Agents (Accounts that belong to the 'Inbound Agent' group) can be added to a Queue as a Member.
Members of a Queue have calls delivered to them from the Queue when the Agent is Available.
How an Agent becomes Available (to take calls) is an important consideration when setting up a Queue and there are multiple methods available. Choosing the correct method is important to ensure your team operate optimally.
Login Type
The Login Type controls how an Agent logs into a Queue. An Agent must first be Logged into a Queue before their Availablity can be be considered.
Note: just because an Agent is logged in to a Queue doesn't not mean they are Availble. You need to understand how Thresholds affect an Agent's Availability.
Agent should generally login at the start of their shift and not log out until the end of the shift. During the day an Agent may pause themselves (via Noojee Vision) to take a lunch or a toilet break.
Static Login
Static Agents are always considered as Logged in and as such do not need to use Noojee Vision to login to a Queue.
You could consider Static Agents as a way to place a fixed handset into a queue which is always Available (subject to Wrap Time and Thresholds). Static Agents are often used for the Reception area or when you don't have dedicated Agents and want to use a ringing phone in a general area where any one of several staff could answer the phone.
Dynamic Login
Dynamic Login is the most common method of Agents logging into Queues. At the start of each shift each Agent launches Noojee Vision and logs into each Queue they are a Member of.
During the day they can pause themselves in individual queues using Noojee Vision.
Skill Login
Skills based login allows you to specify the Skill required by an Agent to become a member of the Queue. You manage an Agents set of Skills via the Account screen and the set of required skills by this Members tab.
When an Agent logs into Noojee Vision and clicks the Start button the Agent is automatically logged into each of the Queues for which they have the required skills.
If you change a Queue's required skills or the Agents set of skills after they have logged in, the system will automatically update the set of Queues the Agent is a member of (i.e. there is no need for the agent to logout and back in to change their membership).
Skills based Login is extremely useful if you have large no.s of Agents or Queues.
Thresholds
Thresholds provide an automated method of handling periods of high call volume by automatically making additional Agents Available.
Lets say you have 10 agents that most days comfortably handle most of your calls within you defined Service Levels (the amount of time you have to answer a call). Every now and then you team gets flooded with calls when something unexpected occurs and so they need some help handling all of the extra calls. Thresholds allow you to define a Secondary team of Agents that can help your primary team during these peak periods.
The Secondary Team will ONLY recieve calls if some threshold is breached. Once the threshold is no longer in breach the Secondary Team will no longer recieve calls at least not until the next breach.
Every Queue must have at least one threshold (usually Threshold Type: Immediate) with one or more Members added to that Threshold.
There are three types of Threshold Types:
Immediate
Your Primary team of Agents should be added to an 'Immediate' Threshold. With an Immediate Threshold, as soon as a call arrives in the Queue any Available Agent in associated with this Threshold will be rang (according to the Ring Strategy).
The Immediate Threshold also provides a 'Priority' option. The priority allows you to further split you primary group by creating multiple Immediate Thresholds with different priorities and members. If you have two Immediate Thresholds one with a priority of '0' and the other with a priority of '1' then when a call arrives in the queue it will be immediately allocated to any Available agent that is a Member for the Priority '0' threshold. If there are no Agents Available in the Priority '0' threshold then the system will immediately allocate calls to Agents which are Members of the Priority '1' threshold.
Essentially the priority mechanism allows you to send calls to a 'preferred' group of Agents but still allows you to allocated calls to a secondary group of agents without risking a breach of your SLA.
SLA
Your Secondary team of Agents should be added to an 'SLA' (or Call Count) threshold. An SLA Threshold is a 'time' based threshold. This means that your secondary group of agents will only recieve calls if a call is been waiting in the queue for more than the defined SLA threshold. e.g. if the 'Seconds' field has a value of '10' then once at least one call has been waiting for more than 10 seconds the secondary group of Agents will be considered Available (subject to them being logged in and not in Wrap and not Paused).
Call Count
The Call Count works the same as SLA except that the threshold is the no. of calls waiting in the queue. If the 'Call Count' is 10 and more than 10 calls are waiting in the queue then Agents which are Members of this Threshold will be considered Available (subject to them being logged in and not in Wrap and not Paused).