Call Queue

What Is a Call Queue?

Call queue is a feature that allows simultaneous callers on the line to “wait” to speak to you instead of being automatically disconnected. With MightyCall, as many callers can wait as are calling in. They can hear audio about current sales, hours, hold music, or have the option to be redirected toward voicemail. When combined with other features like call transfer or Caller ID, this feature can become extremely helpful.

What Does the Call Queue Feature Look Like?

The feature is in reality a call routing system which you can set up for inbound calls. To find it, head to the Call Flow section of the MightyCall web panel. To access the feature, click the little gear symbol located inside the orange square at the bottom of the call flow. A circle of colorful options will then appear: our feature is on the top-left, in a purple circle. Hovering the cursor over it will lead to a “Call Queue” label appearing. This opens up a “Settings” window where you can customize functionality and designate agents that will respond to calls.

How Does a Call Queue Work?

This feature works in an intuitive way.

1. Firstly, callers are placed into a line, and will be dealt with after your active call has finished.
2. If you have multiple people in your team selected, in the Call Flow section you can decide whether all numbers are rang sequentially or simultaneously.
3. Folks who are in line will hear an opening greeting message and then either music or some other uploaded .mp3, depending on which you have selected.
4. If you’ve selected the option for them to hear a voicemail every certain amount of time, they’ll hear that as well.

How to Set Up Call Queue in MightyCall

1. Start in the Call Flow section of the MightyCall web panel. After you’ve set up a flow, click on the circle of dots found on the bottom square. After you’ve clicked the dots, a variety of options will appear.
2. To turn the feature on, click the Call Queue button, which is purple and in the top-left.
3. Clicking this will open settings. Here you can establish how you’d like your customers to stand by. You can also change call queue timing.
4. Finally, on the bottom, you have the option to offer your callers to end their call by leaving a voicemail.

What Companies Can Benefit From Call Queues?

Call queuing is sometimes mistakenly considered a feature for call centers, with smaller companies thinking it’s too complicated for teams and unnecessary for customers. Our solution at MightyCall has been to remove the pains of use at both ends, taking the reliability of call center queue technology and making it simple and versatile for everyone involved.

Here are the companies that will definitely benefit from call queue management– can you spot yours?

• Soloprenuers and very small teams – when you’re a one-man orchestra (or almost), time is of essential importance, and you can’t waste it on callbacks all day. A phone queue will automatically answer general questions on inbound calls, such as hours and location, while directing only important customer concerns to you at specific hours that you designate.
• Growing and mid-sized businesses – These companies need all the resources they can get, at an optimal price. Moreover, as your business expands, you get more people interested and calling, which means you need to boost the ROI of your communications.
• E-commerce stores – WIth several departments like Billing, Sales, and Support, e-commerce stores have lots of calls coming in. And during peak seasons, those calls can quadruple! A “call flow” tree will address general concerns, connect your various departments and minimize waiting time for a practically unlimited number of callers!
• Companies with offices in two or more locations – Connect your offices to a single phone system and handle calls as easily as you would if your colleagues were sitting at the next desk – customers will never feel the difference.
• Remote teams – With modern VoIP technology, even a call center can work remotely! When you queue calls, you can connect as many agents as you want to – there’s no limit to the number of users, and since the platform is cloud-based, they can work from any location.

How to Improve Call Queueing Management With MightyCall?

• Set up business hours and non-working hours: Preliminary settings allow you to customize the way you handle and route calls depending on the working hours of your company and employees.
• Choose who will answer calls: You can customize the system by catering to callers in the queue according to the department or specific agent that will best address their concern.
• Set music on hold: keep clients interested with fun or custom music and sounds while they’re on hold waiting to speak with you.
• Play pre-recorded messages while everyone is busy: Again, you can create custom audios or upload specific phrases you’d like your potential clients to hear. If you have a special sale or new store hours, now might be the time to inform them with a recorded audio message.
  – What to play as a greeting: You can select either standard dial tone or music to make calling more pleasant.
  – What hold music to play: Customize your on hold music by uploading your chosen tunes easily and simply.
  – What to play if there are no agents available: If your clients are still waiting, pick different music or upload another sound file.
• Possible options at the end of a call: Gently nudge clients to call a different number, play audio, or just disconnect.
• Invitation to leave a voicemail: Offer customers to leave a voice message if they prefer not to wait for an agent to answer their phone call. This invitation will be repeated after a specified period of time.

