First, there are mainly two types of Call Centers, Inbound and Outbound.

Inbound Call Centers have key points for their operation, among these are the following.

• ACD or Automatic Call Distribution – This is a system that automatically assigns
  incoming calls to available agents.
• Receive Calls – Inbound Call Centers will only receive calls. Agents do not place
  outgoing calls to customers. Customers will be calling the call center.
• Calls are terminal – This means that the reason for the customer calling must be
  resolved by the agent or the appropriate party.

In inbound call centers the agents must be able to assess the inquiry the caller or customer has placed. Be it positively or negatively, when a customer calls into the service, the assessment must be finished in a single call. Calls that bounce in an inbound call center are usually seen in a bad view.

Outbound Call Centers, on the other hand, manage these key points.

• Place Calls – Outbound Call Centers will be the ones calling the customers. Usually
  through a list of contacts.
• Are Initial Calls – Since the customer is not the one initiating the conversation, it is
  possible for the assessment to take multiple calls or re-schedule calls for a later date.
• Use a Dialer – Instead of an ACD, outbound call centers use a Dialer. This can be a
  predictive or a progressive dialer that automatically calls the contact list and assigns
  the call to an agent.

Outbound call centers will use either a progressive or predictive dialer system. Progressive dialers are more elegant in our opinion as they will call the customer only when the agent is available. Predictive dialers are better when you have a massive team of agents assuring that an agent is available at any time. In predictive dialers, if an agent is not available it can cause situations where the customer is called and they listen to ambiance noise or music on hold instead of a person, causing more disconnections.

In this guide, we will be looking into VitalPBX’s inbound call center capabilities. For Outbound, we have our Sonata Dialer application, but to learn more about this you can refer to the Sonata Dialer manual.

With this known, let’s dwell more into ACD and how it works, calls are managed with the following key points.

• ACD assigns the incoming calls by incoming order to the first available agent.
• The system will answer the call immediately and, if needed, keep the calls in queue
  until they can be answered by an available agent.
• The balance of the workforce between agents guarantees that each caller receives a
  quick response and professional service.

Here are some general rules of thumb you can consider when developing your Call Center
environment.

• If you have more channels, meaning people calling in, than agents, use a queue.
• If you have more agents than people calling in, use a Ring Group.
• Queues are more efficient than Ring Groups since you can have a call on hold for as
  long as you configure it. Queues are unlimited by default in VitalPBX.
• In some rare cases, Ring Groups will work better than Queues for some Call Centers.
  Especially if you are not expecting that many calls.
• Callers can receive information about wait time and position in a queue.
• Queues can have static or dynamic agents, while users in a ring group will always be
  part of a ring group.
• Multiple Ring Strategies are available.

Regarding Static and Dynamic agents, the difference is straightforward. Static agents a logged in a queue indefinitely, while dynamic agents can log in or out at any moment. Both types of agents can pause within a queue at any moment.

With these concepts clear, you might get a clearer idea of how a Call Center operates. As mentioned previously, VitalPBX has multiple tools that can aid in any of the aspects we went through. We have even more tools that expand on these concepts, and we will go through these in this guide.

The first thing you will enter is a Code for the ring group. This is the number you will need to dial to reach this ring group. Then, add a Description so we can identify the ring group.

Afterward, we must include the Extensions that belong to the ring group. These are the extensions that will be called when calling the ring group.

Optionally, members of this ring group can also be an External Number. Keep in mind, when using external numbers, you need to choose an appropriate Class of Service so the module can reach the external number.

Next, choose the Ring Strategy that best fits your needs, be it Ring All or One by one.

There are a couple of options that can help the members of a ring group to identify incoming calls. CID Name Prefix will add anything you enter in this field to the caller’s Caller ID Name. This way, you get to see that the call is from this ring group. You can also add an Announcement, which will playback to the ring group member before connecting the incoming call.

Lastly, let’s add a Last Destination, which is the destination for the call when the Ring Time runs out and none of the members answers the call. With this, you can Save and Apply Changes.

Some additional configurations you can perform in this module are as follows.

