Question
How is the Average wait time metric calculated? How does the metric apply to the Average wait time message?
Answer
The Average wait time metric displayed on the Zendesk Talk dashboard is calculated in two ways:
- Actively waiting calls in the queue after passing through the initial greeting, under Current queue activity.
- A day period from 00:00 to 23:59, under the Overview table.
The Average wait time metric calculates all calls that passed the initial greeting and averages those times throughout a 24 hour period.
The Average wait time message plays only when the average wait time is over two minutes long, and only plays once. To confirm if the average wait time passed two minutes, check the metric with the same name under the Overview table. This message queues based on each individual line's Average wait time metric.
Note: The Average wait time metric listed under Current queue activity is a real-time calculation of what's happening currently in the queue, and does not reflect when the Average wait time message criteria are achieved.
11 Comments
When will the average wait time message be available in other languages? It does not make much sense that all the other Talk options are offered in all supported languages, but this one is only in English.
Hi Zendesk team/ Shannon,
I saw the discussion earlier about creating Average wait times metric per group. May I know as of know has it been available?
I checked the current wordings in this article and it says "The Average wait time metric calculates all calls.." , does it mean it calculates all calls routed to all groups, or just in one single group?
Let's say in 1 phone number there are routing options to 2 Groups A and B. If Group Customer Support A is busy with pending calls and high wait time, while Group Customer Support B is completely free with no calls, when someone connects to Group B on the same number, will they hear the Average Wait time message too? Or only those who connect to Group A?
Appreciate your prompt response
The time customer hear is not realistic as it includes the abandoned calls. The customer will always hear a much lower time than that’s actually true.
Hello, why is our average wait time announcement always 8 minutes max? We have had a very busy year thus far and there are days where we're hitting 25+minutes in wait time. This is VERY irritating to our customers who think they'll only have to wait 8 minutes for someone to talk to them but actually wait so long they've just wasted their lunch break.
Average wait time message calculates the wait time on a 24 hour period. This means even though one particular call may have waited for 25 minutes, the overall average wait time for the number is still around 8 minutes for that particular day.
Dane Thank you for your response. I hope Zendesk knows how ridiculous this metric is, and how useless it is, and how aggravating it is to us clients, as well as our customers. First of all, if you tell us on our live dashboard that the current wait time is 25 minutes, that's the true wait time, and that's what the customer should hear. There's no rationalizing that. Secondly, there's no value in calculating a non-business hour, and things should be configurable enough that we can checkmark what our hours are so that it includes or excludes a zero-wait time at 4am when we're closed.
I still haven't received a true response for why our callers hear 8 minutes as the max. 8 minutes would only make sense (according to Zendesk logic) if for that 24 hour period thus far, the average was taken down to 8 minutes max. I ran the numbers for 2/3/22, when we had our highest call volume with majority of customers having close to 20 minute wait time on average (according to your query's wait time metric for those hours). If I look at the wait time for the entire day of our business hours, the average wait time is 19.8 minutes! Not 8 minutes. Even if I pretend we had 200 calls from midnight to 9pm, and each were only 0.1 minutes of wait time, the total average wait time for those fake 200 calls plus our real ones still is 16.7 minutes. Not the 8 minutes our callers are being told. Our callers are being told by Zendesk that their wait time is half of what it really is. And we're the ones who then have to deal with the irate customers. This should be resolved ASAP. It's not a nice-to-have, its a deficiency and inaccuracy in your current process.
We appreciate the feedback regarding the average wait time message. I have already marked this as an official feedback and will be reviewed by our Product Managers.
Regarding the 8 minutes maximum message for average wait time, it also uses the 24 hour average call wait time. Furthermore, it does not have a set limit. You can verify it be creating a Talk Dataset Query using the metric Call Wait Time.
With this simple report you can breakdown your average wait time for the 24 hour period. If you have discovered that there is a different message that was provided in the message compared to your report. Feel free to submit a ticket and we'll look into it directly.
Ditto on wanting to see an Average Wait Time for business hours, or to the Talk Schedule, re: Objects & Rules, Schedules. Does anyone know a way?
I've just had an escalation call with one of our clients who absolutely hates the "average wait time" feature because it's rarely accurate during peak times and because it doesn't provide any updates throughout the wait. I would love to see a more accurate average wait time be added and/or for the phone system to provide updates throughout the wait.
Another great feature would be to prompt the caller to leave a message every so often so that if they no longer want to wait, they know what to press. I've advised that they just need to press 1 to get routed to voice mail but they often don't remember that if they've been waiting for 30+ minutes and still haven't had their call answered.
This is definitely a good feature to have. Would you mind posting your use case to our Feedback on Talk topic? We have a template you can copy and use in your post. Thanks!
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