You can specify how agents are notified about incoming live chat requests with Chat routing settings. These settings are accessed from your Chat dashboard.
This article includes the following topics:
Understanding and configuring basic notification routing options
There are two options for how notifications for incoming chat requests are sent to your agents:
- Broadcast: All agents are notified of all incoming requests, and the agent has to click onServe Requestto start serving the request. This is the default setting.
- Assigned: Online agents are evenly notified of incoming requests, so only one agent is notified of each incoming request at any time.
Requests are added to a queue in chronological order, based on time of ticket creation. Incoming requests received while agents are offline are sent to the Unassigned tickets view or the agent’s Group view. Offline requests can be assigned to agents as part of triaging, or they can be manually picked up by agents themselves.
In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, incoming live chat request notifications appear in the top-right corner of the workspace, in the Accept button.
If you do not have the Agent Workspace enabled, assigned live chat requests appear at the bottom of the Chat dashboard:
- From the Chat dashboard, selectSettings>Routing.
- In the Chat Routing section, select a notification routing method.
- ClickSave changes.
Configuring chat limits
Chat limits allow you to cap the number of notifications assigned or broadcast to each agent, based on an agent's workload. You can adjust these limits to help your agents better manage the volume or complexity of service requests.
An agent's workload is determined by the number of active live chat requests assigned to them. A request is considered active if it has received a response in the past 10 minutes.
- Broadcast:When agents are at the specified limit, they will no longer be notified of incoming requests, and they will not be able to serve requests through the Serve Request or Accept button.
- Assigned: Agents will be routed incoming requests only up to their chat limit.
- Account: Set one limit that applies to all agents in your account.
- Agent: Notification limits are configured in each agent's profile. You can specify that only admins can edit agent limits, or allow agents to set their own limits.
To enable notification limits
- From the Chat dashboard, selectSettings>Routing.
- Next to Chat Limit, selectOn.
- Next to Limit Type, selectAccountorAgent.
- If you selectedAccount, enter a value in theMaximum chatsfield.
- If you selectedAgent, limits are configured in each agent's profile:
- With theAssignedrouting method, select thePersonal limitscheck box that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- If you're using theBroadcastrouting method or usingAssignedbut don't select thePersonal limitscheck box, set a chat limit for each agent's profile. Select an agent to edit underSettings>Agentsand enter a value in theChat limitfield.
- With theAssignedrouting method, select thePersonal limitscheck box that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- ClickSave changes.
Understanding Assigned notification routing behavior
When Assigned routing is activated, by default chat notifications are routed as follows:
- First, the incoming request is assigned to the agent currently serving the fewest ongoing conversations.
- If multiple agents are tied for the fewest number of conversations, the incoming request is assigned to the agent with no missed assignments in the last 15 minutes.
- If more than one of the available agents has no missed assignments in the last 15 minutes, or if all agents have a missed assignment in the last 15 minutes, the incoming request is assigned to the agent with the oldest last missed assignment timestamp.
- If all available agents have not served any requests yet, the incoming request is assigned to an agent by random.
When all eligible agents areoffline, notifications are not sent. If incoming requests are later assigned as part of manual request triaging, agents will receive a notification when a request is assigned to them or their group.
Additionally, activating skills-based routing, hybrid assignment mode, or chat reassignment can impact assigned notification behavior. SeeConfiguring additional settings for Assigned routingfor more information.
Configuring additional settings for Assigned routing
If you select the Assigned routing method, there are additional settings you can configure.
Configuring skills routing
Configuring hybrid assignment mode
The Hybrid Assignment Mode setting is only available if notification requests areAssignedand you have setchat limits.
混合作业模式给代理商的选择voluntarily serving additional requests after they've reached their set chat limits.
With this setting activated, if an agent reaches their chat limit and a new incoming chat request is not picked up by other available agents, that agent will hear the incoming chatnotification soundand the number of queued requests in the Serve Request/Accept button increases by one. The Serve Request/Accept button doesnotlight up.
To enable Hybrid Assignment Mode
- Go toSettings>Routing.
- In theHybrid Assignment Modesection, select theAllow Hybrid Assignmentcheck box.
- ClickSave Changes.
