This section focuses on how Zendesk messaging routes conversations to the right agents and the various messaging statuses that help track conversation progress. Learn how to configure efficient workflows, set up triggers for routing, and interpret messaging statuses to ensure no customer inquiry goes unanswered.
Q: How are messaging conversations routed to agents?
A: There are three elements that directly control how a messaging ticket is routed:
- Ticket Triggers: These are applied to messaging tickets when a conversation is passed to an agent. They function similarly to triggers for other channels but may require different configurations for messaging tickets. For more details, refer to Routing messaging tickets using ticket triggers.
- Chat Routing Rules: These rules notify agents about messaging tickets in the queue. Notifications can be directed to specific agents, groups, or broadcasted to all agents. If routed by a trigger, only the assigned agents are notified. Agents must click to join the conversation. See Setting up notification routing for live chat and messaging for more information.
- Omnichannel Routing: This feature routes tickets from various channels, including messaging, based on agent availability and capacity. On Professional and Enterprise plans, routing can also consider ticket priority and agent skills. Refer to About omnichannel routing for more details.
See also:
Q: What is the difference between the invisible vs away statuses?
A: See below:
- Online: Signifies you're available to answer messages.
- Away: Signifies internally to other agents that you're away from your computer. You can still send and reply to messages when your status is Away.
- Invisible: Lets you log into the Chat dashboard but not be visible online. You can still get incoming message requests and reply to messages if your status is Invisible.
See also:
Q: What is the difference between Broadcast and Assigned messaging routing?
A: See below:
- Broadcast: Broadcasting chats give agents more autonomy, allowing them to work at their own pace. Set a chat limit to control quality by preventing agents from taking on too many chats at once.
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Assigned: Assigned chats help maintain an even workload distribution, especially for larger teams.
- If using Assigned mode, you can then control the reassignment time if an agent fails to accept the assigned incoming chat. By default it's set to 30 seconds.
Q: What happens when a Messaging conversation is created outside of hours and no agents are online?
A: The conversation ticket is still generated like normal, and will be waiting for the agents to respond when they are back online next.
Q: Do I need specific views to route Messaging tickets too?
A: There are 2 options for this:
- Edit existing views to ensure your messaging tickets flow into an existing view.
- Create new views which are Messaging specific.
- How can I oversee conversations in messaging and live chats?
- Managing Messaging conversations with views in Zendesk.
- Creating views for Zendesk Messaging tickets
Q: What happens if the agent is already in a conversation and we have a limit of one conversation per agent? Would the customer be placed in a queue?
A: Yes the customer does get placed into a queue, however you are not 'advertising' in the widget that they are in a queue and/or their queue position.
Messaging is like having an SMS conversation with someone. E.G I send you an SMS and when you're ready and available, you respond back. This is the same concept with messaging. When the end-user initiates a conversation, the next available agent responds when they can at their earliest convenience.
We also recommend to look at utilising the Estimated Wait time feature if you are looking to offer something along these lines to your customers.
Q: Can a Messaging ticket be linked to a problem ticket?
A: Yes it can. However when the problem ticket is solved, public comments are sent via email only if the user has an email address in their user profile.
Q: Do Messaging tickets work with skills-based routing?
A: Yes they do.