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 on Serve Request to 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, select Settings > Routing.
- In the Chat Routing section, select a notification routing method.
- Click Save 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, select Settings > Routing.
- Next to Chat Limit, select On.
- Next to Limit Type, select Account or Agent.
- If you selected Account, enter a value in the Maximum chats field.
- If you selected Agent, limits are configured in each agent's profile:
- With the Assigned routing method, select the Personal limits check box
that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- If you're using the Broadcast routing method or using Assigned but
don't select the Personal limits check box, set a chat limit for each agent's
profile. Select an agent to edit under Settings > Agents and enter a
value in the Chat limit field.
- With the Assigned routing method, select the Personal limits check box
that appears for agents to set their own notification limits in their profiles.
- Click Save 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 are offline, 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. See Configuring additional settings for Assigned routing for 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 are Assigned and you have set chat limits.
Hybrid assignment mode gives agents the option of 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 does not hear the incoming chat notification sound and the Serve Request/Accept button does not light up.
To enable Hybrid Assignment Mode
- Go to Settings > Routing.
- In the Hybrid Assignment Mode section, select the Allow Hybrid
Assignment check box.
- Click Save Changes.
Configuring reassignment
The Reassignment setting is only available if you're using Assigned routing.
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 (if Reassignment is set to Off), once a notification is assigned to an agent, it is not automatically reasssigned to another agent.
- Go to Settings > Routing.
- Next to Reassignment, select On.
- Enter a number of seconds in the Reassignment timeout window. For example, if
you want notifications to be reassigned after 15 seconds with no response, enter 15.
- Click Save Changes.
Configuring automatic idle settings
This setting applies only if you're using Assigned routing and have enabled Reassignment above.
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 to Settings > Routing.
- Next to Automatic Idle, select On.
- Enter a value in the Chats Reassigned field.
- Select a status option next to Idle Status.
- Click Save Changes.
Monitoring live chat routing data in Analytics
- Acceptance: the percentage of assigned chats that were served 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.