[Asterisk-Users] app_queue input needed...

[Brian West]

So announce this when they first enter.... once and only once.  That
sounds like a reasonable idea.

bkw

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, McAughan, Matt wrote:

> 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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