Use Automatic Chat Distribution (ACD) to automatically place agents in an active chat session without agent interaction.
For example, you can automatically invite customers to chat with an agent when they have been on a particular page for a certain time, clicked a link or revisited a URL. Automatic Chat Distribution balances the number of customers in queue and the agent's workload in order to keep the rate of invitations at a maintainable level and the agent's chat queue saturated.
Result: The Automatic Distribution for Chat window is displayed.
Result: This activates ACD at the account level.
Option | Description |
---|---|
Initial assignment delay | When Automatic Chat Distribution is enabled, you can delay the automatic assignment of chat sessions by the defined time. This way, you can keep chats in queue - in unassigned status - for an extended period. |
Reassign unanswered messages (seconds) | When selected, chats are reassigned to another agent when the originally assigned agent does not answer the chat session within the specified period. In practice this means that a chat is answered by another agent when the originally assigned agent fails to respond.
An agent who fails to answer in time is set to Away status to prevent new chats from being assigned. The agent must then explicitly set their status to Available. |
Reassign messages after agent disconnected (seconds) | When an agent disconnects (for example, after logging out), Automatic Distribution reassigns all active chats to other agents after the defined period of time. When the agent disconnects due to network connectivity issues, chats are reassigned after at least two minutes. Therefore, even if you set the Reassign messages after agent disconnected value to 30 seconds, chats will only be reassigned after two minutes. Keep in mind that if no agents are available to take additional workload then chats will be placed in queue and their waiting time will be counted from the time the customer started the chat. |
Concurrent chat limit | When selected, the number of chats that can be assigned to each agent is limited. When an agent reaches the chat limit, they are no longer assigned new chats. This limit setting can be overridden at an individual agent level. Chat and discussion difficulty affects this limit. |
Option | Description |
---|---|
Show queue position | When no agents are eligible to receive new chats (all have reached their maximum concurrent chats limit), then new chats are placed in a queue. When selected, customers see their position in the queue in the chat window. Agents can manually start chatting with the next customer in queue as described in How to manually start chatting with the next customer in queue. |
Estimated wait time | With this option it is possible to display the approximate waiting time to visitors who are waiting in the queue for agent chat. This option can be enabled if the Show queue position option is active. The estimated wait time is calculated based on previous wait times and the visitor's position in the queue. |
Enable exit from queue | When selected, customers in the waiting queue are presented a button that cancels the chat and displays the unavailable form (if enabled). |
Queue length limits |
Maximum in queue: Do not allow new chat sessions when the total queue size reaches this number. Average per agent: Disable the Chat Button when the total number in the queue divided by the number of available agents reaches this number. |
Invitation throttling |
The invitation throttle controls the balance between the number of invitations sent and the risk that your target queue is exceeded. This helps you avoid long queues of unassigned chats when more customers accept invitations than agents can handle. Throttling options:
|
Allow customers to enter queue upon Available click | Decide how to handle new chat sessions when a customer clicks a button shown as Available, but meanwhile all agents become unavailable. You can override other queue limits and allow them to enter the queue according to the following limits:
|
How is agent chat capacity calculated?Suppose concurrent chat limit is set to 3, chat difficulty has a multiplier of 1, and chat discussion difficulty has a multiplier of 0.5. When an agent has two ongoing chats (counts as 2 x 1 concurrent chats) and a chat discussion (counts as 1 x 0.5 concurrent chat) then the concurrent limit is 2.5. In this case, - since chat capacity is 0.5 - the agent can still receive an additional discussion task, but cannot receive new chats.
Option | Description |
---|---|
Agents waiting for assignment |
To determine which waiting same-rank agent gets the next chat, choose an assignment method:
|
You can set this option independently for customers reassigned within a department (From same department) as opposed to between departments (From other departments).
Result: Settings are applied to your entire account except where overridden at the department or agent level.