A call queue holds callers until someone is free, plays music or messages while they wait, and hands each call to an agent according to rules you choose. Those rules — the ring strategy and the settings around it — decide whether your callers wait thirty seconds or five minutes, and whether one agent ends up taking twice the calls of everyone else.
If you're still deciding whether you need a queue at all, read ring group vs call queue first.
The common call queue strategies
Most phone systems offer the same family of strategies. These are the ones in Yeastar P-Series:
| Strategy | How it works | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Ring All | Rings every available agent at once; the first to answer gets the call | Small teams where speed matters most |
| Least Recent | Rings the available agent who was called least recently | Sharing calls evenly over time |
| Fewest Calls | Rings the available agent with the fewest completed calls | Balancing the number of calls per agent |
| Random | Rings agents in random order | Rough fairness without tracking |
| Rrmemory (round robin with memory) | Remembers the last agent tried and rings the next one in the list | A predictable rotation |
| Linear | Rings available agents in a fixed order | Primary and backup agents, such as a first and second line |
Which strategy fits your team?
- Speed above all, few agents: Ring All. Calls are answered by whoever is quickest. The downside: the same keen person may answer most calls, and everyone's phone rings constantly.
- Fair workload: Least Recent or Fewest Calls. Everyone gets their share, which matters when calls are long or demanding.
- A clear order: Linear. Your most experienced agent gets the first ring; others only when they're busy.
- Mixed experience: add skill-based routing. Each agent gets a skill level, and calls go to the most skilled available agents first.
Whatever you choose, look at your reports after a couple of weeks. Long waits with idle agents usually mean a strategy or timeout problem; long waits with busy agents mean you need more people at that hour.
What callers hear while they wait
The waiting experience matters as much as the strategy:
- Announce position and hold time, so callers know whether to wait or call back.
- A periodic "thank you for waiting" prompt — not too often, or it becomes noise.
- A maximum waiting time and a failover destination: after a set time, callers go to voicemail, another queue or an IVR instead of waiting forever.
- Callback: callers can press a key to leave the queue and be called back when an agent is free, instead of holding.
Callers waiting in a queue are calls in progress too, so keep them in mind when you work out how many calls your system and your SIP trunk need to carry at once.
Keep agents fair and focused
- Static or dynamic agents: static agents are always in the queue; dynamic agents log in and out, which suits shifts and part-time staff.
- Wrap-up time: a few seconds after each call before the next one rings, so agents can finish notes.
- Auto-pause: an agent who misses several queue calls in a row is paused automatically, so callers aren't sent to an empty desk. (It doesn't apply with Ring All.)
- Priority: if several queues share agents, give the more important queue a higher weight.
Watch the queue
You can't improve what you can't see. Yeastar P-Series includes a wallboard for live queue figures on a big screen, a queue panel in the Linkus apps for supervisors and agents, and queue reports. You can also set a service level target — say, a share of calls answered within a set number of seconds — and get an email when the queue falls below it.
Two numbers to start with: how long callers wait before an answer, and how many hang up while waiting. Change one setting at a time, so you know what helped.
Setting up a queue on Yeastar P-Series
In the admin panel, you create a queue, add static or dynamic agents, choose the ring strategy and set the waiting options — maximum wait, failover destination, announcements, wrap-up time. Callback, priority, service levels and the queue's other preferences sit in their own settings. Then point an inbound route or an IVR option at the queue. Yeastar's guide to creating a queue explains each field.
On PBXfactory
Call queues, skill-based routing, the wallboard and queue panel are part of the Yeastar Enterprise plan that every PBXfactory PBX runs. On PBXfactory, the number of seats also sets how many calls can run at the same time — worth keeping in mind for a busy queue. Setting up queues is PBX configuration, which our included support doesn't cover; Yeastar's guides or our paid support packages can help. Seats are €4.99 per month or €54.99 per year, prices excluding VAT — see pricing.