Service level: percent of calls answered within X seconds

If you run an inbound team, the single number people ask about most is your Service level: the share of calls you answered fast enough. A common target is something like eighty percent of calls answered within twenty seconds. VICIdial can show you exactly that on an Ingroup, and you decide what fast enough means.

The setting is called Stats Percent of Calls Answered Within X seconds. You put in a number of hold seconds, and the real-time stats display uses it to work out what percentage of answered calls were picked up within that many seconds on hold. Read alongside your Average speed of answer (ASA), it is one of the clearest KPI numbers you can put in front of a team.

Picking your threshold

The threshold is just the number of seconds you consider acceptable hold time. Set it to twenty and the display shows the percent of answered calls picked up within twenty seconds. Set it to sixty and the bar moves to reflect the looser target. The right number depends on what you have promised callers and how your queue is staffed.

• A tighter threshold like ten or fifteen seconds is a demanding bar and will show a lower percentage.
• A looser threshold like sixty seconds is easier to hit and will read higher.
• The number is per in-group, so different queues can have different targets.

A second threshold

There is a second field, Stats Percent of Calls Answered Within X seconds 2, that lets you set a second hold-seconds threshold on the same real-time display. This is useful when you want to watch two bars at once, say twenty seconds for your headline target and sixty seconds as a backstop, without changing the first number.

How the percentage is built

flowchart TD
  A[Inbound call answered] --> B[Measure hold seconds]
  B --> C{Hold under threshold}
  C -->|Yes| D[Count as in service level]
  C -->|No| E[Count as answered but late]
  D --> F[Within count plus one]
  E --> G[Total answered plus one]
  F --> H[Percent equals within over total]
  G --> H

Service level is a live number, but you will also want the historical view to spot trends. The inbound group report breaks down answered and waited calls over time. For how the whole inbound path feeds these stats, read the inbound call handling guide.

Hitting a service-level target is a staffing problem, but it starts with a server that is actually up and answering. Our managed VICIdial hosting gets you a running inbound box in under 40 seconds, so you can set your threshold and start watching the real number the same day.