What is Chat Routing?

1. The chat routing option helps you prioritize and route visitor chats to the operators based on certain conditions and criteria. You can set different rules to filter the chat requests and route them to the required operators.
2. By default all incoming chats will be notified to all available operators, however by using Chat routing you can route chats to a set of operator(s) by applying various conditions  to suit your business needs.

Benefits of Chat Routing:

1. Routing visitor chats to specific operators based on the criteria allows you to direct the visitors to the suitable set of operators and solve the queries instantly.
2. It also reduces the workload of your operators and improves support efficiency.

1. Click on the Add button on the right top corner of the page.
   

1. Give a title for your routing rule.
   

1. Choose the brand that you want to set up the routing rule for.
   

1. Next, choose your Audience criteria. This can be based on website details, technology, visitor details, department, triggered status, UTM values, CRM values, campaigns, company data, user data and general conditions like number of past chats.
   

1. Choose the routing criteria from the options. The available routing options are as follows.
   
1. All available operators - The visitors will be routed to all available operators in the organization.
   
2. Specific operators - You can pick the specific operator to whom you want to route the chats.
   
3. Last attendee - Visitor chats will be routed to the operator who assisted the last time.
   
4. CRM lead/contact owner - If the visitor is a CRM customer, visitors will be routed to the respective CRM owner of the lead/contact.
   
5. Do not route - This option will not route the chat to anyone.
   

Note: If you choose the Last chat attendee, CRM lead/contact owner on Do not route option, then hit Save next and the rule will be saved to the routing rules list.

1. If you choose the Specific operators option, you will get an option to select the operators to whom you want to route this chat.
   

Note: Only the operators who are associated with the departments linked to the brand, selected for this routing rule will be listed here. This can be configured in the Brand flow controls settings. To configure this, navigate to Settings > Brands > Brand name  > Flow Controls. In the Chat tab, under Flow controls, scroll to 'Departments responsible for chats'. Add or remove departments as necessary.

1. Now, you can pick a routing rule for the operators. There are 4 rules that can be chosen.
   
1. First available: The chats will be routed to the operators who have completed their previous chat and are available to pick up more chats. For example, there are 10 operators and everyone is engaged in different chats. If one operator completes a chat and their status changes to available, then the next chat will be routed to that operator.
   
2. Least loaded: Chats will be routed to the operator who has attended the least number of chats.
   
3. Route one-by-one: The chats will be routed to available operators in the round-robin method. For example, if there are 10 operators, then the chats will be routed from the first operator to the last available operator in an order and when the ten operators have received their first round of chats, the second round of chats will be routed and queued to all of them starting from the first operator in the same order. If an operator switches their status from available to busy, they will be removed from the order temporarily and moved as the last operator and will receive chats only when their turn comes in the queue.
   
4. Simultaneous routing: This option will route the chats to all selected operators and departments simultaneously.

Note: The Routing rule selections (First available, Least loaded, Route one by one and Simultaneous routing) will be available only for 'All available operators' and 'Specific operators' routing options.

1. Click on Save to save this routing rule.
   

Pre-defined conditions available for Chat Routing

The available Predefined Conditions and its descriptions as follows:

What is the order of chat Routing?

The rules follow a top-down execution method, whichever rule first matches the visitor criteria will be executed. You can rearrange the rule order by dragging and dropping the rules (Top-Down, Bottom-Up) as needed.

Note: In case there is a Zobot or Answer bot deployed on your site, the bot will pick the visitor chats. The chat routing rules set up will be applicable, only when bot transfers/forwards the chat to operators.

Disable/delete a chat routing rule

1. To disable the rule, click the Enable/Disable toggle button.
   

1. To delete a rule, click on the Delete(trash) symbol on the right side of the rule.
   

1. A confirmation pop-up appears. Click Delete and the rule will be deleted.