Call Queues & Ring Groups (v20)

Introduction

With 3CX you can create call queues or ring groups and handle incoming calls as a team:

• Ring Groups- route calls concurrently to multiple extensions.
• Call Queues - queue calls for when agents are available. If all agents are busy, calls are kept waiting until one becomes available.

Ring Groups

To create a new ring group or edit a new ring group:

1. Go to “Admin” > “Call handling”.
2. Click on “+ Add Ring Group” to create a new group.
3. Virtual extension number: choose an extension number for your group.
4. Ring group name: choose a name for your ring group, for example, sales or support.
5. Department: Specify which department the ring group is part of. This is important as the ring group will follow that department’s office hours.
6. Assigned DID number(s): use the drop-down to assign a DID number to your ring group. When called the DID number will route calls directly to your ring group.
7. Ring strategy:

• Ring all - Rings all group members at the same time until someone picks up or the ring time is reached.
• Prioritized hunt - The system will start with the top group member listed in the “Users” tab and proceed down the list until it finds an available agent. The first member will receive each and every call.

8. Ring time (seconds): add in seconds how long the call should ring before it’s considered unanswered. Default ringing timeout is 20 seconds.
9. In the “Destinations” section, set different destinations for out of office hours or break times and holidays.
10. Navigate to the “Users” tab and click “+ Add user”. Use the search box to find the users you want to add to the group or enter their extension number. If you selected “Prioritized Hunt” you can drag and drop the users to change their listing order depending on whose phone you want to ring first.
11. Navigate to the “3CX Talk” tab to create a web link that users can click on and call your ring group free of charge and without any downloads.

• Choose a name for your link i.e. sales, support etc.
• From the “Ask customer for” dropdown choose what information you would like to collect from the customer before a call is initiated.
• Copy the 3CX Talk link and add it to your website, email signature and social media pages. With a simple click visitors can call your queue directly.

12. Click “Save”.

Call Queues

Queues offer many more options on how a call should be handled. If you cannot take the call immediately it’s added to the call queue and there are various ways of handling queued calls. To configure a queue:

1. Go to “Admin” > “Call handling”.
2. Click “+ Add queue” at the top of the screen.
3. Virtual extension number: choose an extension number for your group.
4. Queue name: choose a name for your queue, for example, sales or support.
5. Department: which department does the queue fall under. This is important as the queue will follow that department’s office hours.
6. Maximum queue wait time (seconds): set a time limit for how long a call can wait in the queue before the call follows the rules set if a call is unanswered.
7. Assigned DID number(s): use the drop-down to assign a DID number to your queue to route calls directly to your queue.
8. Polling strategy:

• Prioritized Hunt – The system will start with the top group member in the “Users” tab and only if that user is busy will it proceed down the list until it finds the next available agent. This strategy can be used to set up skills-based routing, by prioritizing the agents according to their skills.
• Ring All – Rings all queue members at the same time until someone picks up or the ring time is reached.
• Hunt Random Start – Randomly choose an agent to distribute the call to and evenly distribute calls amongst available agents.
• Round Robin – distributes incoming calls evenly among logged in agents ensuring that each agent gets a fair share of calls.
• Longest Waiting – Forwards the call to the agent waiting the longest.
• Least Talk Time – Forwards the call to the agent with the least total talk time.
• Fewest Answered – Forwards the call to the agent who has answered the least number of calls.
• Hunt by Threes Random – Sends the call simultaneously to 3 random agents.
• Hunt by Threes Prioritized – Forwards the call simultaneously to 3 agents at a time as prioritized in the “Users” section.

9. Ring time: set the maximum time in seconds that a call should ring before following the rules set if a call is not answered. Default is 30 secs.
10. In the “Destinations” section, set different destinations for out of office hours, break times and holidays.
11. Navigate to the “Users” tab and click “+ Add user”. Use the search box to find the users you want to add to the group or enter their extension number. Pay attention to the order of users as some of the polling strategies work from the top of the list to the bottom.
12. Go to the “Options” tab to record or upload a greeting prompt for your queue.
13. Navigate to the “3CX Talk” tab to create a web link that users can click on and call your queue free of charge and without any downloads.

