Queue priority

Queue priority is a number you set on an Ingroup that decides which waiting calls reach an agent first. A higher-priority call is offered to the next free agent ahead of lower-priority calls, even if the lower-priority caller has been waiting longer. It lets you treat some inbound traffic as more urgent without giving it a separate team or a separate phone number, which keeps your staffing simpler.

A common setup is to give existing customers or sales lines a higher priority than general support, so those calls jump the line. Because priority can rearrange the order, a caller's announced Place in line may change as higher-priority calls arrive. The system still works through the Virtual queue; it just picks the highest-priority eligible call when it does Next agent call and hands an agent their next conversation.

Priority versus skills

Queue priority is about importance; Skills-based routing is about who can handle the call. The two work together: skills decide which agents are even eligible, and priority decides which eligible call goes first. If you push one queue's priority too high, lower-priority queues can starve and their Service level will slip, because agents keep getting pulled toward the favoured line and the rest just wait. The effect is easy to miss until the neglected queue's numbers fall off.

Start with a small spread of priority values and watch the reports before widening the gap. Big differences make the effect obvious but also make it easy to accidentally bury your lower-priority lines during a busy spell. A modest gap usually does the job, nudging important calls forward without making the other queues feel like an afterthought to the people stuck in them. Review the spread again whenever your call mix changes, because a priority setting that worked for last quarter's volume can quietly choke a line once the traffic pattern shifts.