• Ringback Tone – This is a Music on Hold class to playback while someone is calling
  the ring group.
• Allow Diversions – With this feature enabled, the ring group members can enable any
  call diversions, i.e. call forwards, which will affect the incoming calls to the ring group.
• Mark Cancelled Calls as Answered – This will mark the calls as Answered if one of
  the ring group members answers the calls. With this disabled, calls will appear as
  missed in the extensions for the members who did not answer the call.
• Answer Channel – This is the default behavior for a ring group, as the ring group
  module will answer the call, and then connect it with any member that answers their
  phone. With this feature turned off, calls will not be marked as answered until a
  member answers the call. Keep in mind, that if you turn it off, audio (i.e. Music on
  Hold) may not playback, as the call is still ringing the system.
• Skip Busy Extensions – If this is turned on, any extension with a busy status will be
  skipped.
• No Release – This adds the no-release (/n) flag to the ring group members. This
  avoids creating multiple items in the CDR. Nevertheless, some phones may present
  issues on transfers when this feature is enabled, therefore it can be disabled.

And with this, you now have a Ring Group created. You can dial the ring group code from any device that does not belong to the ring group and members will start to ring. As you can see this is a very straightforward module that easily allows you to dial multiple extensions.

The Queues module is comprised of multiple tabs, the General, Announcement

Settings, and Others tabs.

We will begin with the main configurations in the General tab. This contains the general configuration for our queues and here is where we add our Members also known as Agents in a queue.

First, we will add a Code to our queue. This is how we are able to call a queue internally. And we add a Description so we can identify it easily.

Next, we have our Ring Strategies. We must choose one of the following.

• Ring All – This will ring all the available agents at once. Note: that this is not a
  recommended strategy if you want to have accurate statistics for your agent reports.
• Least Recent – This will ring the agent with the least recent assigned call.
• Fewest Calls – This will ring the agent with the fewest calls assigned.
• Random – This strategy will ring any agent at random.
• Round Robin Memory – Calls will be assigned in order of login, and the queue will
  remember which was the last agent assigned in the order.
• Linear – This will ring the agents linearly in order of login. This strategy will always
  begin with the first agent and only go to the next one if the agent is busy.
• Weight Random – Will randomly ring an agent, based on their penalty.
• Round Robin Ordered – Will ring an agent in order of login. Will continue to the next
  agent based on the previous agent rung.

It is very important you choose the ring strategy appropriately. This way calls are distributed as evenly as possible according to your operations. We recommend using any of the Round Robin options as these are the most fair among the agents.

Options like Least Recent and Fewest Calls may overwhelm a single agent with calls until they reach the number of calls answered by other agents. This is evident especially if you have mixed shifts where a new agent logs in and does not have the same amount of calls answered as the other available agents. With Linear, the first agent can get overwhelmed if they complete calls often, and all new calls will always be assigned to them. Linear is only recommended if you know that calls will last longer.

Afterward, you can add a CID Name Prefix. This will help the agent identify the queue, especially if they belong to multiple queues. Similarly, you can add an Agent Announcement, which will playback to the agent prior to connecting the call with the caller.

A Join Announcement is an audio that will playback to the caller when joining the queue. This is usually a welcome or disclaimer message that tells the caller the queue they have called into or that the call will be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.

Next, we configure the Queue and Member Ring Time. Queue Ring Time is the time in seconds a caller will stay in the queue before going to the Final Destination, while the Member Ring Time is the time in seconds the call rings an agent before going to the next available agent respecting the ring strategy. If the Queue Ring Time is set to zero, the caller will wait indefinitely in queue until an agent answers the call. In between ringing members, the Retry time in seconds will be considered.

Then, we have the Wrap-Up Time. This is the time agents will have between getting calls assigned. During this time, agents will not get calls assigned allowing them some breathing time, and to wrap up any process from their previous call.

Afterward, we can start adding members to the Queue. Members have four aspects to configure.

