Waiting Room

Overview

The Waiting Room feature keeps callers on the line when no available buyer is found right away — instead of dropping the call or sending it to a "no match" outcome immediately.

Think of it like a hold queue at a call center: the caller hears hold music while the system quietly checks for available buyers in the background, every few seconds. If someone becomes available before the timer runs out, the call connects. If not, the call is handled according to your "No Buyer Matched" routing — just like it would without the Waiting Room.

The result: fewer lost calls when your buyers are temporarily busy.

In this article you will learn about:

• How the Waiting Room Works
• Enabling the Waiting Room
• Configuring the Waiting Room Duration
• Marking Webhooks as Re-Fireable
• What Happens When the Waiting Room Expires
• Viewing Waiting Room Activity
• Use Cases
• Pricing

---

How the Waiting Room Works

When a call comes in and no buyer is matched, the Waiting Room steps in:

1. The caller is placed on hold (they hear hold music)
2. Every 5 seconds, the system re-checks all your configured webhooks to see if a buyer has become available
3. The moment a buyer becomes available and picks up, the call connects normally
4. If no buyer is found within your configured time limit, the call moves on to your No Buyer Matched routing

This process runs entirely in the background — the caller simply experiences being on hold, with no indication they are being re-routed.

---

Enabling the Waiting Room

The Waiting Room is an account-level feature that must be turned on before you can use it on any campaign.

To enable it:

1. Go to your Account Settings
2. Open the Features section
3. Find Waiting Room and enable it

Once enabled at the account level, you can configure it on individual campaigns.

Note: If you don't see the Waiting Room feature in your account, contact support to have it enabled.

---

Configuring the Waiting Room Duration

Once the Waiting Room is enabled for your account, you set how long callers are held on a per-campaign basis:

1. Open the Campaign you want to configure
2. Click on Edit
3. Find the Waiting Room field in the campaign settings
4. Enter the number of seconds you want callers to be held (for example, 30 for 30 seconds)
5. Save your campaign

Leave the field blank to disable the Waiting Room for that specific campaign, even if the feature is active on your account.

---

Marking Webhooks as Re-Fireable

During the Waiting Room hold period, the system only re-fires webhooks that are marked as Re-fireable. This prevents duplicate data — only the webhooks that make sense to re-check for availability will fire during the hold.

When setting up your webhooks (Timers), you can toggle the Re-fireable option on each webhook that has a trigger of:

• Data-Appending ping
• Passthrough ping
• When a call comes in

NOTE: Webhooks that have a trigger of 'When a buyer is selected' and have 'Hold caller until completion' enabled are re-fireable by default.

• Re-fireable ON — this webhook will be sent again on every re-check during the Waiting Room
• Re-fireable OFF — this webhook will only fire once, at the start of the call

For ping-post availability checks, enable Re-fireable so the system can keep polling your buyers for an open slot while the caller waits.

---

What Happens When the Waiting Room Expires

When the hold time runs out:

• If the call is already connected — nothing changes. The call continues normally and the system will not interrupt an active conversation.
• If no buyer was found — the call moves on to your No Buyer Matched routing, exactly as if the Waiting Room had never been involved. You can route these to voicemail, a fallback number, or any other option you have configured.

---

Viewing Waiting Room Activity

Every call that enters the Waiting Room is logged step-by-step in the Call Debug Log. You will see entries such as:

• "Holding caller until a buyer becomes available" — the call has entered the Waiting Room
• "Waiting room expired" — the time limit was reached without a match

This makes it easy to audit calls and understand exactly how many callers waited, and whether they eventually connected or were routed elsewhere.

---

Use Cases

Below are two high-impact ways Retreaver users can use the Waiting Room today.

---

Pay-Per-Call / Performance Marketing

In performance marketing, buyers often have real-time availability windows. A buyer might be free to take calls one moment and at capacity the next.

The Waiting Room helps performance marketers:

• Reduce wasted calls when buyers are momentarily busy
• Improve connection rates without changing your routing setup
• Give buyers a short window to free up before a call is marked as unmatched

---

Call Centers with Fluctuating Agent Availability

During busy periods, agents go in and out of availability quickly. Rather than dropping a call the moment all agents are busy, a short hold window can dramatically improve your answer rate.

The Waiting Room helps call centers:

• Recover calls that would otherwise be lost during peak times
• Avoid routing callers to voicemail unnecessarily
• Keep callers on the line while an agent wraps up a previous call

---

Pricing

You will be charged double your standard per-minute call rate, for the time a caller has spent in the Waiting Room.

• Time spent in the waiting room is rounded up to the next minute. Meaning that if a user has spent 30 seconds in the Waiting Room, you will be charged for the whole minute.
• You are only charged for the actual time a caller spends in the Waiting Room — from when they are placed on hold until they connect, the call ends, or the timer expires
• Charges appear in your billing as "Waiting Room"