Configuring reassignment
The Reassignment setting is only available if you're usingAssignedrouting.
When this setting is activated, a reassignment timeout period is attached to each incoming chat request. If the agent initially assigned the chat request doesn't respond before the assignment times out, the incoming request will be reassigned to the next available agent based on their capacity and set chat limit. The request will not be routed to the initial agent again until an attempt has been made to route the request to all other eligible and available/online agents.
If this option is not enabled (ifReassignmentis set toOff), once a notification is assigned to an agent, it isnotautomatically reasssigned to another agent.
- Go toSettings>Routing.
- Next toReassignment, selectOn.
- Enter anumber of secondsin the Reassignment timeout window. For example, if you want notifications to be reassigned after 15 seconds with no response, enter 15.
- ClickSave Changes.
Configuring automatic idle settings
This setting applies only if you're usingAssignedrouting and have enabledReassignmentabove.
Enable this setting to automatically set chat agents' status to Away or Invisible after a specified number of notifications are automatically reassigned. Agents are notified when their status is changed.
To enable automatic idle status
- Go toSettings>Routing.
- Next toAutomatic Idle, selectOn.
- Enter a value in theChats Reassignedfield.
- Select a status option next toIdle Status.
- ClickSave Changes.
Monitoring live chat routing data in Analytics
- Acceptance:指定的百分比聊天服务d by agents out of all the chats routed to the agent
- Capacity (beta): The estimated amount of chats that can be served by the account in a given period of time. The capacity is a function of 1) the number of agents logged in, 2) the average chat duration of an account and 3) the chat limit set by the agent.
10 Comments
这篇文章有一个大的改变。它用来表示at if an agent did not accept an incoming chat assignment, the system *would not* try to assign it to them again:
Now, it says it will keep trying them after trying everyone else:
I've been trying to get help for months now (and keep having my tickets silently closed out without assistance), because I was seeing agents being "retried" for the same chat, when this article still said that was not the expected behavior.
Was the behavior of the tool actually changed a month ago, or was it doing round robin and re-trying agents who did not pick up the first time, again, this whole time? I've opened and had 3 tickets closed without any comments from Zendesk about this at this point, and I just want to confirm what the behavior is currently, and what it was historically, to troubleshoot related issues.
Hi, @CJ Johnson. The update was made at the request of one of our Chat product managers. I don't recall if it was a change in behavior, or a correction/clarification of the description of existing behavior.
I'm sorry your tickets weren't addressed. I can't help with that, but I hope you've gotten some assistance now.
Is there a way to enable a notification for when a chat ends?
I'm afraid it's currently not possible to set up a notification in the UI for when a chat session/conversation ends. This is not something that's in the roadmap, but I recommend that you start a thread about thishereto engage with other users looking for a similar functionality. Specific examples, details about use cases, and how you currently handle things are helpful for our product teams to understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for roadmap planning.
Thanks Jess!
Hi @jess
And if you use a trigger when tag "zopim_chat_end" is present and send to you an email?
Currently I'm using a view where I see the tickets of the finished chats by filtering with this tag.
Cheers.
Maria
How does reassignment work with broadcast mode?
For example, if an agent serves a chat in broadcast mode but takes beyond the reassignment timeframe to address the end user, will the chat get added back to the broadcast queue for a different agent to serve?
What happens in this scenario?
Hey, is there any way to prioritize the transferred chats to the top of the queue? Because by default, they are going to the bottom.
Hi,
How can we separate 2 chats channel in messaging?. What we want is a separate of Facebook Messenger and our website
Thank you
The only workaround for this is also discussed inServing chats in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. That is to create a specific view for unassigned chat tickets similar to email channels.
Hi Vincent,
Similar to the one above, you will just have to create a different view for new tickets that will be created for those channels. You only have the capability to setupnotifications for Messaging.
Is there a maximum wait time when using Messaging? We recently changed from Broadcast to Assigned routing, and we see some new tickets get created at times as opposed to being served to agents online during business hours.
Is that due to no one being available? At what point does a new messaging request leave the messaging queue and just become a new ticket? Is there a way to adjust the time a message stays in the queue?
Pleasesign into leave a comment.