Call Duration Brackets (Customisable) - Zendesk Explore Calculated Attribute
Call Duration Brackets (Customisable)
Voice - Calls
Calculated Attribute
Splits Voice calls into customisable duration ranges, making it easier to analyse call lengths against your team’s goals and processes.
Business value & use cases
- Zendesk now ships with a default Call Duration Brackets attribute, but building your own gives you more control to align with your team’s context, and lets you slice by fields like Phone Line Name.
- Align brackets with SLA targets, billing increments, or internal KPIs to make the data more actionable.
- Quickly identify unusually short or long calls that may signal quality or training issues.
- Support workforce planning and QA by showing where most calls sit in duration ranges, especially when combined with abandon-stage context from Abandon Location.
Dataset and dependencies
- Dataset: Voice - Calls
- Type: Calculated Attribute
- Dependencies: None (standalone attribute)
The code
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Not sure how to work with the code? Check our getting started guides.
Implementation steps
- Go to Explore → Report Builder > Voice → Calls Dataset → Start Report.
- Select the Calculator icon for Calculations.
- Choose Standard calculated attribute.
- Paste in the code above - change the time durations to suit your team’s needs.
- Validate and save.
- Apply the attribute to reports (rows, columns, or filters).
Validation tips
- Compare output against a manual spot-check of raw call durations.
- Verify “Not recorded” values to ensure they represent expected edge cases.
- Test bracket thresholds (e.g. 120 sec vs 121 sec) with known data samples.
Caveats and considerations
Zendesk now includes a default call duration bracket attribute, but there’s still value in creating your own. The built-in version uses broad, standardised ranges, whereas this custom attribute gives you full control to define brackets that match your team’s context.
In this example, we’ve used the timeframes for the following reasons:
- 0-2 min: captures very short calls - either rushed or highly simple; consider pairing with Short-Abandoned Calls if you also need to filter out queue hang-ups.
- 2-7 min: typical support interaction length for many teams.
- 7-15 min: longer calls worth monitoring for complexity.
- 15-30 min / >30 min: potential training, escalation, or process issues.
Duration values must be entered in seconds, not minutes.
Example chart
Example dashboard visualizing custom call duration brackets