• Extension – This is the user we will add as a member to our queue.
• Penalty – This is how we prioritize agents within a queue. Agents with a lower penalty
  will be prioritized when assigning calls. Only when these agents are busy or
  unavailable, agents with higher penalty will be considered.
• Member Type – Agents can be either Static or Dynamic members. Static agents will
  be permanently logged into a Queue, while Dynamic agents can log in or out of a
  Queue. By default, agents will always be Dynamic. We recommend static agents
  when you prioritize a device or cubicle assigned to a queue, rather than considering
  individual agents. Dynamic agents will give more accurate statistical reports.
• Allow Diversions – This will allow agents to enable call diversions like Do Not Disturb
  and Call Forwarding.

You can add as many agents as you need to a queue, and remove them at any time.

Lastly, we have the Final Destination where the call will be sent if the members/agents do not answer the call in time. And the Destination After the Agent Hangs Up. If the agent hangs up first, you can send the call to another destination. This can be something like a satisfaction survey with a specific extension or an IVR tree using our IVR Stats commercial add-on. We will see more about IVR stats later.

With these configurations, you can Save and Apply Changes, and have a queue ready.

Additionally, you can configure the following.

• Service Level – This is used for statistic reports. This is the amount of time it takes
  the agents to answer a call in the queue.
• Join Empty – Allows the callers to join the queue when there are no agents. The
  available options are:
• Yes – If set to yes, this allows the callers to join the queue without agents.
• No – If set to no, callers cannot join the queues without agents.
• Strict – Callers cannot join a queue without agents or only unavailable agents.
  Unavailable Agents mean that the agents are paused or busy.
• Loose – Callers can join a queue without agents and the agents are
  unavailable.
• No + InUse – Callers cannot join a queue without agents or agents that are
  busy on a call.
• Leave Empty – This will kick callers out of the queue when the last agent leaves the
  queue and the caller is still waiting in the queue. The available options are:
• Yes – When set to yes, callers will be kicked out of the queue when the last
  available agent leaves.
• No – When set to no, callers will not be kicked out of the queue when the last
  available agent leaves.
• Strict – This will kick the callers from the queue when the last agent leaves or
  becomes unavailable. An unavailable agent means that the agent is on a call
  or on pause.
• Loose – This is the same as strict, but paused queue agents will not be
  considered as unavailable.
• Yes + InUse – This will kick the caller from the queue when the last available
  agent leaves or gets on a call.
• Alert Info – This will add to the alert-info header so agent devices can have a different
  ringtone.
• Music on Hold – This is the Music on Hold class that plays back while the caller is in
  the queue.
• Ring Busy Agents – If enabled, this will ring agents even if they are on a call.
• Ring Unavailable Agents – If enabled, this will ring agents even if they are not
  registered on the PBX.
• Record – If enabled, this will record all the calls in the queue. Remember, if you
  enable call recording in multiple stages of a call, be it in a trunk, inbound route, or at
  an extension level, for example, multiple instances of the call will be recorded.

Next, we have the Announcement Settings we can add to our queue.

Here we can configure our Periodic Announcements. This includes a Periodic Announcement we can playback based on the Periodic Announcement Frequency. This is an audio that usually tells the caller that they are still in the queue and will be connected to the next available agent. We will see later how to upload these sound files.

Additionally, we have the following options.

• Announce First User – This option will tell the caller that they are the next in line.
• Relative Periodic Announcement – This option considers the length of the Periodic
  Announcement, so the frequency is considered at the end of the periodic
  announcement’s length.
• Announce Hold Time – This will estimate the hold time based on previous calls, and
  announce the time to the caller.

Then we have the Position Announcements, which include the following options.

• Announce Position – This lets you choose if you want to announce the position to the
  caller. The available options are:
• No – If the announce position is set to no, the queue position will not be
  announced to the caller.
• Yes – if set to yes, the queue position will be announced to the caller.
• Limit – if set to limit, the Announce Position Limit will be considered. The
  position will be limited to the Announce Position Limit value. This means that if
  the position of the caller exceeds the Announce Position Limit the queue
  position will not be announced to the caller.
• More – if set to more, this means that the position will be announced to the
  caller if the Announce Position Limit is exceeded.
• Announce Frequency – This is how often the position and hold time are announced
  to the caller. In smaller Call Centers, it is more difficult to estimate the hold time for
  callers. So this can be a frustrating feature in these smaller environments. By setting it
  to 0 the feature is disabled.
• Minimum Announcement Frequency – This defines the minimum amount of time
  that must elapse before announcing the position or holding time again. This is used to
  prevent these announcements from playing too often.
• Announce Round Seconds – This is used to round the holding time if the time is non-zero. You can choose in intervals of 5 seconds between 0 and 50 seconds

Remember to Save and Apply Changes if you made any changes in this section.