• Choose a name for your link i.e. sales, support etc.
• From the “Ask customer for” dropdown choose what information you would like to collect from the customer before a call is initiated.
• Copy the 3CX Talk link and add it to your website, email signature and social media pages. With a simple click visitors can call your queue directly.

14. Click “Save”.

Queue members must be logged in!

Queue members must be logged into a queue to answer calls. Configure queue members’ extensions to automatically log in and out by editing the user’s extension and going to “Call Forwarding” > choose the status you want to edit > check the “Log out from queues” option.

Advanced Options

Further customize your call queue from the “Advanced” tab:

• Allow call back: This option gives callers the option to hang up and be called back when an agent is available. The exact scenario of callbacks:

1. Caller calls Queue and is waiting.
2. Caller gets the option to register a callback (option 2). This happens after an amount of time that the caller has been waiting (configurable)
3. Queue Accepts to make a callback.
4. Queue makes the callback as soon as the agent is available.
5. Caller does not answer
6. Queue marks this as a failed callback.

• Record calls: record calls and give callers the option to either opt-in or out or recordings.
• Chat assignment: whether incoming chats are auto-assigned to the agent who responds first or if an agent needs to “Take” the chat for it to be assigned to them.
• Schedule queue statistics reset: when all the statistics in the queue are cleared and you start fresh. This could be daily, weekly or monthly.

Enterprise Queue Features

The Enterprise edition also features these additional queue options in the “Advanced” tab:

• Wrap-Up Time – gives the agent a set time in seconds to enter notes into the call record, after ending a call. During this time the agent will not receive any calls.
• Maximum Callers in Queue – when this number is reached, calls are routed according to the settings in the ‘Destination if no answer’ section.
• Priority Queue – prioritize calls from this queue over calls from other queues the agent/extension is a member of. Example: The support department has a queue for all support calls, and another queue for VIP customers, the VIP queue gets priority over other calls.
• Queue Statistics Reset – click to reset the queue agent calls and wallboard statistics, or set a periodic schedule for automatic reset. Detailed statistics for the queue, i.e. average call time, average wait time, etc, are visible through the “Agent Status” and “Queue Monitoring” sections on the “Panel” view in the 3CX Web Client.
• Queue Email Notifications – enable to notify the manager for certain queue events, i.e. calls breaching the SLA time limit, queue calls lost, and callback activity.

Skill-based Routing

3CX Enterprise edition includes skill-based routing, which allows queued calls to be distributed to agents based on their skill group. For example, a call center can assign its support agents in increasing skill-level groups based on their expertise. In this way, incoming calls are first assigned to agents in the level “1” skill group and when not available, move on to the less experienced agents in subsequent skill groups.

Available skill-based routing strategies:

• Ring All - rings the phones of all the agents in this skill group.
• Hunt Random Start - randomly selects an agent to assign the call to, distributing the calls evenly among the agents in this skill group.
• Round Robin - cycles sequentially through all available queue agents in this skill group.
• Fewest Answered - prioritizes available agents who answered the least number of calls in this skill group.

Paging

Paging is used to make a one-way announcement to a ring group via the phone speaker, without the called party picking up the handset. Paging requires you to set the relevant dial code in “System” > “Dial Codes” > “Paging”, e.g. *9, and a phone that supports and is configured for intercom. 

To add a paging group for a ring group go to “Call Handling”> Click on the ring group you want to edit > in the “Ring Strategy” dropdown choose between:

• Paging -  add the extensions to the page in the section “Group members”.
• Paging Multicast - is suitable for large paging groups and requires phones supporting multicast, on the same local subnet as 3CX. Define the target multicast address to send the audio stream to and then use the provisioning configuration method to configure the IP phone to listen to this address.
• Click “Save”.

Intercom

Intercom enables you to make an announcement to a single extension with two-way audio, i.e. the called party can respond without picking up the handset. To call a user via the intercom function, add the paging/intercom prefix in front of the extension number, e.g. if your paging dial code is *9,dial: *91100. Configure the intercom dial code in “System > Dial codes > Paging”. The extension using intercom needs to have the “Operations” option enabled in “Users > View”.

See also

• How to manage your agents’ status in queues guide.
• Talk to your site visitors by installing the 3CX Live Chat.
• Learn about Dial Codes and how to program them.

Last Updated

This document was last updated on 27 February 2024

https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/call-center-queues/