Configuring Queues

Responses that have passed through the stages of the response funnel can then be processed for distribution using queues. For example, one queue might be defined to pass all qualified responses to Sales. During the application-implementation phase for new customers, a queue is created as a default. If your company uses an inside Sales or Telemarketing organization to perform additional prequalification of prospects before distributing leads to Sales, one or several call center queues can be defined. Queues can also be defined to deliver leads to channel or business partners, or to keep campaign stake owners apprised of the level of response to a particular campaign or program.

You create a queue in two steps, for more information, see Creating Queues.

Queue assignment rules are developed using the condition builder. All attribute values collected during the prospect's response (by Web form) or included in a contact import of registrations can be used to sort responses and assign them to a single or multiple queues. For more information, see Configuring Queue Assignment Rules.

Typically, you perform the following tasks with queues:

You can create a master queue to deliver qualified leads to another application.
You can create separate queues for each sales territory or sales representative.
You can create call center queues to deliver leads to a prequalification team.
You can create industry-specific or product-line-specific queues to deliver leads to Sales specialists for that industry or product.
You can create a queue to aggregate responses to a particular campaign or program and deliver to management.

Attributes Frequently Used in Queue Assignment Rules

The following attributes are used in the queue assignment rules:

Geographic attributes used to define a territory (country, state, or province).
Lead scores, for example, deliver only A and B leads to Sales.
Campaign or program names used to define queues that process only responses to a specific marketing initiative.
BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Time frame) values if not already used in scoring rules.
Contact activity attributes, such as the number of downloads, frequency or duration of Web site visits, and event attendance.
Product interest or industry.

Based on the delivery selected, contacts are either delivered by email, as a CSV (comma separated value) formatted file attachment to an email, delivered to a call center, or delivered as a file to a specified server.

Leads or prospects are assigned to queues and marked with a status. Queue assignments can be displayed under the Activities tab. The following table describes the queue status values.

Queue Status	Description
Pending	Leads or prospects are assigned to a queue but not yet published or sent to a distribution list.
Published	Leads or prospects are published to another application.
Sent	Leads or prospects are sent to the distribution list defined for a queue.
Failed	A prospect or lead was not assigned to a queue because some information was missing.

For more information, see: