How to

How to build and work a call queue

You have 200 prospects in Yakima and an afternoon to call them. The list is easy to make and hard to work: who did I already try, who said call back Thursday, who said never again. A Sales Queue is a call list kept inside BasicBMS. You fill it from a customer search, then work it one customer at a time. Each call is logged on the customer, callbacks land on your calendar, and the next person to call comes up by itself.

Before you start

  • Your login can use customers. Everyone who can already gets the Sales Queue.
  • Your login is linked to an employee profile. A queue needs an owner, and that's who owns it.
  • You can narrow the customer list with search chips (see the search guide below).
  • The customers have phone numbers, on the customer or on a contact.

Steps

  1. Open Customer → Management and narrow the list with search chips, for example "City is Yakima" and "Account rep is" you.

  2. Tick the customers you want, or skip ticking to take them all, and click Add to Queue.

  3. In the panel, pick a Queue or choose New queue… and type a New queue name. Click Add ticked (N) or Add all results (N). The app reports Added N customer(s). and offers a link to open the queue.

  4. Open your queues any time from the menu under your name: Sales Queue. Each queue shows how many customers are open, how many callbacks are due, how many are done, and when you last called.

  5. Click Start calling. The first customer's dashboard opens with a call bar across the top: the queue name, "call X of N", and what happened last time if they've been tried.

  6. Call the number shown (it's a phone link). Then pick the outcome: No Answer, Left Voicemail, Call Back, Interested, Not Interested, Wrong Number or Do Not Call.

  7. Choose who you spoke with under Talked to, type a line in Notes, and, for Call Back, set the Call back date and time.

  8. Click Save & next (or press Enter in Notes). The call is saved and the next customer opens. Save & stop saves and returns to the queue.

Who comes up next. Callbacks that are due come first, soonest first. Then customers never tried, then those tried the fewest times. A "no answer" drops behind everyone not yet tried instead of coming straight back.

What each outcome does. No Answer and Left Voicemail keep the customer open. Call Back puts them on callback with a date. The other four mark them done. On the queue, the All, Open, Callback and Done buttons filter the list; Move up and Move down change the order. (screenshot: queue detail)

What posts behind it

Nothing to the ledger. Each call is written as a Call entry in the customer's Jabber log, titled with the outcome and the queue name, with your notes and the contact. A callback date also puts a follow-up on your calendar, "Call back: customer". Those stay on the customer even if the queue is later deleted.

When it won’t let you

'Call Back' needs a callback date. Pick a date and time in Call back before saving.

Only the queue's owner can change or work it. Queues are personal. Anyone can look at a coworker's queue (marked View only), but only its owner, or an administrator, works it.

Your login has no employee profile, so it cannot own a queue. An administrator needs to link your login to an employee.

That search matches more than 5,000 customers. Narrow it down first. A queue holds at most 5,000 customers. Add another chip.

Tick the customers to add, or add all results. You clicked Add ticked with nothing ticked.

What this doesn't do

There's no dialer: the phone number is a link, and your phone or softphone makes the call. Nothing records or times a call. A queue is a snapshot of the search when you built it; customers who match later aren't added on their own. A queue has one owner and can't be handed to someone else. And ticks only cover the page you're on; use Add all results for more than one page.

Related

Stuck on this one? Call (509) 955-0770 and we'll walk through it with you.

BasicBMS

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