Queue
What is a queue and how do you distribute it well?
A queue is the list of conversations waiting on someone. How you sort that list determines which customers you systematically help too late.
In short
A queue is the set of incoming conversations that have no handler yet or no answer yet, in the order they're picked up. A team can have multiple queues, for example per channel, per language or per topic, and how you split them determines who sees what.
Why oldest-first isn't always right
Most teams work in arrival order, and that's a defensible choice as long as every question is equally urgent. They rarely are. A customer asking whether they can still change an order before it ships has a window of hours. A customer asking about the warranty period doesn't.
Sorting only on waiting time means a question with a deadline ends up behind one that arrived ten minutes earlier. What you want is a second dimension: an urgency following from the topic, moving to the front without stalling the rest.
How many queues are too many?
Every extra queue is a place work can sit without anyone noticing. A queue for German customers watched by one person stalls the moment that person is ill, and the conversations in it appear nowhere else.
The rule that holds in practice: only create a separate queue when there's a skill behind it that not everyone has. Language is such a skill, technical depth sometimes too. Topic usually isn't, because that's a filter rather than a skill.
Assign or let people pull?
With automatic assignment every agent gets conversations allocated. That distributes fairly and stops difficult conversations from sitting, but it ignores who's good at what and what someone just finished.
With pull, everyone picks their next conversation. That works in small teams and breaks once the queue is long: short and easy conversations get picked first and the awkward ones sink. That effect is measurable in the gap in waiting time between your fastest and slowest category.
The middle form works for most teams: the system assigns, and an agent can hand back with a reason. The reasons you get back are your list of missing skills.
Where it goes wrong
A queue with no owner during absence
Every queue should have a second person who sees it. Without that, holiday or illness is enough to stall a queue for a week before anyone notices.
Letting the customer choose urgency
A dropdown with High, Normal and Low produces nothing but High within a month. Determine urgency from the topic and the data, not from what someone ticks.
Putting repeat contact in the queue as a new conversation
A customer writing for the third time goes to the back if it becomes a new conversation. Attach repeat contact to the running conversation, otherwise you penalise exactly the customer who's already waited too long.
Only measuring queue length
A short queue can mean it's quiet or that a lot was just assigned to people who can't get through it. Also measure the waiting time of the oldest conversation, because that number points at the customer who's worst off.
What to do this week
Look at the oldest open conversation in your queue and work out why that one in particular is still there. Nearly always it's one of three things: it sits in a queue almost nobody watches, it's an awkward topic everyone skips, or it's assigned to someone who isn't in. All three are fixable without new software.
What this looks like in a system
In Cuego topic and urgency are determined on arrival, so a question with a deadline doesn't queue behind a warranty question. Assignment runs on skill and availability, and a conversation handed back asks for a reason you can read later. The waiting timer continues across a handover, and the oldest open conversation appears as a separate figure in the overview so it doesn't vanish into an average.
Shared inboxRelated terms
Backlog
A backlog is the pile of open questions. The number says little; the age of the oldest says everything.
Read onAbandon rate
Abandon rate is the share of customers who drop off before reaching anyone. Those questions don't disappear, they return by email tomorrow.
Read onTicket routing
Ticket routing determines which question lands with which agent. Set up poorly, it costs you the first twenty minutes of every morning.
Read on