Note: The Announce First User, Hold time, and Position can become a double-edged sword. We will see in a moment where you can add priority to other calls based on the queue or caller. So the estimations in holding time and queue position may change, and a caller can go from the first position to the second or their hold time may increase. This can frustrate the caller, so we recommend you use these features at your own discretion.

Finally, we have the Others tab for additional settings.

Here, we find the following Member Settings.

• Auto pause – This will pause the agents automatically in a queue if they do not
  answer multiple calls in a row. You can choose between the following options.
• Yes – Will pause the agent in this specific queue.
• No – Will not pause the agent even if they don’t answer incoming calls.
• All – This will pause the agent in all the queues they belong to.
• Penalty Members Limit – This option disregards the consideration of the agents’
  penalty if there are too few members logged in the queue. No penalty is considered if
  there are X or fewer agents in the queue.
• Member Delay – This is a delay in seconds you can add before connecting the caller
  with the agent.
• Timeout Restart – Resets the timeout for an agent to answer if a BUSY or
  CONGESTION status is received from the channel. This is useful if the agent is
  allowed to reject or cancel a call.
• Mark Cancelled Calls as Answered – This is useful if you are using the Ring All
  strategy. This will mark calls that have been answered by one of the ringed members
  as answered. Whereas if this is disabled, calls would be marked as missed.

Finally, we have Other Queue Settings that allow us the following.

• Queue Weight – If the agents belong to multiple queues, the queue weight gives
  priority to calls from this queue over the others.
• Queue Max Length – This is the number of callers that can be in a queue. A value of
  0 means that there can be any number of callers waiting in the queue.
• Reset Stats – For this feature, you need to create a cron job. We will learn more about
  cron jobs later. This feature allows you to reset the current statistics for a queue.
• Answer Channel – This feature is enabled by default. This allows the queue to answer
  the incoming call. If it is disabled, calls will not be answered until an agent is available.
  Notice that if this feature is disabled, no announcement or music on hold will play.
• IVR – This allows you to set an IVR while the caller is waiting in the queue.
• VIP customers – This is a list of customers that have a higher priority over other
  callers for this queue.
• Autofill – With this feature enabled, the queue behaves more like a real queue. If there
  are multiple agents available, multiple calls are assigned to those agents at the same
  time

This was the last tab for the Queues module. As you can see this module is very extensive and allows you to make granular changes to your queues. Queues are the basis for any inbound call center and with VitalPBX you can create as many queues with as many agents as you need.

This module is very simple to follow. All you need to add is a Description to identify the list and the list of numbers on the VIP List. The VIP List must have the Caller ID numbers for the customers just as you expect to get them from your VoIP Provider. Each number must be separated using a line break.

You can add as many numbers as you need to any number of Queue VIP lists.

• *50 – Log in and Log out from a specific queue.
• *51 – Pause and Resume an agent from a specific queue.
• *52 – Log in and Log out the agent from all the queues the agent is a member of.
• *53 – Pause and Resume an agent from all the queues they are a member of.
• *54 – Spy on an extension in Barge Mode. This allows you to listen to listen to a call
  an agent is on and participate in the conversation.
• *55 – Spy on an extension. This allows you to listen to a call without the agent or the
  callers knowing you are listening.
• *56 – Spy on an extension in Whisper Mode. This is normally known as coaching. This
  feature allows you to listen to a call and be able to speak with your agent without the
  caller knowing you are in the conversation.
• *57 – Spy on a random channel. This will allow you to listen to a call from a random
  agent.
• *80 – This allows you to Hot Desk into a device.
• *90 – This code allows you to Hot Desk into a device and log into your queues in a
  single step. Dial *90#QUEUE_NUMBER#FEATURES_PASSWORD, and this will log
  you into the queue using your features password.

