Working the Work Queue

Every service business has the same leak: work that only happens when somebody remembers to pick up the phone. An agreement quietly runs out because nobody called about renewing. A maintenance visit sits on the calendar as "sometime in March" until March is over. A customer asks for a call back and the sticky note gets lost.

The Work Queue is the fix. It collects every customer you need to reach into one list, in the order you should reach them, and it doesn't let an item go away until someone records what happened. Open it from the clipboard icon at the top of any page, or Work Queue in the left menu.

What lands in the queue

A call booked for a specific time (from Book a Call in the header) stays on the Booking page until that time arrives. Then it jumps to the very top of the queue marked Due now until someone handles it.

You only see the kinds of item your role allows. Someone without agreement permissions never sees renewals, and people who don't take surveys never see follow-ups. See Who sees what below.

The order: first in, first out, unless it's urgent

The queue is first in, first out. The oldest renewal date or the soonest tentative appointment comes first, so the item that has waited longest gets worked first.

The exception is priority. Every item is Low, Normal, High or Urgent, and higher priority always goes ahead of older items. That's how a manager handles an angry customer: add a call marked Urgent, or bump an existing item to Urgent, and it goes straight to the top of everyone's queue who can see it.

Recommended: leave nearly everything at Normal. If half the queue is "High", nothing is.

Set up a view for each job you do

Most people use the queue for more than one thing: renewals on Monday, scheduling spring tune-ups on Tuesday, survey calls on Friday afternoon. Don't re-filter every time. Set the filters once and Save view. It becomes a tab across the top.

Good views to start with:

• Renewals this month: type Renewals, look ahead Next 30 days.
• Book spring tune-ups: type Appointments, look ahead Next 60 days, filtered to the agreement name ("Spring AC Check").
• Survey calls: type Follow-ups.
• Call backs: type Calls.

Managers with the Manage Shared Queue Views permission can share a view with a whole role. Share "Tuesday renewals" with your office staff and it shows up as a tab for everyone in that role.

The filters worth knowing

• Type chips across the top. Click to show only those kinds of item; the number on each chip is how many are waiting.
• Show: Ready to work (the default: open and not snoozed), Overdue, Trying again later, Out of attempts, Everything open, or History (handled).
• Look ahead controls how far into the future the queue reaches. The default uses each type's own window. Choose Everything, however far out to see, for example, every agreement that expires in the next eight months. That's useful for planning, even if nobody should call about those yet.
• Priority chips, and under Filters: date range, business unit, job type, tag, technician, city, agreement name, number of attempts, and who it's assigned to.

Calling one customer after another

Before your first call, click Calling from in the top-right corner and pick the phone that should ring: your desk phone, your cell, or another number. It's saved to your login, so it follows you to any computer. The regular dialer also highlights it as your default.

Then the rhythm is:

1. Click the first item. It opens on the right (full screen on a phone) and is reserved for you. Everyone else sees it greyed out with your initials and "working on it", so two people never call the same customer.
2. Press the green Call button. Your phone rings. Answer it and press 1 and the customer is dialed (see Making calls from Suprata for why you press 1).
3. Do the real thing: Renew agreement, Schedule it, Book a visit, or Start the survey. Or, if you can't reach them, record what happened.
4. The next item opens by itself. Turn that off under the ... menu if you prefer to pick.

The item stays reserved while you have it open and frees up a few minutes after you move on. If you close your browser mid-call, nobody is locked out for long.

Email and text instead

The Email and Text buttons come with ready-made wording: a renewal reminder, "let's schedule your service", and "sorry we missed you". The wording fills in the customer's name and details, and you can edit it before sending. A sent message counts as an attempt and is saved to the customer's notes.

Recording what happened

Every item ends one of four ways.

• Try again later: no answer, left a voicemail, asked for a call back. Pick when it should come back: In 2 hours, Tomorrow morning, Next week, or an exact time. It disappears until then. Tap a reason button (No answer, Left voicemail, Asked for a call back…) so the next person knows what already happened.
• Done (calls only): the call is finished.
• Dismiss: this doesn't need doing, and nothing about the customer's records changes. Duplicates, things already handled some other way.
• Decline: the customer said no. What that means depends on the item:
  • a renewal is marked as not renewing;
  • an appointment is cancelled, and you can tick a box to cancel the job too;
  • an on-site job is cancelled;
  • a follow-up is closed without a survey.

Dismiss and Decline always need a reason. That's deliberate: in six months someone will ask why a customer's agreement lapsed, and the answer should be in the notes.

Where the notes go

Whatever you type is saved where the next person will look for it:

• Renewals: the customer's notes and the agreement's notes.
• Appointments and on-site jobs: the job's notes. When you schedule, the note is also added to the appointment itself, so the technician sees it.
• Calls: the customer's notes.
• Follow-ups: the customer's notes and the job (or agreement) it was about.

Every attempt is also kept in the item's own history, so the fourth person to call can see "no answer" three times without digging.

Out of attempts

Each type has a limit (four tries for renewals and appointments, three for calls and follow-ups, by default). When you hit it, the item is marked Out of tries. It stays in the queue, but a manager can filter for these (Show: Out of attempts) and decide whether to email, escalate, or let it go.

Scheduling from the queue

Schedule it (for appointments) and Book a visit (for on-site jobs) open the same scheduling panel you use when making a new work order. It shows the service location, crew availability and nearby appointments. The tentative date on an agreement-generated appointment is pre-filled, but it's only a starting point. Move it to whatever the customer actually agrees to.

When you save, the appointment becomes Scheduled. If you've set up an automation for it, the customer gets a confirmation text and email.

Adding a call

Click Add call. Pick the customer, or, if they aren't a customer yet, type just a name and phone number. Suprata creates a basic customer account for them (it tells you it's doing this) so the call history has somewhere to live. You can fill in the address later.

You can also book a call from Book a Call in the header: choose No set time - add to the call queue and it lands here instead of on the Booking page.

For managers

• Assign: select items (tick boxes on the left) and Assign them to a person or a whole role. An assigned item is visible only to that person or role, and to managers.
• Priority: bump items up or down, one at a time from the item panel or in bulk.
• Dismiss in bulk: clear out a batch of stale items with one reason.
• Team activity: the tab on the right of the view bar shows, for any date range, how many items each person worked, how many they finished, how many calls they made, renewals won, visits booked, surveys taken, and average time per item.
• Queue settings (under ...): how far ahead each type looks, how many attempts before an item is flagged, how long an opened item stays reserved, and the follow-up survey rules.

Who sees what

Anyone who could use the old Daily Queue gets Use Work Queue automatically.

Common mistakes

• Using "Dismiss" when you mean "Try again later". Dismiss takes the item out for good. If you might need to call again, snooze it.
• Marking everything High priority. Priority only works if it's rare. Use Urgent for the angry customer, not for "I'd like this done today".
• Leaving the tentative date as the real date. An appointment generated by an agreement a year ago is a guess. Confirm the actual date with the customer before you schedule it.
• Not picking a calling line. Until you choose one under Calling from, the Call button asks you every time.
• Letting "Out of tries" pile up. Check that filter weekly. Three unanswered calls usually means it's time to email, not to call a fourth time.

Related articles

• Follow-up survey calls
• Making calls from Suprata
• Agreement renewals
• Recurring schedules on agreements