[Asterisk-Users] app_queue input needed...

[McAughan, Matt]

There is one thing you have to look out for. Wait time is affected only by
the number of calls in front of you, not total calls, the number of agents
answering, and the length of calls.

I say this because if you are going to update the announcer x seconds,
depending on the calculation the caller may experience, "your wait time is 5
minutes", "your wait time is 25 minutes", "your wait time is 7 minutes".
That makes me want to hang up as well. On our (non Asterisk) phone system we
avoid this by just announcing the average wait time once, when the caller
enters the queue.

I think the proper calculation should be a running average of time to answer
over the last X period, with a factor taking in to account average agents
logged in over that period. Something like average wait time per agent per
period. Then factor  that against your current queue position (calls
entering behind you have no affect on your wait time) and current number of
agents (more could log in to help out or drop off). What the proper period
factor is I don't know. 30 seconds, 1 minute, after each hang up? Too
frequently it will fluctuate wildly. Too infrequent it will show residual
affects.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Critchfield [mailto:critch at basesys.com]
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 02:25
To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] app_queue input needed...


On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 14:05, Brian West wrote:
> A friend and I have recently added the ability to announce the callers
> position in the call queue every x seconds.. or even just inject an
> anouncement every x seconds.  All setup in queues.conf and can be setup
> per queue.
> 
> My next project is to add the ability to announce the callers estimated
> wait time.  I want some feedback to see whats the best method to calculate
> that?  What do you want just minutes? or minutes and seconds?  Or the
> option to use one or the other?
> 
> I'm thinking (totaltime / totalcalls) - (now - qe->start) = current
> estimated wait time.  Which would update after each call is hungup.


I do not use queues, so accept my comments as only an opinion of how I
would like to experience them if I where a person in a queue.

Your wait time is not very accurate unless you have sufficiently large
enough pools of people to service them to offset little abnormalities.
So I would say it would be good to define an acceptable list of
announcements, then round up to the first available announcement and
play from there. Have to look up be something like...
under 3 minutes
under 5 minutes
under 8 minutes
under 10 minutes
under 15 minutes
under 20 minutes
If I ever heard a time over 20 minutes I'd hang up and call back later,
or stop doing business with the company. This limits down your number of
prompts and lowers the expectation of wait time accuracy.

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>

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