Using the Time in Queue Report

The following describes how to access and interrogate the Time In Queue call report, which provides a list of queued call statistics that can be grouped in any one of the following ways:

  • By service.

  • By the dialled phone number.

  • By queue.

  • By the hour of day the call was made.

This article concerns the latest version (v2) of this report. An older version exists for legacy purposes, but there is no modern reason to use it instead of v2.

The report includes the following details for each grouping:

  • Total: The number of calls allocated to queues during the specified period.
  • Queued: Of the allocated calls, how many reached a queue.

    If the report is grouped by Queue, this value will always be 100% of the Total.

  • Short: How many calls lasted less than a specific duration (defaults to 10 seconds), shown as both a quantity and a percentage of the Total.
  • Queued Minus Short: How many calls were Queued, minus the number that were Short.
  • Answered: How many Queued calls were answered, shown as both a quantity and a percentage of the number Queued. This section is divided into multiple parts, which include:
    • How many were answered in total.
    • How many were answered in under a Target time threshold.

  • Avg. Queue For Answered: The average time (in seconds) that Answered calls spent waiting in the queue.

  • Avg. Conversation: The average time (in seconds) that Answered callers spent in conversation with an Agent before wrap-up.

  • Abandoned: How many callers hung up before their call was Answered, shown as both a quantity and a percentage of the number Queued. This section is divided into multiple parts, which include:

    • How many were abandoned in total.
    • How many were abandoned within a Target time threshold.

  • Avg. Queue For Abandoned: The average time (in seconds) that Abandoned calls spent waiting in a queue.

  • Max Queue Time (Answered): The longest time any call spent in a queue before being answered.

  • Max Queue Time (Abandoned): The longest time any call spent in a queue before being abandoned.

Implementation

  1. Access the Call Log page.
    1. Hover over your company name in the top-left corner of the screen to reveal the context menu.

    2. Click Call Log for Today. This opens the Call Log screen, with call totals for the current date selected.

  1. Use the Show Me drop-down to select Time In Queue Report (v2).
  2. Use the For... drop-down to select the category of calls you want to include in the report. Depending on your choice, you may be presented with additional drop-downs to further specify the calls you're interested in.
  3. Use the On... drop-down to report on one of the following:
    • All calls for your organisation.
    • Inbound calls for your organisation.
    • Calls specific to a single organisation.
    • Calls specific to a single service or number.
    • Calls specific to a single Agent.
    • Calls specific to an Agent group.
  4. Use the Over... drop-down to choose the reporting period, which can be a single day, month, or year; a certain period in the past (e.g. last 7 days); or a specific date range.

    The maximum date range for this type of report is three months.

  5. Use the Targets section to choose thresholds and other settings for assessing whether calls were answered in an acceptable time-frame.
    1. Using the three text fields provided, type the durations (in seconds) representing the different thresholds for call answering speed.
      • Calls shorter than Target 1are considered good.
      • Durations between Target 1 and Target 2 are considered acceptable.
      • Any between Target 2 and Target 3 are considered poor.
      • Those in excess of Target 3 are considered unacceptable.

      Any threshold with a value of 0 will not be used. By default, only Target 1 is used, with a duration of 20 seconds.

    2. Calculate Answered Target %s of: By default, the % figures for Answered calls are based on Queued calls minus Short calls. If you would prefer a percentage of the total Answered instead, select the Total Answered radio button.
    3. Calculate Abandoned Target %s of: By default, the % figures for Abandoned calls are based on Queued calls minus Short calls. If you would prefer a percentage of the total Abandoned instead, select the Total Abandoned radio button.
  6. Use the Short Call Filters section to choose what duration, if any, should define a call as being Short in this report. Short calls are excluded from certain totals.

    There are several fields in this section, each relating to a different category of call, namely:

    • Unanswered
    • Answered
    • Abandoned

    For each, type a length of time (in seconds) that calls must exceed to not be considered Short. By default, only the Unanswered field is used, and its default value is 10 seconds. Setting any of these to 0 will mean that no calls in this category will be treated as short.

  7. Use the Group Results By drop-down to select a method of grouping the report data (by queue, by service, etc).
  8. In addition to the standard Avg. Conversation column—which tells you how long callers have been in conversation with anyone during their calls, Agent or otherwise—you can tell the report to include more specific data by ticking the Show Conversation Time with Agents check box.

    If all of your calls were to involve just the caller and one of your Agents, the average conversation time would clearly only relate to conversations with Agents. However, if the caller was connected to a third party (for example, as a result of a patch or an enquiry call), the time in conversation with this third party would be included in the average.

    By enabling the Show Conversation Time with Agents option, you can see the time callers spent with Agents, both as an average (in seconds) and a total (in hours, minutes, and seconds).

  9. If any of your queues have Whisper messages enabled, the time your Agents have spent listening to those whispers is excluded from this report by default. To include this time, tick the Also Include Time Agents Spent in Whisper check box.
  10. If you want to produce a report based on a few specific queues, use the Include Queuing Information For... drop-down to select a list of queue IDs, then use the adjoining field to type a comma-separated list of queue IDs to include, e.g.

    0001,0002,0052

  11. If you want to generate a downloadable CSV file containing the data in your report, tick the Produce CSV Data File check box.

    When you run the report with this setting enabled, underneath the list you'll find a file icon that lets you download the data when clicked.

  12. Click Update to display the report based on your choices.

When viewing the report, you can use the Previous and Next buttons (alternatively titled Yesterday, Last Month, etc. depending on the reporting period) to move backward and forwards through its history; for example, if you are viewing a 24-hour period and press Previous Day, the report will refresh to display values from the previous 24 hours, and so on.