How to Configure and Customize the Call Queue Management Feature in MightyCall

To get started with setting up call queuing, click the “Queue” button in the Flow tab. From there, select the flow you’d like to edit, and then click the dots on the square on the bottom of said flow. A pop-up box will appear with all of the possible settings you could need.

Initial setup

Before continuing on to more advanced settings, check out the little “Sun” and “Crescent” icons in Call Flows. These are here to help you set specific waiting rules for working hours (the “Sun” icon) and non-working hours (the “Crescent” icon). Though you can choose simple “At all hours” routing for everyone, we suggest personalizing your waiting rules based on business hours.

Choose who will answer calls from the call queue

On the left of the pop-up box, you will see a list of all of the users in your system, each with a box next to it. You can switch between which receivers will respond to the phone call queue by checking the various boxes next to their names. You can do this at any time by simply clicking to make a check-mark appear (or disappear).

Add greetings

You can manage call queues with the following settings: what to initially play (music or just ringing), what hold music or tone to play, and what to play if there are no agents available.
For all dropdowns which deal with audio being played, the audio can be selected from default audios which are already there or can be uploaded as an outside .mp3 of a special greeting you’ve created (you can upload that by clicking the green “Add Greeting+” button).

Possible options at the end of the call

If no one is still available, you can end with a dropdown which provides five options, found on the bottom: “Disconnect”, “Call to User”, “Play Audio”, “Leave Voicemail”, and “Call Any Phone Number” (non-MightyCall number). For options which require audio, like “Play Audio”, a dropdown will appear with audios you can select. For options which require a number (like “Call to user”), a number dropdown will appear as well.

Invitation to leave a voicemail

In the times when you have other calls waiting, you can offer callers in the queue to leave a voicemail. To do this, keep the box selected (it’s selected by default), input how many seconds should elapse before the opportunity to leave a voicemail is offered and select which number gets the voicemail (or click Invite+ for others). Finally, click Ok. When those voicemails are left, transcriptions will automatically be sent to your email so you can access them from wherever you are.

To disable the feature, simply reverse whatever changes you made above.

Phone Queues on Android and iOS

To have every MightyCall feature in your pocket, wherever in the world business finds you, download our free Mobile App for iOS or Android today.

What Causes Long Call Queues?

Whenever a caller has to wait on hold for over two minutes, the chance that they’ll have the persistence to wait or give you a callback grows exceedingly slim. Long calling queues aren’t just inconvenient for callers, they are also a sign of poor organization within a company.

Reasons for long customer calling queues include:

Few available agents – If your company has just a few agents handling inbound calls across several departments, your lines will ring like crazy and customers will end up waiting for what may seem like forever. Whenever possible, designate different people for attending to calls in different departments so that all callers don’t end up in the same line.

Seasonal call loads – If you’ve called a large company during the holidays, you probably know how frustrating it feels until someone picks up. Businesses like e-commerce get a huge influx of seasonal customers during peak times like Black Friday and the Holiday Season, so it’s advisable to worry about improving your call flows or hiring extra agents during peak seasons.

Poor staff organization – your call loads may not be that full, but due to poor organization, nothing just works the way it should. For example, you may have a great phone system, but your agents are not aware of how to set up call flows or they haven’t been updated in ages. If that feels like you, check out how you can restructure queuing up calls to cut waiting time.

Lack of modern technology – With some business communications systems, call handling can become a pricey option, so businesses would rather have long wait times and manually handle them, than pay extra for a feature they think isn’t necessary. Voice over IP (VoIP) is a great option here in that it provides exceptional call handling at no extra cost to the main subscription.

