KPI Example

What is the Number of Waiting Calls?

The Number of Waiting Calls, sometimes referred to as Calls in Queue, measures the number of contacts that are trying to get through to you to contact your organization but have yet to receive an answer. This can give you an overview of how your call center team performs on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Even though the aspiration for every organization is to not have anyone waiting in the queue, the Number of Waiting Calls can be an indicator of the company’s growth, or the impact of the latest marketing action.

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Why is the Number of Waiting Calls important?

Number of Waiting Calls has importance for both positive and negative reasons. On the positive end, this KPI can be an indicator of company growth and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns–if you have a lot of people calling in after a recent market expansion, your company is likely moving in the right direction.

On the negative end, however, the Number of Waiting Calls might indicate…

  • lack of appropriate staffing,
  • lack of customer satisfaction,
  • lack of customer retention.

A high number of waiting calls can threaten your call service agents with burnout and decrease the quality of their service.

It’s recommended to measure this KPI daily, because clients tend to get impatient, and giving your call service team constant access to this information will stimulate a more dynamic routine in their department. After all, the sooner you connect with your contacts, the quicker you can address their needs.

The Number of Waiting Calls also tends to fluctuate greatly through the year. Having knowledge of this KPI will ensure you can allocate resources accordingly so agents can answer calls as soon as possible.

Best practices for Number of Waiting Calls

As with other call service-oriented KPIs, it’s ideal to strike a balance between quality and quantity. While you’ll want your agents to answer all calls in a timely manner to keep your customers happy, you’ll also want to ensure your agents pay attention to the quality of their calls. Preventing agent burnout should be of paramount importance– keeping your agents from being overworked will maintain their call quality at a high level.

The Number of Waiting Calls will likely fluctuate at different points of the year, week and day. With this in mind, you can better allocate resources to the call service department to cope with the influx of calls when needed.

If Number of Waiting Calls consistently remains too high, it’s time to hire more staff for your call center team, provide more self-service help, or simply make your product and/or website easier to use.

Check out other, related KPIs from Plecto related to Number of Waiting Calls:

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