With the Real-Time Monitor, you can see an overview of key chat metrics, including queue size, customer wait times, and chat satisfaction, on a single screen. Customer service team leads can get an at-a-glance view of current Chat support demand and update agent assignments accordingly.
This article contains the following sections:
Understanding the default metrics
The Real-Time Monitor dashboard displays a number of constantly-updated metrics.

Metrics are organized into the following categories:
Queue
The top row of the dashboard displays information about the Queue. The information here refers to chats that have not been served by any agent. It is divided into three subcategories:
-
Queue: New chats that have not been served by any agent. This is the sum of Incoming Chats (
)and Assigned Chats (
). Applicable only if chat routing mode is set to Assigned.
- Wait Time: The longest and average times visitors have been waiting for their requests to be served. Wait time is calculated as duration between the first visitor message in the chat and the first agent message. Wait time will be 0 for agent-initiated or trigger-initiated chats.
- Missed Chats: The number of chats in the past 30 minutes where the agent does not answer the incoming chat request and the visitor subsequently leaves.
Chat Activity
- Currently Served Chats: The number of chats your agents are serving right now
- Chats Per Agent: Average number of chats per logged in agent, and per online agent.
- Response Time: Longest and average time that visitors have been waiting for an agent reply. Response time is the duration between the a message by a visitor, and the next response by an agent. If multiple messages are left by a visitor before an agent responds, response time is measured from the time the visitor leaves the first message in the string.
- Chat Duration: Longest and average length a current ongoing chat. Chat duration is calculated as duration between first message in the chat (visitor message, agent message or message sent via triggers) and when the chat ends (visitor ends the chat, or last agent leaves the chat, or chat ends due to inactivity timeout).
Agent Activity
- Logged In Agents: The total number of agents currently logged in
-
Status: The number of logged in agents broken down by their current status:
- Online (
)
- Away (
)
- Invisible (
)
- Online (
Customer Satisfaction
- Satisfaction (Overall): The percentage of chats rated Good over the past 30 minutes.
-
Ratings: Total ratings over the past 30 minutes, broken down by their satisfaction choice:
- Good (
)
- Bad (
)
- Good (
Customizing available statistics
Admins can customize which of these statistics appear in Monitor for the whole account.
- In the Chat dashboard, click the Monitor icon (
).
- At the top of the Monitor edit page, click Settings.
- Select or clear check boxes next to each statistic to determine if it appears in Monitor.
- Click Save Changes.
Filtering by department
Both agents and admins viewing the dashboard can filter the statistics by department. Select one or more individual departments, All Departments, or No Department.
To filter by department
- In the Chat dashboard, click the Monitor icon (
).
- At the top of the Monitor edit page, click the Filter by Department drop-down menu.
- Select All Departments, No Department, or an individual department.
Accessing additional real-time activity data using the API
Get additional insight into your team's acitvity using the Real-Time Chat API. For details, see our API documentation.
18 Comments
It'd be great if the total number of chats served and missed for the current day is shown here.
Feature request to add the current running daily totals for Average Response Time and Average Wait Time Served.
Where is Service Level? The most important call centre metric?
Hello,
I am able to retrieve the current day's talk data via the API. I currently gather this data each day and store it. However, I do not see a way to do this for chat data. Is there a way to gather this information for chats that I am not seeing? For talk, it is the following endpoint in the API: https://company.zendesk.com/api/v2/channels/voice/stats/agents_activity.json
I would love to see a similar endpoint for chats. Perhaps https://company.zendesk.com/api/v2/channels/chat/stats/agents_activity.json
Hey Dennis,
The closest we have for Chat currently is located here: Chat API
There's the streaming API which I've linked above for you.
I hope this helps!
Hello Brett,
Thanks for getting back to me. Unfortunately, it does not help as I am not able to determine which agents are on chat using the the Chat API as it stands currently. The streaming API will tell me how many agents are online at the moment but does not tell me whom.
time is very limited, if i handling for 8 hour online , then this monitor should show my all 8 hour(until online) detail.
why setting limit up to 30minute
until agent is online , generate all result.
Hello Team,
Why does our Chat monitor does not display Real-Time numbers?
Thanks!
Jerenz
Hello Jahn Jerenz Bronilla,
The best way to accomplish this would be to use the Chat API. From there, you can pull real-time agent metrics for your reporting needs. If you need any help with working through the API, I would highly recommend posting in our Developer Support forum.
Best regards.
I'm SO SICK of "use the API" response from Zendesk. That is your go-to solution for literally every question on any suite of the products. Not everyone has the developer resources and bandwidth to build this from API. Why are we even paying for Zendesk if we have to do all the basic stuff?
Devan - Community Manager - but should the monitor in chat be real time? What's the sense of having the monitor when leaders and manager cannnot get the real time numbers?
I agree with Aswin Kannan that not everyone here has the developer resources.
Hey Jahn,
Just to clarify, the Monitor tab should give you real time numbers. As mentioned in the above article, the Real-Time Monitor dashboard displays a number of constantly-updated metrics.
Are you noticing specific metrics that are not updating correctly on your end? Is there possibly just a delay with the metrics updating on your end?
Any additional information you can provide is greatly appreciated.
Let me know!
@Brett - Apparently it does not show which consultant are next in line with the chat. Can you enlighten me if this is reallt the case?
Hey Jahn,
Just to confirm, are you trying to find out which agent receives the chat next or which visitor is next to be assigned to an agent? I'm not sure if that's possible but I'm happy to check on this for you.
Let me know!
Hi @Brett,
Is it possible if we can have the chat consultant queue on the monitor?
Example:
Agent 1 - 10mins waiting
Agent 2 - 11mins waiting
Agent 3 - 12mins waiting
Thanks
Jerenz
Hey Jahn,
I did some digging on my end and it doesn't look like this is possible at this time. You can filter wait time by department but you won't be able to filter by agent in real time.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Our average chat wait time seems to be around 80 to 90 seconds in Zendesk Explore, but our agents are actually answering almost immediately when they see a chat coming in. However we have a trigger set to automatically start an outbound chat at 120 seconds - does that in some way affect the chat wait time numbers? Otherwise, can you think of why these numbers would be so clearly inflated?
Hi pstrauss,
Chat wait time is defined as the following:
Is it possible that there are missed chats inflating this number? I always recommend creating a test query to break data down by individual Chat IDs/Ticket IDs. This will allow you to pinpoint which chats/tickets have a high wait time causing this average to be higher than expected.
Best,
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