Why You Should Improve Call Queue Management

You know that feeling when you call a business and are pleasantly surprised at how lightning fast your concern is addressed and solved – without long wait lines, callbacks, and transfers to/from grumpy agents? Here are more of the smooth sailing vibes that efficient call queue management can provide:

• Happier clients – No more waiting for minutes in line, dropping the phone, and calling a competitor that just happens to answer right away! Let the happiness of your customers guide you in all organizational improvements.
• More productive employees – No more juggling communications errands, manually transferring calls or worse – asking the customer to call another number! Take 5 minutes for setup and your agents will save hours of productive time.
• Better teamwork – Hello organized workday, where everything runs automatically and smoothly! Collaboration between departments and even offices in different locations can be completely automatic.
• Positive budgeting – With VoIP, you can create virtual queues as simple or as complex as your company needs. We can help you create call routing for a complex call center or a simple home business. All for a single, transparent cost of a business number with no pricey call queue software – our system is cloud-based and hardware-free.

Why Use Call Queuing?

There are numerous reasons why this is such a key feature for so many businesses. Here are just a few:

Don’t end your current call prematurely:

If the person you’re talking to is very important – maybe they’re in the process of ordering a large sale – you likely won’t want to finish up with them in the middle because another important call has come in. With this feature, you don’t have to; they’re provided with a good “place”, which can be filled with information about your business (or can simply be forwarded to another employee).

Provide answers without speaking:

Many incoming calls will likely be mundane: when are you open until/do you have any sales-type questions. These can easily be answered by uploading audio which can contain these answers. During their wait time, people can hear all about your special deals or new store hours. This filters out the ones who need less help.

Give your team a breather:

During busy days, business calls can come in nonstop. Now maybe you run a call center and your team is used to a higher call volume. But maybe you run a tractor supply shop and a new model just came in and your team is not used to dealing with a litany of incoming calls. This feature gives them space to get to every client with peace of mind.

Keep things orderly:

Even if you do run a contact center, you still need organization. You can’t have your employees having to quickly pick up and do the “Please hold”-and-then-slam-the-phone-down thing. A phone queue system allows for calm and orderly communication for businesses handling heavy call loads.

Use Case

Let’s imagine that you run a book shop. Normally, you’re not overly busy – it’s a book shop, after all, so maybe you get the occasional “Until when are you open” or “Do you have X” questions. But during certain periods, things ratchet up considerably: in August, kids need reading materials for schools, and when some major or popular book series comes out, everyone suddenly wants one. In these times your lines are clogged; you don’t just have a second call, but you have a third, fourth, and fifth.

With our handy feature, all of those callers can have their questions answered without you having to speak a word to them. You can upload audio answering questions about if you have the new book in stock and therefore will only have to end up answering specific questions.

Helpful Terms to Know About Call Queuing

• Call Flow: This is the path or “flow” that a call will take when it comes in. You can set up every detail of this flow on the MightyCall web panel.
• VoIP: Standing for Voice-over-Internet-Protocol, this is a kind of business phone system which makes calls over the internet instead of traditional analogue lines. Making the switch to a VoIP phone system can provide you with lots of new and exciting possibilities, including a virtual phone call queue that’s as real and reliable as it gets.
• Call forwarding: This is a crucial feature which allows you to “forward” (that is, send) phone calls to other numbers. This way someone can call a business number which you’ve advertised and then have it redirected to one of your employees who may be operating on a different number.
• VIP/Block List: This is a particular feature of the flow but is important to recognize as a powerful tool. Phone queue options allow you to set up special paths for significant calls. With VIP, important calls can be directed to you even after office hours. Likewise, with Block, certain annoying callers can be hung up on without you having to do anything.

Ready to Start Using the Call Queuing System?

So, what is call queuing? It’s a way that you can get to all of the people who might need help without missing any of them. When you have several incoming calls on the line, it’s important to be able to get to them in a timely manner or, if you can’t get to it, being able to address it without even having to speak with the person waiting on the line.

Having this function means being able to address the concerns of all callers who need help, which makes it a key customer communications feature. MightyCall offers such an option and presents it in a way which is easily accessible and easy to set up, even for those who are not usually great with technology. Our call queue software is vibrant, straightforward, and genuinely fun to use.