Workforce Engagement Management

Good afternoon,

I am taking a deep dive into Idle status and time spent in the status when service levels are not being met.  It has presented me with a question.  How can an agent be in idle status, with calls in queue, and not be placed on a not responding status?  

What trick is the agent doing?

#RealTimeMonitoring

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Yvonne Martinez
AVP, Contact Center
Rally Credit Union
Corpus Christi TX
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Hi Yvonne,

It's likely due to the queue/skill setup and/or routing. Agents can be Idle and not receive interactions if:

• They carry a lower star rating on the skills waiting (or don't carry that skill at all)
• They are deactivated in the queue - they can show Idle but be in a deactivated status. This one is tricky to detect. You'll also want to check your role permissions, so the agents don't have the ability to deactivate queues themselves
• The queue uses bullseye routing, and the agent is in a lower bullseye tier

I hope that helps!

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Dave Lottman
Workforce Manager
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I believe this behavior is usually related to the queue's routing configuration rather than the agent doing something intentionally.

Depending on how the queue is configured, an agent can remain Idle while interactions are waiting. For example, routing may be based on skills, language proficiency, Bullseye Routing, Preferred Agent Routing, or even Genesys Predictive Routing (GPR). In these scenarios, the platform may intentionally prioritize certain agents or wait for a better match instead of immediately offering the interaction to every available agent.

With Bullseye Routing, for example, an interaction may remain queued while Genesys attempts to find an available agent within the higher-priority bullseye rings before expanding the search to additional rings.

Regarding Not Responding, that's a different behavior. An agent is only placed into Not Responding after an interaction has actually been offered to them and they fail to answer within the configured timeout. If the interaction was never offered because the routing logic determined the agent wasn't the best candidate, the agent will simply remain Idle instead of moving to Not Responding.

I would start by reviewing the queue's routing method, required skills, utilization settings, Bullseye Routing, Preferred Agent Routing, and whether GPR is enabled. Those are usually the main factors behind an agent appearing Idle while interactions are still waiting in the queue.

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Raphael Poliesi
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