CloudTalk allows you to assign agents to various ring groups based on your unique needs. Different ring groups can be created based on different departments or groups in your company that focus on separate tasks, i.e. Sales Support, Customer Support, Finance, Complaints, and many more.
Ring groups can be created, viewed and edited directly in the Dashboard > Groups by any Administrator.
If you're a new CloudTalk user you may find the following introductory video helpful. You can also check out our dedicated YouTube channel for more videos on all the different features of CloudTalk!
Creating Groups
If you wish to make a new group, go to the list of groups in your Dashboard and click on "Add a group".
You will be redirected to a page where you can set up rules for your new Group, such as:
Basic Settings
Assigned Agents
VIP Contact Tags
Queue Settings
Sounds and Greetings.
Basic Settings
Basic Settings allow you to create an internal label that will help with distinguishing individual groups. It is necessary to enter an email address for each group, as this is used for voicemail notifications.
Assigned Agents
This section allows you to add specific agents who should belong to the Group. The number of agents assigned to a Group does not matter. You can add as many agents as you wish. A single agent can also be a part of several Groups at the same time.
To assign agents to a Group, click on “+ADD”. You will be provided with a list of all agents from which you can choose anyone you want.
After you have associated agents with the Group, click on "Add" to confirm the settings. Chosen agents are now added to the Group.
VIP Contact Tags
Here, you can decide which Contact Tags define a VIP customer for the specific Group. In order to add the tags, you need to assign specific tags to your VIP customer in the Contacts section.
Follow these steps:
Add Contact.
Fill in important information, such as name, email, company and tags (if necessary).
Scroll down and click on “Add Contact”.
How you tag or name your VIP clients is up to you. For this article, we decided to tag them as “VIP”. After you select the tag in VIP Contact Tags, these customers are put to the front of the waiting queue. You can learn more about VIP queues here.
Queue Settings
CloudTalk allows you to select a ring strategy for your groups. Inbound calls may be distributed among the group’s agents in three different ways:
Ring All: The call will ring to all agents until one of them answers.
Round Robin: The call will ring to a chosen agent only. If the agent doesn’t answer, CloudTalk will choose the next agent in line, until the call is answered. This strategy cannot be used in combination with the Mobile App.
Random: The call rings to a random agent within the queue. This strategy also cannot currently be used in combination with the Mobile App.
Ringing timeout
Ringing timeout defines how long the call rings to a specific agent until it moves to the next one.
You can also define some criteria that the Group needs to meet for a call to enter the Queue. Possible rule sets are:
Always: All callers will enter the queue.
At least one agent is logged in: Callers will enter the queue if at least one agent has a status "online", "calling" or "idle".
At least one agent is present: Callers will enter the queue if at least one agent is in status "online" or "calling".
At least one agent is available to take a call: Callers will enter the queue if at least one agent is in a status "online".
This setting is especially helpful if you do not want your customers to wait in a queue while there is a low chance that the call will be picked up within a given time.
Thanks to the "Send calls to busy agents?" setting, you can decide whether currently "busy" or "idle" agents should receive call notifications.
“Assign a skill for Skill based routing” - assigning a skill will turn on the use of Skill Based Routing for your group. Calls will therefore be distributed to agents based on their skill level.
You may define the skills of your agents directly in the Dashboard > Account > Settings > Skilled Based Routing.
After you chose Skills according to your needs, they need to be assigned to specific agents. Go to “Agents”, choose a desired agent, click on “Edit” (pencil) and “Skilled Based Routing”. For this article, we decided to create the skill “English Language”.
Sounds and Greetings
Waiting message
You are able to choose the music that your customers will hear while waiting in a queue. Decide between our predefined waiting music or upload your own.
Uploading your own recording can be done in Account > Sounds > Add sound.
Important notice:
only mp3 files are supported
a maximum of 8 MB is supported
Periodic announcements
Periodic announcements are what callers hear while waiting on the line. You can decide to play a message for them periodically, to ask for their patience and to remind them that agents are doing everything they can in order answer the call as soon as possible.
For example, a message stating, “Thank you for holding, your call is important to us” can be played approximately every 40-60 seconds.
If you select default ringing as the waiting message, then this feature will be disabled.
Read more about customised greetings here.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Support team, we are always happy to help!