What is a call center wallboard?

What a wallboard actually is

The word wallboard means a board on the wall. In large call centers, a TV screen is hung on the wall, with large numbers that everyone in the room can see from their chair. It is not a report you open when you want to — it is a picture that is always there.

The idea is older than cloud PBXs. Once these were boards of red lights, then simple text screens, and today they are web pages that refresh every few seconds and are shown on a regular screen or a TV.

The difference between a wallboard and call reports is time. A report looks backward, at yesterday or the last month. A wallboard looks at now, at this moment.

Why it helps

In a call center without a display board, agents don't know what is happening outside their own call. An agent who just finished a call may go make coffee, not knowing that five people have been waiting in the queue for three minutes.

When the number appears big on the wall, everyone sees it. The manager doesn't have to walk between the desks and say "there's a queue." The team reacts on its own: they shorten a call that can be shortened, push a break back by a few minutes, or switch over to help.

There is also a fairness side to it. When everyone sees the same picture, it is clear why they are being asked to hurry, and it is also clear when they can breathe.

What to show on the board

The common mistake is to overload it. A board with twenty small numbers is read by no one. A good board shows a few figures, in large type, and these are usually the important ones:

The most important figure is almost always the longest wait. Five people waiting twenty seconds each is a reasonable situation. One person waiting four minutes is a customer about to hang up in anger.

Colors and thresholds

Many boards color the numbers by status: green when everything is fine, yellow when approaching a problem, red when you need to act now. That way the eye picks up the situation even before reading the number.

Set the thresholds according to what suits you, not according to what sounds good. If your callers are used to waiting a minute, there is no point in the board turning red after twenty seconds. If it is red all the time, people stop paying attention to it.

A good rule: red should be rare enough that when it appears, everyone looks up. And if after a month the board is still red most of the day, the problem is probably not the thresholds but the number of people answering the phone, and that is a question for the reports.

What not to put on the board

A display board is a screen that everyone sees, including guests who walk into the room. So don't show sensitive information on it: callers' full phone numbers, customer names or the content of inquiries.

Another sensitive subject is agent rankings. Some call centers show on the wall who answered the most calls. This can encourage healthy competition, but it can also cause agents to cut short calls that need time, or to feel humiliated. Usually it is better to show the numbers of the whole team, and talk with each agent about their own figures separately.

And finally: don't show figures that no one can change right now. "Total calls this month" is interesting at a team meeting, not on the wall in the middle of a workday.

When you need a board, and when you don't

A display board is suitable when several agents answer the same queue and sit in the same room or area. There it saves a lot of coordination.

In a small office, with one or two secretaries, a wall board is usually a luxury. Whoever answers the phone already knows whether the phone is ringing. A computer screen where you can see the active calls when you want is enough there.

Even when the team works from home, a wall board loses its value. In that case it is better for each agent to keep a small window on the computer with the same figures, or for the manager to monitor and update the team when needed. More on this in the article on working from home.

A small board on the phone: extension lights

There is also a tiny "display board" that many people already know without calling it that: the lights next to the keys on the office phone. On many phones you can set a key for each extension on the team, and its light shows whether the extension is free, ringing or on a call. This method is called BLF.

In an office of five or six people, these lights give most of what is needed: the secretary sees who is free before she transfers a call, and can answer in place of a colleague whose phone is ringing. When there are more people than keys, you add an expansion module to the phone with more keys.

What the lights don't show is the queue: how many are waiting, and for how long. For that you need a screen.

The simple alternative: an active calls screen

Not every organization needs a dedicated wall board. In most cloud PBXs, the control panel has a screen that shows the active calls right now: who is talking with whom, for how long, and from which number. A screen like this, open in a browser on a computer or on an extra monitor next to the workstation, gives a large part of the benefit of a wall board.

The difference is mostly in the design. A wall board is built to be read from several meters away, with huge numbers. A management screen is built for working up close, with more details and more buttons. On the other hand, a management screen also lets you take action: transfer a call, disconnect a stuck call, or listen in.

A middle option is to open the queue screen or the active calls screen on a TV, with the browser zoomed in. It is not as nice as a dedicated board, but it works, and requires no additional software.

An example from the field

The orders call center of "Birkat Hashem Catering" works with four women agents in one room. Before the holidays the load jumps, and the agents complained that they didn't know when to go on break.

The solution was simple: a second screen next to the shift supervisor's desk, showing the queue and the active calls. When there are more than three waiting, she asks everyone to stay. When the queue is empty, she sends one on a break. No wall screen and no investment, just what was already in the control panel.

The display board and the team: how to present it right

A new board on the wall can be seen as a "camera" watching the employees. It is worth presenting it to the team in advance, and explaining that the goal is to help, not to supervise: that everyone knows when there is a heavy load, and that no caller waits without someone knowing about it.

It helps a lot to decide together with the team what to do in each situation. For example: when the wait goes over a minute, whoever is on break comes back; when it goes over three minutes, the supervisor joins in answering. When the procedure is clear, the board becomes a shared work tool and not a source of pressure.

And one more small thing that makes a difference: show successes on the board too. An "answered today" figure that climbs through the day gives a sense of progress, not only of load.

How to set up a board in practice

In most cases you don't need special equipment. What you need:

1. A screen: a regular TV or a large computer monitor, in a place the whole team can see.
2. A small computer: a simple computer, or an existing computer connected to the screen by cable, running a browser.
3. A separate user: it is worth opening a user for the board account with view-only permission, so that someone walking past the screen cannot change settings.
4. Power settings: turn off sleep mode and the screen saver on the computer, otherwise the board goes dark in the middle of the day.

It is also worth checking what happens overnight: is the browser still logged in in the morning, or does it need to sign in again? It is better to find this out in a test than during a rush.

Common mistakes

• A board nobody looks at: hanging in a corner, too small, or always red. After a week it becomes decoration.
• Too much data: three to six numbers are enough. Everything else belongs in a report.
• A board without a procedure: the board shows that there is a problem, but if no one decided what to do when it is red, no one does anything.
• An exposed management screen: if you show the control panel itself on the wall, make sure the user cannot change anything, and that callers' personal details are not displayed.