These are the most common feature codes you will use in everyday operations in a Call Center.
Every code has a prompt that will guide you through the process of operation.

The module is simple to use. You must add a Description to identify the priority, followed by the Priority level and the Destination.

The Priority level establishes its priority, the higher the better. And the destination is always a queue. You can then set this Queue Priority as a destination in an IVR or inbound route, and the priority is set.

• Queue Show – This command shows you the logged-in agents and their current status in a queue. If no queue is entered, all queues are shown.

queue show Q<queue_number> 

• Queue Add Member – This adds a new member to a queue. Using a dial string (such as SIP/6001) to a queue with an optional penalty, member name, and a state interface.

queue add member <dial string> to <queue> [[[penalty <penalty>] as <member name>] state_interface <interface>]

• Queue Remove Member – Remove a specific channel from a queue.

queue remove member <channel> from <queue>

• Queue Reset Stats – Resets the gathered statistics from a queue.

queue reset stats Q<queue>

These commands will help you with troubleshooting and assessment of your queues.

This is a commercial add-on, so, to use it you need to install it first under Admin > Add-Ons > Add-Ons. Since it is a commercial add-on without a license you can create one single Queue Callback with all its features for an unlimited amount of time. Licensing is available individually for the add-on or with our Call Center and Carrier Plus Licensing plans.

Once you have the add-on installed, you can go to PBX > Call Center > Queues Callback.

To create a queue callback, we must enter a Description to identify this callback. Next, we can select the Callback Queue. This is the queue where we are going to send the callback numbers. By default, it is the same queue, but you can choose any other queue. Remember that every module that places an outgoing call also requires a Class of Service, so it has the permissions to reach the numbers to dial.

If we are using a Dial Prefix to use a specific Outbound Route, you can add it as well. We will then define the Maximum Tries and Ring Time. This is how many times VitalPBX is going to try to reach the caller, and for how long it’s going to wait for an answer.

The rest can be left with the default values for the time being. The other important part to configure is the Ask Callback Number option. When this is enabled callers will be able to enter the number they wish to be called back to. To prevent any misuse of this option, you can establish the Allowed Number Rules. These are dial pattern rules that need to be followed so the caller can enter a valid number. You can establish whether a pattern is enabled or not.

With this, you can Save and Apply Changes. The additional configurations you can add are as follows.

• Caller ID – You can set the Caller ID Name and Number the module will use. This is
  helpful so the customer knows who is calling them.
• DTMF Digit – This is the digit the caller will press to opt for a callback while waiting in
  a queue. By default it is 1.
• Instructions Message – This is a message that replaces the Periodic Announcement
  in a queue.
• Invalid Message – This is a message that will playback when the caller enters a
  number that is not allowed in the Allowed Number Rules.
• Number Prompt Message – This is a message that prompts the caller what digit to
  press to opt-in for a callback.
• Thanks Prompt – This is a message that plays after a caller opts in for a callback.

With the callback created, to use it, you need to assign it to a queue. For this let’s go back to PBX > Call Center > Queues. You will now see that there is a new field in the General Tab for a Queue Callback.

You can add this to any new or existing queue. Here, select the callback you created from the dropdown menu.

You can then click on Update or Save and then Apply Changes. Keep in mind that adding a Queue Callback will replace the Periodic Announcement with the Instruction Message prompt, and will also disable the ability to associate an IVR with the Queue.

Your users will now be able to opt in for a callback instead of waiting in the queue.

You can monitor the different callbacks from the new Queues Callback Reports under Reports > Call Center Reports > Queues Callback Reports. Here you will see a table of the different callers that have opted for a callback.

Here, you can filter the view by Queue Callback, Status, and Start and End Date. The Scheduled Queue Callbacks table has information on the Date and Time the caller opted for the callback, the Callback Queue, the Callback Requester Name, the Callback Number, the number of Tries, the Status of the callback, and Actions such as delete callback.

Using the Queues Callback module will give your callers a higher satisfaction rate as they don’t have to hold on to a queue, and have more use of their time. This is a great addition to any Call Center environment.