GoDesk. Nothing changes on the phone system yet.

Review the members, then select Keep phone queue in step. GoDesk shows exactly who the phone queue will ring, and who is left out because they have no extension, before anything is changed. From then on the phone queue follows this list.

Select Stop to switch the sync off. The phone queue keeps its current members. Select Unlink to remove the link.

If GoDesk Voice has queues that are not managed here yet, they are listed at the top of the page. Create a queue from one, or link it to an existing queue.

If a change is saved in GoDesk but not on the phone system, GoDesk says so. Try again, or contact GoDesk support.

Choose how calls ring

For a linked queue, choose how calls ring under How calls ring: Round robin (one agent at a time, carrying on where it left off), Longest idle, Fewest calls, In order (always the same order, primary first), Random, or Ring everyone at once.

Except when ringing everyone, set how many seconds each agent rings (5 to 120), then select Apply.

Backup members only ring when every primary member is busy, whatever the strategy.

Set queue targets

In Settings, open Queue targets under Calls.

Answer within sets your service level time. Service level is the share of callers answered within this time. A common target is 80% within 20 seconds.

Ignore hang-ups shorter than leaves out callers who hang up almost at once, usually because they dialled by mistake. They are still listed, but not counted in the abandon rate or the service level. Select Save.

Watch how queues perform

Under Insights, Reports has a Call queues report (answered, abandoned, service level, speed of answer, waits and callers not yet called back) and an IVR menus report (what callers pressed and where they hung up).

Supervisors watch queues live on the Floor under Team. See the supervisor guides on queues and the Floor for day-to-day use.

If something does not work

If callers are not reaching the right people, first check the queue's members and that each person has an extension and the Voice channel switched on. If the problem is in the call flow itself (numbers, hours, IVR menus), check your GoDesk Voice administrator panel. For anything else, email GoDesk support at help@godesk.co.ke with the queue name and an example call time.