Skills routing provides a way to identify specific skills for both visitors and agents and route chats accordingly, helping make sure your customers get the relevant and targeted support they need. For example, you might want to create a skill for customers from Spain, so you can route chats to agents who are qualified to work with them (fluent in the Spanish language and familiar with the laws and practices in Spain).
To use skills-based routing, you must haveassigned chat routingenabled. SeeSetting up notification routing for live chat and messagingfor information.
For answers to some common questions about skills-based routing, see ourChat skills-based routing FAQ.
Understanding how skills routing works
With skills-based routing, incoming chats are given tags to indicate that they require assistance from agents with specific skills. Only agents with the skills that match those tags are notified of and able to serve that incoming chat.
There are a few different conditions that affect how chats are routed with skills routing. Keep in mind the following:
- Agents must have all of the skills a visitor has to be routed chats for that visitor. For example, if a visitor is tagged with skills A, B, and C, but an agent is only tagged with skills A and B, that visitor's chats will not be routed to the agent.
- Maximum wait time, which is set when you enable the feature (seeEnabling skills routingbelow) specifies the amount of time a chat will wait for an agent with the exact set of skills. Once the maximum wait time has elapsed, the chat is assigned to any other agent within the department, based on the number of concurrent chats being served.
- Agents set to Invisible, Away, or Offline are not included in the queue for routing.
Enabling skills routing
First, you should enable the skills-based routing feature. Note that in order to use this feature, you must already have chat routing enabled. For details about chat routing, seeSetting up chat routing.
- SelectSettings>Routing.
- Click theSettingstab, and make sure you have selectedAssignedfor chat routing.
- In the Skills Routing section, selectOn.
- Select a value in theMaximum Wait Timefield. This setting determines how many seconds a visitor should wait in the queue for an agent with matching skills before being reassigned to another available agent.
- ClickSave Changes.
Creating skills
Once skills-based routing is enabled, you need to create the skills that you'll later assign to your agents and visitors.
To create a skill
- SelectSettings>Routing, then select theSkillstab.
- ClickAdd Skills.
- 输入一个名称为您的技能。请注意,这个名字哟u give your skill must match the tag applied to incoming chats requiring this skill, so you may want to keep this short (this is important when you'readding skill tags to visitors).
- ClickCreate Skill.
Using the example from the beginning of this article, we'd want to add the skillES:
We'd then assign this skill to our qualified agents, as described in the next section.
When you create a skill, it is enabled by default. However, skills can be disabled, and when disabled they will still appear in the skills list, but will not be available for skills-based routing. If you find you need to use a disabled skills, you can re-enable it.
To enable a disabled skill
- SelectSettings>Routing, then select theSkillstab.
- Click the skill to be enabled.
- For Skill status, clickEnable skill.
- ClickSave skill.
Assigning skills to agents
您已经创建了适当的技能之后,您need to assign them to agents so they can be routed the correct chats. Agents can be assigned a maximum of five skills.
There are a few different ways you can manage agent skills.
- SelectSettings>Agents.
- Select the check boxes next to the agents you want to assign skills to.
- Click theActionsdrop-down menu and selectAssign Skills.
- Click in the Skills window and select a skill to add from the options. Repeat as needed until all skills are applied.
- ClickAssign.
- SelectSettings>Agents.
- Click the name of the agent you want to assign skills to to open their profile.
- Click in theSkillsfield and select a skill from the list that appears. Note that autofill is not enabled in this field.
- ClickSave changes.
To assign skills to yourself
- SelectSettings>Personal>Profile.
- In theProfiletab underPreferences, select the drop-down menu in theSkillsfield and search for or select skills to assign.
- ClickSave Changes.
To remove skills from agents
- SelectSettings>Agents.
- Click the name of the agent you want to assign skills to to open their profile.
- In theSkillsfield, click the X next to the skill you want to remove.
- ClickSave changes.
Adding skill tags to visitors
To set up a trigger to assign tags
- From the dashboard, selectSettings>Triggers.
- ClickAdd Trigger.
- At the top of the page, make sure Trigger status isEnabled.
- Enter a name and brief description for your trigger.
- In theCustomize Triggersection, configure to check conditions related to your skill and assign a tag that matches the name of the skill required. Note that tag matching is not case-sensitive (the tagtier_1would match with the skillTier_1, for example), and autofill is not enabled when entering a skill tag – you'll need to type in the entire tag. Make sure to set the value ofRun triggertoWhen a visitor has loaded the chat widgetto ensure that the trigger runs at the correct time.
