Queue Priority: which calls reach agents first

On a blended setup your agents are juggling two streams of calls: outbound calls the dialer placed and inbound calls customers placed. When both are sitting in queue at the same instant, something has to decide which one lands on a free agent first. That something is Queue Priority. It is one number, but it quietly shapes which customers wait and which get answered.

Higher number, sooner to an agent

Queue Priority is set per outbound campaign and per inbound group. The rule is simple: when calls compete for the same agent, the one with the higher priority value is delivered first. It does not change how fast the dialer places calls, only the order in which already-connected calls reach a person. So it is a tie-breaker, not a throttle, and it only comes into play in the instant when more than one call is waiting for the same free agent.

The defaults are deliberate. An outbound Campaign defaults to 50, while an Ingroup defaults to 0. Since 50 beats 0, outbound calls reach agents before inbound calls out of the box. That surprises people who assume inbound should always win, especially on a Blended dialing setup where the two streams meet.

Why outbound wins by default

It comes down to who will wait. An outbound contact that the dialer just connected has no patience; if they sit in a queue for a few seconds they hang up, and you have burned a contact and possibly logged a drop. An inbound caller chose to call you and is far more willing to hold for a moment, especially if they hear hold music or a position-in-line message. Prioritizing the impatient party reduces wasted outbound connects, which is why the defaults favor outbound. Once you understand that logic, the default numbers stop looking backwards and start looking sensible.

When to flip it the other way

Some operations genuinely need inbound to come first, like a support line where a missed inbound call is a missed paying customer. To do that, raise the in-group Queue Priority above the campaign value, for example set the in-group to 60 while the campaign stays at 50. Now waiting inbound callers are handed to agents ahead of the outbound queue. Just go in knowing it can cost you outbound connects, since those contacts will drop while they wait their turn.

A setting that pairs with pacing

Queue Priority only matters when calls are stacking up in queue, which usually means your pacing is placing more outbound calls than agents can clear. If you are seeing a long queue and a rising Drop rate, the priority knob is a bandage; the real fix is your Dial level. A campaign paced correctly rarely has a deep queue for priority to sort through in the first place. Our guide onlowering your VICIdial drop rate covers that, and the dialing strategies guide shows how priority and pacing work together. If managing all of this yourself sounds like a lot, you can get a managed VICIdial box running in under a minute.