Introduction #
One of the features of Contact is email queueing. When an email arrives into Contact, it is placed in an email queue and an agent is selected from a user group that is assigned to the queue. The destination email address is used to select the appropriate queue. Agents with the required skill can take individual emails from the inbound queue(s) and respond to them through their web interface.
Roles & Profiles #
- Profiles are supported within companies. Each company administrator can assign an Email Queues profile to a user login to define which email queues that are used in the company the user can see. The Email Queues profile may permit the user to see all of the company’s email queues or only some of them.
- Roles can also be assigned to user logins. Each role can have an Email Queue Configuration privilege associated with it that permits or prohibits access to the list of email queues used by the Contact.
Administrator email management #
Company administrators can define, edit and delete email queues. To manage email queues, click Email > Email Queues on the menu bar and list of the email queues that are currently defined is displayed.
From here you can:
- Create and manage an email queue
- Edit or delete an email queue
- Copy an email queue
- Assign agent groups and classifications to an email queue
- Assign agent assets such as text blocks, a template and file attachments to an email queue
- Define email queue KPIs
- Configure advanced settings for a queue, such as a timer for an email queue that defines the recommended time that an agent should take to answer an email, and the priority of the email queue
Note: The configuration pages that contain mandatory parameters are denoted by an asterisk (*) on the tab. |
Actions for supervisors and agents #
Company supervisors can do the following through their web portal:
- View and track key-performance statistics for each email queue
- View the status of each email queue (number of emails waiting, average wait time, and so on)
- Manage long email queues by overflowing emails into another email queue.
Company agents can do the following through their web portal:
- View information such as the email queue that an email is meant for and the length of time the email spent in the email queue.
- View the current email queues that they serve and the current email activity
- View the status of other agents and email queues (if enabled by the company administrator)
- Take an email either from their inbox or from a queue and either respond to it immediately or park it so they can deal with it at a later time
- Return an allocated email to a queue or assign it to another agent in one of their user groups, and remove it from their inbox (if permitted to do so)
- Assign themselves to or de-assign themselves from specific channels and/or queues (if configured to do so by a company administrator).
If an agent is not available for a channel/queue because their availability has been changed (either by themselves or by a supervisor), but they are able to handle items for that channel/queue (are configured to do so by a company administrator), they will not be automatically allocated items from that channel/queue. However, they can still pick up an item from the channel queue(s), if required.