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Talk - agents remain available after missed call
Posted Aug 14, 2017
If an agent misses a call (i.e. doesn't answer it in time), the agent remains available to receive calls in the queue. This is a problem if an agent forgets to make themselves unavailable to receive calls (i.e. if they're in a meeting or gone home for the day) as calls will continue to be routed to them if they are not actually at their desk. This means that callers would experience a longer wait time as calls are routed to agents that are not actually available. Talk currently relies on an admin manually changing the agent's availability as a work around.
In these instances, it would be helpful if Talk could put the agent into wrap up or make them unavailable to receive calls until they make themselves available again. This is already a feature of our current contact centre phone software (we are trialing Talk) and I am surprised that Talk does not have this feature.
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29 comments
Official
Sean Chuang
Update March 2023
Hello,
If you are using Omnichannel Routing, idle functionality can be used as follows: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5286614817562-Enabling-idle-timeout-for-unified-agent-statuses
Thanks,
Sean
Hey Community,
Thanks for reaching out. That's an improvement on agent inactivity we have currently slotted in on our short term roadmap in 2022.
Thank you for your patience.
Sean
0
Caroline Kello
Hey Erin,
Thanks for reaching out. That's an improvement we want to make for the agent experience, to remove the pain point of having to remember to set yourself offline when you step away from your desk for whatever reason. There's a few ideas we have floating around on how to solve this and we're discussing options, but there's nothing on the roadmap for this yet.
Can I ask how your current telephony provider is solving this, and in what way their solution works best for you or if you can even see improvements in their implementation?
Thanks, Caroline
0
Erin Slovitt
Hi Caroline,
Our current provider allows admins to determine the behaviour. The options are for the agent to remain available or to be made unavailable for a pre-determined amount of time. Admins have the option to determine the length of time which ranges from 10 seconds or until the agent manually makes themselves available again.
This seems to be the best set up. The system recognizes that the agent should be unavailable for a period of time after a missed call and gives admins the capability to determine how long for. I don't see any possible improvements.
This isn't just a pain point for Talk agents. It is a poor customer experience to be routed to an agent who isn't there and of course Talk users are billed per minute while calls are waiting to be answered.
2
Caroline Kello
Hey Erin,
Absolutely agree that this is a pain point from both the agent and the customer's side, thanks for highlighting that. I appreciate you sharing how the functionality currently works for you, this helps us decide the best way to approach solving this problem.
Thanks again, Caroline
0
Steve Ross
Zendesk,
I'm extremely surprised this would not have been considered upon initial development. I just discovered this being a problem when doing my month end reports after my first month of using Zendesk Talk!
I had one agent who repeatedly just locked her computer and went home for the weekend and apparently was forgetting to go unavailable, it resulted in 647 missed calls on her account alone! The functionality Erin is talking about is common in almost every ACD I have ever worked with. I sincerely hope this is being looked at with more of an urgency then 'new functionality development', as this is essentially a break in how your system should function to provide proper customer service. For the record, Zendesk Chat already has the ability to program these settings, it allows number of seconds before a reassignment followed by number of reassignments before putting the agent unavailable. This should be a minimum functionality.
Can you please advise on the status of getting this functionality fixed?
Regards,
Steve Ross
3
Corey Franco
We've had a similar experience as Steve above, only it was while someone was on vacation for a few days. This functionality is so basic I assumed that is how it worked based on my experiences with other platforms. This really threw off our reporting metrics by hundred in December and now it is something that we have to account for. Is there any timeline on when we can expect this functionality be rolled out?
3
Karen Provost
The previous carrier we had used different "modes". There was break, lunch, meeting, training, forced released, and we created one called AWF (away with focus). Most of these are self explanatory as to when they would be used. Forced Release is the mode the agent would automatically be flipped to if they missed a call or CHAT and we determined the length of time or rings that we wanted this to happen in. If in this mode it would prevent them from receiving any more calls or CHATS until they manually put themselves back. Which also did not allow calls to bounce. We used AWF when an agent was pulled out the phones to work something that needed focus.
With the only options of "online" or "offline" it is challenging for us to understand what the agent is doing. More importantly, not having the automatic "Forced Release" of some sort when a call is missed does not allow for good facing experience nor does it provide valid data for reports if an agent forgets to logout.
Having this functionality is very much needed.
3
Jenny Gillett
Hi all
This is in our top feature requests and is just as high on our backlog. I don't have any dates to share with you right now but I assure you we have not forgotten about it and we understand the need for change in how we handle agent states. I thank you for your patience and ask you to please bear with us a while longer so we can get this prioritised and out to you. I will update you as soon as we have movement.
