The Queue
The picture above uses only two entries to enhance clarity. In this scenario a Supervisor could see that two visitors have been waiting between two and four minutes to be attended to. The Queue offers a lot of information which can be further refined and/or broadened.
Managing the Queue: Filtering
With many agents and many simultaneous sessions the Queue can become unwieldy. If there are many visitors waiting you can apply filters to investigate those potential sessions that are most vital to you.
To filter the Queue, select Queue from the main menu then select Filter queue from the top left. A popup displays, offering two drop-down lists that represent all Named Areas and languages registered in the system.
Select the Named Area drop-down list. (Perhaps to ensure that the ‘most important’ Named Areas are being attended to?). For example, you may have a private or limited Named Area that only carries information on high-ticket services such as investment banking or portfolio management. It may be that you would want to ensure that visitors to certain Named Areas never have to wait more than a preset amount of time before they are answered.
Note: You can filter the queue according to multiple criteria. In the picture above the queue is being filtered by 3 Named Areas, all in English.
You can now select the OK button or you can also define the languages you wish to filter against.
When you are done defining filters for the Queue click OK and the list will display on the Queue page.
Session Forwarding
Session forwarding is perhaps the most powerful feature of all as it allows all agents, regardless of role, to forward sessions to either another agent or another team. This is crucial to ensuring a timely and fruitful resolution to matching the right agent with a visitor. If your front-line visitor service agents are enabled to pinpoint the right agent or team within the organization this can have a dramatic effect on the success of each and every session.
Switch on Forwarding
Forwarding is not configured by default. Super Admins / Admins can switch on forwarding by following the steps below:
- Select Settings > Global then click the Advanced button.
From the Options drop-down list make sure the Show Inherited and Label checkboxes are selected.
In the Filter field enter the word forward.
Note: Session forwarding is ‘Role Agnostic’. It is best used as a 'direct line'. Everyone registered in the system is available as a target using session forwarding. This is useful for handling 'outlying' or 'special' cases. For example, an agent who normally handles small loans could be confronted by a 'big fish' whose needs are outside the expertise of the agent or the team of which they are a member. Rather than ask the visitor to 'call again' the agent can instantly forward the visitor directly to someone registered within the system who can handle that particular visitor. This could be a 'knowledge domain' expert or it could be someone tasked with the responsibility of matching difficult or exceptional visitors to the member(s) of your staff who can perhaps best add value to that session.
From the Session Forwarding drop-down list select Both. This will switch forwarding on for both agents and teams. If you do not want both switched on select either Agents or Teams.
Click Save to activate forwarding.
As alluded to elsewhere in this document, if a call comes in and a session is started it may be likely that the agent who answered the call cannot offer the type of service a particular visitor requires.
It may even be that you decide that all visitors will first be ‘vetted’ by your front-line agents and then forwarded in a targeted manner so that you can maximize the value of each and every session.
Note that this would be an example of the previously-mentioned ‘upside-down’ hierarchy, where the front-line agents, perhaps less skilled in nuanced financial services but experts in ‘handling’ clients, can ask a series of questions that enable them to forward the visitor to the ‘sweet spot’ in the system. Such a front-line would need to ‘see’ the relevant teams. It may even be that many sessions would be forwarded twice; the first to a relevant team and the next; from that specialist team to the most relevant, available, member of that team.
Note: Everyone can see everyone else, within the same account, when forwarding sessions. This means that registered users, who cannot normally see teams and team members thereof, are able to forward sessions to teams ‘upstream’ and to users upstream. This also means that whatever your process design, all of your agents have the ability to forward sessions to all of your agents all of the time. For example, a visitor who was just handled by the technical support team may now have a sales-related question and can be forwarded to the corresponding team or person.
Note: Session forwarding is virtually instantaneous, only limited by the speed of the network; to the visitor it seems entirely seamless.
Note: You can forward visitors who are still waiting in the Queue and have not yet started a session. And you can also forward sessions after they have started. See the Invite an Agent or Team to Join a Session section on this page for the steps required to forward a session from within that session.
Forward a Session to an Agent
The situation below is that a session is in the queue and you want to forward that session to another agent.
On the Queue page select the (
) drop-down list beside the Preview button.
The list offers two options:
- Forward to agent
- Forward to team
Select Forward to agent. The Forward session to agent modal page slides in from the right.
Use the Filter field and Sort by drop-down to find the agent then click on the entry in the list.
Note: The list is populated by all agents within the account in which you function, regardless of role or hierarchy.
Write a short message then click the Forward button. The message and the session is then forwarded to the Queue of the person you selected from the drop-down list.
The message/session disappears from the queue where it was displaying and arrives, instantaneously, in Chico’s queue. In this example Chico can either answer or forward the message again.
Forward a Session to a Team
Forwarding to a team is almost exactly the same as forwarding to an agent. The only difference being that the message and session are forwarded to, potentially, all members of the team you have chosen.
The situation below is that a call is in the queue and you want to forward that call to another team where it can be forwarded to a more appropriate agent for that session.
On the Queue page select the (
) drop-down list beside the Preview buttonThe list offers two options:
- Forward to agent
- Forward to team
Select Forward to team. The Forward session to team modal page slides in from the right.
Select a team from the list.
Note: The list is populated by all teams within the account in which you function, regardless of role or hierarchy.
Write a short message then click the Forward button. The message and the session is then forwarded to the Queue of the team you selected from the drop-down list.
The message disappears from the queue where it was displaying and arrives, instantaneously, in the Corporate debt team’s queue. Now, a member of the Corporate debt team can either answer or forward the message again.
Note: This request is still in an unanswered state in the sense that the session could be answered or forwarded again to any agent or any team.
Invite an Agent or Team to Join a Session
As well as the ability to forward requests to agents and teams from the Queue you are also able to invite an agent or team into the session; from within the current session.
The difference between forwarding and inviting is that the agent who requests the invite (you) remains in the session.
Select either Invite an agent or Invite a team. Available agents and teams then display.
Write a message to the agent or team then click the Invite button.
Visibility of Forwarding Queues
Admins and Supervisors can see forwarding queues with additional team information by setting the following configuration to true:
com.unblu.core.client.desk.queuePlayerManager.showSubTeamForwardQueues
To access this configuration element from the Agent Desk:
From the main menu select either Account or Teams or Users then, from the top menu on the page select Settings.
Select the Advanced button to reveal some extra options.
From the check boxes under Match against: select the Key and Show inherited check boxes then enter the configuration value com.unblu.core.client.desk.queuePlayerManager.showSubTeamForwardQueues into the Filter field and press enter in order to find the correct value. The picture above shows what you should see.
- Select the showSubTeamForwardQueues check box under Agent Desktop Settings.
- Click the Save button. This sets the value to true and means that Supervisors and Admins will see the forwarding queues of their team members.
Note: The forwarding queues will be displayed above the normal queue with a title like "My team" or "Assigned to me". For the sub-teams; the teams' names will display as the title.
Preview Before Forwarding
The ability to preview is especially useful when forwarding, or indeed when one wants to try to figure what the visitor might want, before you have communicated with the visitor.
Note: The Preview feature is available for all calls waiting, regardless of whether they are to be forwarded or not.
Note: Sessions can still be forwarded after they have been accepted and started by an agent.
The picture above shows what, as an agent, you might see after clicking the Preview button. The site has a ‘preview’ message across it. Note that the Chat page is from the visitor end, and reproduced as part of the preview.
Select (
) when you want to close the preview page.
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