For example, chats from visitors containing Spain's country code (ES) could be given the tagES:
- ClickCreate Trigger. Now, only agents with the ES skill are notified when a visitor with the ES tag requests a chat.
For more details on setting up triggers, seeWorking with triggers.
To add skill tags using the Javascript API
- Learn more about the Javascript APIhere.
18 Comments
The article liked for the Javascript API has this note:
Note:This guide applies only to the Chat widget from Chat-only accounts, not from Chat+Support accounts.
How do we add skill tags to visitors for Chat+Support accounts?
You can use these API command to add chat tags:chat:addTags; or, if you need to use the legacy
$zopim.livechatAPI with the Web Widget, then you can wrap the Javascript withzE. Here's a quick guide: How can I customize the Zendesk Chat widget using the JavaScript API?You can refer to this doc for more information onmigrating from the Chat widget syntaxto thethe unified Web Widget (Classic).
Thanks Mike!
Hi there!
Is it possible to configure skills based routing based on organization?
For example, let's think about a VIP organization (tagged via a custom org field). I would like to assign all incoming chats from this organization to specific agents.
We have the agent workspace enabled, I assume the skills based routing in support is not applicable to chats and, the skills in chat interface have to be used, am I right?
However, the users are not tagged in support with VIP. How do we identify that an user is part of a VIP org so that it is routed correctly?
Thank you in advance!
Thanks Gab,
I just want to confirm that the solution you provided for adding tags to the chat is the same thing as what's described in this article "Adding skill tags to visitors".
I want to be able to route chats to different departments and the routing setting seems to only route based on a tag that's assigned to the vistior and not a tag that's assigned to the chat.
Will adding the tag to the chat, using the solution you provided, work with the skills routing shown here?
Is it possible to apply tags to visitor based on the language their using? Example, if the customer starts the chat in Spanish, how can I route that to a Spanish agent?
Thanks
Hi Eduardo,
Have you seen this article(?):https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408833808538-Recipe-Route-a-chat-to-a-department-based-on-the-country-the-visitor-is-chatting-from
If you are looking for a solution to detect the language no matter the location, I don't think it's possible.
Hope this helps!
Paul
If you are already using Agent Workspace, you can just utilize support triggers to route those chat tickets to specific group of agents or specific agent. Make sure to include the organization as a condition.
HiDane
Many thanks for getting back to me, much appreciated!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this method will assign incoming chats to a specific agent only, the one which is defined in the trigger, correct?
What do I need to do if I'd like to assign chats to a pool of agents with a specific skill?
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Thank you in advance!
Hi Dane,
I would like to avoid creating a dedicated group for this... if possible...
To you think the setting below will route chats correctly if multiple agents are assigned to this skill?
Thanks!
This method will only add the skills to the ticket but it will not triggers a chat skill-based routing. When it comes to chat skill based routing, it needs to be worked on by using chat triggers with add tags action that corresponds to the skill names of the agents.
This trigger will add a tag to visitors when a widget was loaded.
It will then route the chat to agents with the same skills.
Hello! Is there a way to prioritize certain skills for agents when it comes to routing? For example, If I have 5 agents who can do skill A and skill B, but as a priority I want them to be routed chats with skill A over skill B (because, for example, I have 10 other agents who also possess skill B, but not skill A), is there a way to do that?
Chat skills routing will still use theAssigned路由行为路线传入的请求an online agent who has been available for the longest time as long as their skills will match. There's no native feature to prioritize routing based on the skills available.
Why can't we use as a condition the User Tag in support as a Visitor Tag?
TheVisitor Tagfor chat triggers is specific for the chat platform. It can only be applied via the set Tag action in chat triggers and user tags is not part of it.
what happens if a ticket comes in and it has skills, but no available agent is online? does it defer to the department?
Bobby Koch- there is a maximum wait time for the chat to find agent based on the skill however if not being accepted on that specific timeframe let say 60 seconds. Chat will be routed to the next available agent within the same department.
Jahn Bronilla
So if I have 4 departments
EMEA (2am to 7am)
- no agents have skills here
US Support (7am to 7 pm)
---- HR
---- SALES
---- Support
If i am setting visitor tags for HR, Sales, and Support in my widget, what happens if a visitor tag is passed during the EMEA hours? Could I just set a trigger in chat to say assign to that department, and skills will be skipped?
Pleasesign into leave a comment.