Call centers

A call center is the right tool when calls will wait: steady volume, a team that signs in and out, and a manager who wants to see who is handling what. Queues are unlimited and included, and are usually numbered from 701.

Agents: assigned and signed in

An agent has two facts: they are on the queue's roster, and they are signed in (the portal calls it joined). Only a signed-in agent is offered calls. Signing in and out has three roads, and an administrator has a fourth:

• On a Poly desk phone, an agent key on the screen, which comes from a setting on that phone that we switch on.
• In the Webex app, the call queue control the app shows a person who is an agent.
• From any phone, *81 to join, *82 to leave, and *83 to hear the current state.
• On the queue's Routing tab in the portal, the Joined tick beside each agent, which an administrator can set for anyone.

Signed out means the queue does not offer that person calls; their own extension still rings on direct calls. Agents who are signed in and still receive nothing usually have do not disturb on (*79 clears it) or a phone that is not registered; the Routing tab shows a readiness pill beside each agent. We can also set every agent to be signed out automatically each night, so nobody is left "in" over the weekend by mistake.

Routing

The ring policy is the same four as a hunt group: Simultaneous, Regular, Circular, Uniform. On Regular and Circular, Amount of Rings is how many rings one agent gets before the call is taken back and offered to the next. The safety net is the block that never strands a call: forward to a destination after a number of seconds when nobody has answered. A queue with nobody signed in should not hold callers in silence; point the safety net at a person, a mailbox, or a menu.

What callers hear

The Playback tab holds the messages: an entrance message when the caller lands in the queue (optionally played all the way through even if an agent frees up), a comfort message that repeats while they wait, with the seconds between repeats, and an estimated wait announcement that tells the caller either their place in line or a wait time in minutes, refreshed as they wait. Hold music between messages is the company's hold music. Every message can be typed and read by text to speech; see greetings and hold music.

Thresholds

A threshold watches the queue and emails an address when the number of waiting callers or the longest wait crosses the line you set. It is the feature hunt groups do not have, and it is how a manager learns that six callers are waiting while the team is at lunch.

What a call center does not do

There is no supervisor whisper or barge on a standard queue; the closest thing is a pre-alert announcement played to the agent's caller. Recording and the AI summary on each call come from call recording on the agents' extensions, not from the queue. See call recording.

Call center or hunt group?

A hunt group is the fit for a small team with light volume that wants any available person to pick up: no signing in, no queue, no hold music. A call center is the fit once callers will wait, once you need to see who is signed in, and once a manager wants alerts. Both are included; pick by how the team works, not by cost.