Wrapup Seconds: giving agents time after a call

When a call ends, your agents usually have a few things to do: finish their notes, update the contact record, take a breath. Wrapup Seconds is the campaign setting that gives them that window on purpose, by holding them out of the dial queue for a set number of seconds after each call. It is one of the simplest knobs in VICIdial, and also one of the easiest to set wrong.

What the setting actually does

Wrapup Seconds is the number of seconds an agent is forced to wait before they can dial or receive another call. The timer starts the moment the agent hangs up on the customer. (With alternate number dialing, it starts when the agent finishes the whole lead instead.) The default is 0, meaning no forced wait at all.

One thing to be clear about: the timer is a floor, not a ceiling. If it runs out before the agent has picked a Disposition, they still do not advance to the next call. They sit on the wrapup screen until they choose one. So Wrapup Seconds guarantees a minimum gap, but the agent's own pace can always make it longer.

When it earns its keep

A forced wrapup window is worth setting when your work after a call is real and unavoidable. Common cases:

• Agents have to enter order details, notes, or compliance fields after every contact.
• Calls are emotionally heavy and a 10-15 second decompress keeps quality up.
• You are running predictive dialing and want a predictable, stable gap between connects.

The flip side: every second of wrapup is a second the agent is not on a call. On a busy campaign, a generous wrapup window directly lowers how many dials your floor produces per hour. If you are chasing throughput, treat this number as a cost, not a default.

Picking a number that helps

Start by timing your agents during a normal shift. How long does the after-call work genuinely take? Set Wrapup Seconds a touch below that, not above. If real wrapup is about 20 seconds, try 12-15 and let the agent's own dispositioning carry the rest. You want the timer to protect the floor without padding it.

Keep an eye on the related controls too. Wrap Up Bypass lets an agent stop the timer early with a link, which is handy when they finish notes fast. And remember the agent is still in a paused-equivalent state during wrapup, so it shows up in your Occupancy and Talk time reporting. If wrapup time is creeping up, that is usually a process or training signal, not a reason to raise the setting.

Where it fits in your dialing setup

Wrapup is one piece of how a campaign paces itself. The other big lever is how aggressively the dialer connects calls in the first place, which is covered in our guide to VICIdial dialing strategies. If you set a long wrapup but a high dial level, you can end up with calls connecting while agents are still wrapping, which pushes your drops up. If that starts happening, our walkthrough on lowering your VICIdial drop rate covers how to rebalance the two.

Tuning a single field is quick once the box is yours and you can edit campaigns freely. If you would rather skip the server setup and start dialing, see our plans and have a ready VICIdial install in under a minute.