The review queue
If you are a reviewer, this is your whole job on one page: the calls chosen for you, what you have done with them, and what is left. You install nothing — this is a browser page.
Where it is
Review queue
Where a reviewer lands when they sign in. An owner can see it too, and reviewing a few calls yourself in the first week is the fastest way to find out whether your scorecard actually works.
What lands in the queue
Answered, recorded calls, sampled across the team according to the rule the owner set. Never everything — reviewing every call is neither possible nor useful.
- Unanswered attempts never appear. There is nothing to listen to.
- Both incoming and outgoing calls.
- Calls from both recorders. A Source of Mobile means a phone recording, where the far end will be quieter — worth knowing before you judge the audio.
- Calls spread across agents, so you are not reviewing one person all morning.
Why a particular call and not another is answered by the sampling rule, not by you — see Sampling and coverage.
The figures at the top
- Awaiting review
- Calls sampled and not yet taken by anybody. This is the number that tells you whether you are keeping up.
- In review
- Calls somebody has taken and not finished. Yours and other reviewers’ both.
- Completed
- Reviews finished in the current period.
- Average score given
- The average you have been giving. Worth glancing at: a reviewer whose average is a point above everybody else’s is applying the scorecard differently, which is what calibration exists to fix.
- Available to take
- What you can pick up right now.
If “awaiting review” grows every week
That is not something you can fix by working faster, and it is worth saying rather than absorbing. The target is set above the available reviewing time, and the owner needs to either lower the calls per agent or add hours. A queue that outruns its reviewers is the most common way a quality programme quietly stops.
Taking a call
- Pick one from Calls waiting for a reviewer. There is no assignment to wait for.
- It moves to In review and is yours, so two reviewers do not score the same call by accident.
- Score it and finish it, or skip it with a reason.
- Then take the next one.
Finish a call before starting another. A reviewer with six calls in progress is a reviewer whose colleagues cannot take them, and partial reviews help nobody.
The scoring screen itself is covered in Scoring a call.
Skipping, and when to do it
Some calls cannot be scored against a scorecard, and forcing a number out of them is worse than skipping. Skipping is a legitimate outcome, recorded with a reason.
| Skip when | Do not skip when |
|---|---|
| A wrong number, or thirty seconds of nothing | The call is simply bad — that is a low score, not a skip |
| The audio is unusable rather than merely quiet | The far end is quiet, as phone recordings are |
| The same conversation already reviewed from the other device | You disagree with the sampling |
| A personal call recorded by accident on a work handset | It is awkward to score somebody senior |
Skips are visible, and that is the point
A reviewer skipping a third of their queue is telling the owner something real — either the sampling is picking up the wrong calls or the scorecard does not fit the work. The figure is how that gets noticed, so skip honestly and with a real reason.
The Calls page next to it
Reviewers also have Calls. What it shows depends on a setting the owner controls: by default your own queue, and with Let QA reviewers see every call, not only assigned ones switched on, every call in the company.
The broader view is for investigating a complaint, finding one specific conversation, or pulling examples for training — things no sample will contain. Playback is logged either way.
A working rhythm
Little and often
Reviewing is tiring in a way that surprises people. Four or five calls at a sitting is sustainable; twenty is a day where the last ten get skimmed, and a skimmed review is worse than no review because it looks like data.
Finish what you start
Partial reviews block the call for everybody else and help nobody. Score it or skip it.
Watch your own average
If yours drifts away from the other reviewers’, the scorecard is being applied differently rather than the calls being different. Ask for a calibration session — see Coaching and calibration.