The Ultimate Guide to Call Center Queue Management: Strategies, Tools, and Best Practices

Nobody likes waiting in a queue. Waiting in a call center queue can be just as frustrating as waiting in line at a store.

In fact, up to 60% of customers say that even a one-minute hold time when they contact a call center is too long.

Unfortunately, call queues are commonplace in the call center. No matter how well-staffed your company is, you won’t always be able to answer every call immediately. Call center queue management technology, however, can help you respond to callers as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The right approach to queue management can help companies enhance customer satisfaction, improve agent efficiency and improve overall business performance. In this guide, we’ll dive into why queue management is so important, how you can improve efficiency, and the key mistakes you’ll need to avoid.

Why Queue Management is Critical in Call Centers

Every day, call centers receive hundreds, even thousands of calls. Even with an excellent routing system and hundreds of staff, it’s impossible to answer all of those calls instantly. That’s where queue management technology steps in. It enables companies to control the flow of callers, ensuring they’re directed to the most qualified agent, in the fastest time possible.

The trouble is, managing queues, and keeping them moving quickly, isn’t easy. High call volumes and a growing need to monitor and manage multiple communication channels can quickly lead to lengthy wait times, higher call abandonment rates, and diminished customer satisfaction.

The less effective your queue management strategy is, the more the customer experience suffers. You could even risk losing opportunities for sales and drive consumers away from your company, into the arms of competitors, if you force them to wait too long.

Complex and lengthy queues don’t just create issues for customers either. It also places additional strain on your employees. Agents overwhelmed by rapidly growing queues feel pressured to finish conversations faster, leading to burnout and stress, as well as poorer customer experiences.

Effective queue management, which combines analytical insights with technology and proper planning, is the key to balancing workloads, boosting team productivity, and keeping your customers happy. 

Key Metrics for Call Center Queue Management

To improve call center queue management, business leaders first need to know which metrics they should be tracking to determine whether their strategies are really effective. There are numerous metrics businesses can monitor using call center software and monitoring or reporting tools.

From a queue management perspective, some of the most significant KPIs to monitor include:

• Average Wait Time (AWT): AWT measures the average time customers spend waiting in the queue. This is calculated by dividing total wait time by the number of calls answered. Measuring AWT provides insights into how quickly your agents typically respond to customers, helping you to understand how long callers are left waiting.
• Call Abandonment Rate: Call Abandonment Rate shows you the percentage of customers who hang up before reaching an agent. If your abandonment rate is high, this is a clear sign that customers are getting frustrated waiting for their calls to be answered. It might indicate you need to increase your staff or invest in new technology.
• First Call Resolution (FCR): FCR measures the percentage of calls resolved in the customer’s first interaction. A high FCR is key to reducing repeat calls and maintaining customer satisfaction. Alternatively, if your FCR rate is low, this might indicate that you’re routing customers to the wrong agents, or not providing agents with enough information to resolve issues.

Monitoring these three metrics will give you a good idea of how effective your call queuing strategy is already. It should also give you benchmarks you can refer to when you’re tracking the impact of any call management strategies or technologies you implement in the future.

Types of Call Center Queue Management Strategies

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to queue management in the contact center. Your strategy will depend on a number of factors, including the number of staff members, the available technology, and the different types of callers your team needs to handle.

On a broad scale, some of the most common strategies include:

1. First In, First Out (FIFO)

This is one of the most traditional ways to manage calls, often requiring no particularly advanced technology. With the FIFO approach, you simply queue customers based on the order in which they contact your company. This is a relatively “fair” approach to ensuring everyone who contacts your team gets the same treatment – but it doesn’t allow you to prioritize urgent issues or VIP customers.

Not every person who contacts your call center will have an urgent issue. Some may just need to check in on something (like the arrival date of an order), while others need to tackle immediate problems, like an issue with non-responsive software. Typically, the FIFO approach is best used in situations where most callers will have requests with the same level of urgency.

2. Priority Queuing

Priority queuing is a more strategic approach to call center queue management. It involves identifying specific factors, like the reason behind a call or the person who is calling, using AI and IVR systems, so your contact center technology can “prioritize” the calls that matter most.

By prioritizing VIP callers, or people who need help instantly, you can ensure those with urgent issues get the prompt response they need. However, this does sometimes mean that callers who are identified as “non-priorities” may end up waiting longer, as they’re regularly pushed to the back of the queue. There’s also a risk that your system may occasionally struggle to differentiate between priority and non-priority callers, depending on the technology you use.

3. Skills-Based Routing

Skills-based routing is another excellent call center queue management strategy that helps to reduce the risk of call transfers, improve customer satisfaction, and increase first call resolution rates. With this strategy, your system ensures that calls are directed to agents with the appropriate skills to handle a concern. This leads to faster, more accurate resolutions.

Plus, skills-based routing can help reduce queue times for customers. Instead of everyone waiting in the same queue to simply speak to “anyone,” people are divided into different queues for different departments, making each queue shorter.

4. Automated Callbacks

Automated callbacks offer a modern alternative to standard “routing” and call queue management strategies. Instead of asking users to wait on hold to be directed to the right agent, you give them the option to request a callback when a relevant agent becomes available.

This can be an excellent way to improve customer satisfaction, as customers can proceed with other tasks while they’re waiting for an agent to be available. However, you will need to ensure you have the right technology in place to help you organize the order of call-backs and assign them to relevant agents. Plus, you may still need to offer customers the option to “wait on hold” if they prefer.

Technology for Optimizing Queue Management

As call center interaction volumes continue to increase, and companies deal with a wider range of challenges, such as reduced staffing, increased communication channels, and higher customer expectations, technologies can streamline the queuing process.

For instance, ComputerTalk’s iceAdministrator system gives users comprehensive control over queues and users, allowing them to design workflows for callers built on their specific needs. It even includes a workflow designer tool, that allows you to modify your workflows in real time.

Tools like these help businesses to take advantage of various routing strategies, such as priority and skills-based queuing, auto-attendants and IVRs for self-service, and more. Beyond comprehensive queue management systems, companies can also take advantage of other tools to enhance queue strategies:

• IVR Systems: Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems allow customers to navigate options or self-serve through automated prompts. They can complete tasks without speaking to an agent (like checking on a balance or order status). Plus, IVR systems can gather information from customers that help to determine where to route their call, based on their needs.
• CRM Integrations: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms empower agents handling customer queues, by giving them access to caller details instantly. When agents can access in-depth information about a customer, they can personalize the customer experience, and resolve issues faster, reducing average handling time and increasing first-call resolution rates.
• AI and Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can handle common queries and issues for customers on a 24/7 basis. This leads to fewer customers reaching out to a call center, reducing interaction volumes, and allowing agents to move through queues at a greater speed. Some bots can even transfer contextual information to an agent from a chat that’s escalated into a call, which further accelerates issue resolution times.

Best Practices for Call Center Queue Management

The right approach to call center queue management relies on a combination of data-driven insights, intuitive technology, and adaptability. Here are our top tips for optimizing queue management.

1. Adjust Staffing Based on Call Volume Forecasts

With historical reporting tools and predictive analytics, businesses can gain insights into when call volumes are likely to spike and subside. Based on previous data, you can see which times of the day, and which days or weeks of the month incur the highest call volumes.

This means business leaders can rapidly adapt their staffing strategy, to ensure that additional team members are available during periods of peak demand. There are even solutions that allow you to combine your call center analytics with workforce management tools, so you can adjust staffing and scheduling strategies based on new data as it emerges.

2. Optimize Agent Training

Effective agent training is crucial to ensuring you can deliver empathetic, personalized, and professional support to customers. It’s also the key to making sure your agents can handle calls as efficiently as possible, reducing wait times, and increasing first call resolution rates.

Providing agents with comprehensive training on how they can use CRM integrations to surface customer data, leverage AI tools to troubleshoot problems and suggest solutions, and obtain product information will help make them faster and more productive. Implementing cross-functional training strategies that ensure all of your agents can handle a wide range of different types of calls and requests, can also reduce the need for call transfers.

3. Implement Real-Time Monitoring and Adjustment

Historical data can help you predict potential peaks and changes in call volumes, but sudden issues can lead to unexpected changes. That’s why it’s so important to be able to keep track of call volumes and queues in real time, with a solution like iceMonitor.

With real-time insights into call volumes, supervisors immediately see when calls are beginning to spike, and queue times are increasing. This means they can implement new proactive strategies to route calls more efficiently and distribute callers among team members. This can minimize queue times and even reduce the risk of agent burnout, by ensuring call volumes are distributed evenly.

4. Offer Advanced Self-Service Options

Self-service isn’t just a popular option for customers because it’s available 24/7. It can also lead to quicker resolutions to common problems. When customers have access to comprehensive FAQs, chatbots that can answer typical queries, and advanced IVR systems, they can solve issues independently.

This means they don’t need to call your call center and wait to speak to a human agent as often, so you end up with fewer people in your call queues. The more you can reduce call volumes, the more wait times will decrease. Plus, your employees will face less stress.

5. Encourage Agent Autonomy

Giving agents autonomy is crucial to reducing call queues and wait times. If agents have access to scripts, tools, and resources they can use to solve problems and address issues themselves, they won’t need to wait for other employees to be available to help them serve customers.

Giving agents the authority and freedom to make quick, on-the-spot decisions can lead to better first-call resolution rates, and reduced call transfers. It improves both the employee experience, by showing your teams you trust them to address each situation effectively, and the customer experience, by allowing them to access resolutions faster.

Common Mistakes in Queue Management

Aside from implementing the right technologies and strategies to improve your call center queue management, it’s also worth making sure you’re aware of the key mistakes you’ll need to avoid. Here are the top mistakes to side-step with your queuing strategy:

• Overlooking Data and Metrics: Failing to monitor KPIs like average wait time and abandonment rates leaves you blind to operational inefficiencies. Regularly track these metrics to maintain optimal queue efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
• Failing to Update Technology Regularly: Sticking to outdated systems can lead to inefficiencies and frustrated customers. Regularly review and update your software to take advantage of the latest features and improvements, like AI-enhanced routing systems, self-service options, and IVR tools.
• Ignoring Agent Feedback: Agents often have valuable insights into queue challenges, and inefficiencies in the workplace. Regularly seeking feedback from your team is a great way to unlock ideas on how you can improve queuing processes.  
• Neglecting Customer Feedback: Customers’ experiences are key indicators of your queue management’s success. Gather and analyze feedback to identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategy accordingly. Automated surveys are excellent for gathering feedback after calls.

Building an Efficient Queue Management System

Effective queue management is crucial in the modern call center. If you’re not managing your queues effectively, then your customer satisfaction rates will suffer, your efficiency levels will drop, and your employees will face a higher chance of burnout.

Take a moment to consider your current queuing strategy. Are you tracking the right metrics, and using the best technology to boost efficiency and agent performance? If not, now could be the time to upgrade your call center queuing strategy.

Contact us for a demo to learn more about how our intelligent IVR systems, routing tools, and monitoring systems can help you optimize call center performance.