I've just enabled call queueing on our group of 4 phones. If there's no active calls, and someone calls the main number, they are greeted by a voice telling them they are 1st in the queue... Is this expected behaviour?

What would be much better for us is that the phone would ring a few times before they are told of their position in the queue.

It takes 8 seconds between getting connected and the phone ringing... Not good!

Maybe i've got it set up wrong?

Having thought about it, this behavior makes call queueing pretty useless for us. The problem is, we don't have very well defined office hours... We work from home, so in the evening we often let the office phone ring if we're eating or watching TV. If we're in the office we'll pick it up. This works well - after X seconds of ringing it'll go to voicemail.

Now if the office is unatended, the first (and only) caller gets a queueing message, so they think the phone will be answered. If the phones aren't answered, they will wait forever (it never goes to voicemail)! Also, if ALL the phones are on DND mode, the customer is still queued, even though none of the phones ring!!!

The phone rang for 30 minutes last night until I got out of bed to pick it up... As you can probably guess, the guy on the end wasn't too pleased.

The solution is simple. When the phones are ALL idle, the queueing sould be basically disabled. The phone should ring normally. After X seconds of ringing, it should go through to the voicemail.

If the phones are all on DND, it should go through to voicemail straight away!

The ONLY time call queueing should start is when a phone that isn't in DND mode is ON A CALL.

Does this make sense?

It says in the voipfone manual - if the call in the queue isn't answered, it should go to voicemail.

This is not the case, and for some reason, when you are in the queue, the phone rings forever and the caller never goes to voicemail. Voipfone should fix this.

the way queueing works is as follows

1: caller is answered by the queuing system and the lines statistical information is checked and the caller is informed of their position in the queue

2: then every 30 seconds the lines statistical information is again queried and the caller informed of there position

If you have a number of callers all in the queue at the same time then not only will the caller be informed of their position in the queue but they will also be informed of how long before their call will be answered

But what I'm saying it that the queueing system shouldn't answer the call if there are no other calls active... There's no point in telling someone they are the first person in the queue if there isn't a queue!

d.brophy make a good point. Quing shouldn't be active if there is no need to queue.

imho: You should only need to queue if all extensions in the initial group are engaged. As soon as a line becomes available - the top most entry in the queue should go off queue and the extension should ring, after 'n' seconds it should then go to voicemail.

Having the line go straight to queue, even if extensions are available to answer looks really bad.

I wish to re-open this topic, i too purchased call queing but, disabled it after i noticed i was loosing calls.

When i called people back and asked them why they hung up it was becuase they heard they were in a que, but didnt wait long enough to find out there position. They just hung up and thought they would try again later.

I have since disabled call queing.

However if the system was made to ring when there wasnt a que ie 1st caller, then it would work really well. And give the option for caller 2, 3, 4, etc to wait or ring back. Later.

Does voip have any plans to change this in the future. I wont use it in its current state, but if this small adjustment could be made i would be much more comfortable with it.

Please Please Please (i know your busy and you work hard!)


Regards



Richard

Yeh, ok then

Seriously, we have it on the to do list. Just at the moment though we are making major changes to billing, database management and failover and voice server additions. All very necessary but not too exciting for end users.

Hopefully we'll have another customer facing, product and feature development, Bush like Surge, shortly.

I can't agree with the above posters enough.
We are a small business and the personal touch is vital for us. We will start using call queuing when:
- the caller gets a ringing tone if the phone line is not busy. We will lose calls and business if the call queue cuts in every time.
- we can personalise the call queue message
- callers have the option to press a button and leave a voicemail

Please Voipfone can we have these features?! Call queuing would be a killer app for us!

John

Agreed. I bought the Queue option and it is pretty much useless to me now.

Serious bummer as I have a small call centre that would have really benefited from this feature being done right (tbh it was one of the features that sold me on the system). Now that I am implementing it, I have found its serious limitations and will have to disable it.

Bummer

Any progress or comments on these suggested alterations to call queuing?

John

[bump]

This is also a feature that we MUST have. We are loosing calls also, however I cannot turn off call queuing as we have varying volumes of calls through the day and need it on.

The situation is so bad I am considering moving provider.

PLEASE guys, surely this shouldn't be too difficult to implement.....I am seriously willing to pay to get it bumped up your to-do list!

I considered buying the Call Queueing system when I signed up - now I'm glad I didn't!

I too thought that it was plain obvious how it must work - when there is even one phone available and on-hook (let alone 2, 3, or 4 phones), there should be no queueing whatsoever, the phone(s) should just ring. Only when all the phones in the call group are busy should the queue system take over and start speaking to the caller.

This to me sounds like a self-evident feature of a queueing system, and I am really surprised with the software engineer who developed it in this counter-intuitive way!!

Hi - We purchased the call queuing too but disabled it after 2 days as we were loosing so many calls and I was not even on the phone

If there could be a setting to not queue when 1st caller and also to ring a couple of times before the announcement that the person is in a queue I am sure this would make the call queuing more effective and seriously help our business

Support team - is there any update on this issue?

Bump...

Unbelievably this thread started four years ago and the first caller still gets a recorded message!

Going to cancel this just like all the previous customers who have been attempting to guide the software designers in the right direction on this one, somebody just isn't listening.

The current message; “Please hold to be connected to the next available representative, thank you for your patience” simply is not right if the incoming line is free.

This service should ONLY operate from caller two onwards AND all lines engaged!

imho, It should start if all lines are engaged.