Queue Capacity Control - Setting Queue Caps

What are queue caps and how do you configure them?

Talkative allows you to set "queue caps" for managing the capacity of queues. This feature allows you to configure the capacity control in three different ways:

1. Turned off: There will be no limit on the number of pending interactions in the queue.

2. Static: You can set a fixed, unchanging limit for the number of pending interactions in the queue.

3. Based on the number of agents online: The limit will dynamically adjust based on the ratio of agents currently available. (Please note this feature is only available if you are using Talkative routing. If you use external routers such as Mitel, Genesys, or Salesforce OmniChannel this third option is not supported).

You also have the flexibility to override the queue cap  on a per-queue basis.

To enable the queue cap control feature, simply navigate to Settings > General > Routing System > Queue Cap > Select your option and click "Update Routing System"

To set a queue cap on a queue level, navigate to the Queue and edit "Routing System".

Queue cap settings will override the global queue cap setting on the main routing system settings. If no queue cap value is entered on the queue-level setting, it will inherit the main routing system settings.

Setting the correct queue cap

The aim of a queue cap is to balance the output of your contact centre team (as measured by number of customer interactions handled by agents)  against customer experience (measured by average wait time). 

On one extreme, customers queuing for 30 minutes or more is arguably not worth the marginal efficiency gain of minimising agent idle time. On the other extreme, no queue cap at all means agents will likely be waiting (idle time) for customers to start an interaction, since the queue is marked as offline when the queue cap is reached, and therefore the widget is hidden/unavailable.

While typically a smaller queue cap will benefit your customer experience, please also be mindful that having the option to chat/video be removed (because the queue cap is hit) can also cause customer frustration - and may cause them to contact you on other channels regardless.

Setting the correct queue cap depends on a number of factors, but you should consider:

• average handle time of interactions

• workload/capacity of agents (i.e. are they doing 1 video chat at a time, or 3 concurrent web chats)

• your business goals and whether you want to lean more towards overall efficiency or towards ultimate customer experience

As a very rough guideline, Talkative would advise a dynamic queue cap of 0.4 for video chat interactions, and 1.0 for web chat interactions.

In all cases Talkative would advise showing the queue position and expected wait time in the widget.

Does the dynamic queue cap take into account whether agents are at capacity or not?

No - the queue cap only comes into effect when a customer is "pending" i.e. queued. This can only be the case when all agents are at capacity, so by definition the queue cap does not take into account agents' current workload/capacity.

The average queue time (assuming queue is at capacity) can be calculated as follows:

Maximum average queue time = (agent ratio) x (average handle time of interactions) / (capacity of agents online)

For example, if your:

• average chat handle time is 6 minutes;

• agent ratio in dynamic queue cap settings is set to 1.0, and;

• you have each agent handling 3 chats at once, then;

Your maximum average queue time will be equal to = 1 x 360 seconds / 3 = 120 seconds. Note this is the same regardless of how many agents you have online.

In another example, if your:

• average chat handle time is 8 minutes;

• agent ratio in dynamic queue cap settings is set to 0.2, and;

• you have each agent handling 1 video chat at once, then;

Your maximum average queue time will be equal to = 0.2 x 480 seconds / 1 = 96 seconds. 

Note this calculates the maximum average queue time - this is assuming you have more demand than you can resource and the queue cap is required to intervene.