Thanks
Jenny
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Tom Bamert
This lack of capability and the current lack of clarity in the documentation is not acceptable for any call center solution. We have been told by Zendesk we can do this with the API, but that is not our job. It appears the focus is purely on more revenue generating features and not on strengthening the current features customer depend on. If this is Zendesks approach going forward, you won’t last long in the market.
-1
Tom Kirby
Hi Guys,
Is there any update on this as the last input from Zendesk was 7 months ago saying it was top requests and high on the backlog. Do we have a timescale?
The frustration is that the same functionality is already built-in chat where you can set missed chats to move someone unavailable after a couple.
2
Nate Roy
Any updates on an ETA for either functionality to fix this or a notification to managers if agents miss above a set number of calls so they can intervene?
4
Amanda
Any update on this? This feature would help us greatly!
3
Wolf Hilbl
I too would kindly like to know if there is any update on this feature?
You just need to forget to set yourself to offline and then you can explain why you lost 50 calls, on your day off.
At least something that registers is the agent is actually online at all would be more than welcome.
Kind Regards, Wolf
2
Caroline Becherer
This feature would be so great for us. Thank you!
2
Violeta Micu
Is this feature included in the Q4 Roadmap?
1
Violeta Micu
Hi @..., 2 years ago you said that this feature was top priority. Which is the current status?
1
tiago
Hi Everyone, @..., @..., @..., @..., @..., Cheers to all of you.
Just for you to know, solutions exist. Check this: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/snapcall/ .
This feature exists, especially with the Slack modules integrated into Snapcall, It popup you a warning into a Slack channel when for example on an interval of time "T" (that you can define), if you miss X calls (that you can define).
Also, the system of automatically disconnecting a specific agent from a queue if he misses X calls in a row is settable.
Have a nice day.
1
Robert Sutherland
Any news since the last update 2 years ago when this was stated as a "top priority"? Really need a solution that doesn't involve adding unnecessary marketplace apps and shelling out another $20/month per agent.
4
Krystal S
I agree with Robert. A "solution" is not here spend more money. If there is the ability for chat to automatically be set to away after a certain number of reassigned chats the same should be said for calls.
0
Sydney Neubauer
Hey Zendesk,
It has been 3 years since it was announced this is top priority. There has not been any official statements since. Our team is still experiencing issues with this. We had an Agent forget to sign out and missed 24 phone calls before it was noticed.
We lowered our session time out to 30 minutes in an attempt to automatically sign out Agents however it has been discovered that calls are continued to be routed to Agents until they open up the Zendesk again.
Our team is needing this functionality as it is happening too often. When is this coming?
4
Puneet Misra
Violeta Micu Caroline Kello Jenny Gillett Hi All, I am following up on this thread. Is this still a top priority on your product roadmap? If not, is there any updates or workarounds you can share with us?
1
Vaughan
I too would love an update on this feature request. Is this on the roadmap for 2022?
0
Matthew Sammut
Same here, any updates on this? Seems like a pretty fundamental feature which most other competitor products already have.
"high on our backlog" posted back in 2018 does not give us much confidence here - is this feature still being developed or planned?
1
Bryce Petrick
Status update on this "feature" (read: core functionality)?
0
Stephen White
Hello, I see this was on the short-term roadmap in May this year. What is the status, please?
0
robert sutherland
Looking to move our Enterprise account and our $1,500+/mo subscription bills out of Zendesk ASAP because of how this "high priority" feature is being handled. OVER. FOUR. YEARS.
If I was a more cynical person, I would swear that this feature is intentionally being ignored as more unnecessary routing -> longer call times -> more billable minutes.
0
Jack Petersen
Do we have any updates on this? I saw that it was on the 2022 roadmap in May but no updates from Zendesk since then.
0
Trevor Whitecotton
Hi @..., is there an update on this? This is standard call center behavior. How do we get this prioritized?
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Marilyn Austin
Hello, @... and the PM team. I'm proposing that this issue be re-evaluated. Most telephony tools have a fail-safe wherein an agent is placed in a not ready state if a call is routed to them and goes unanswered. This state is something they have to manually exit in order to be delivered another call. This is huge in helping ensure multiple calls do not route to the same, potentially unavailable agent which is an incredibly poor caller and agent experience.
In the proposed feature solution, multiple calls could still route to said agent within the available 5-60 minute idle threshold. Also, not every ZD customer requires use of a complex solution such as omnichannel just to be able to prevent situations wherein an agent forgets to update their status before stepping away only to return to multiple missed calls.
0