Department routing is not working correctly in chat

Issue symptoms

Department routing is set up in Chat but is not routing chats correctly.

• Chats are being routed to the wrong agents and wrong departments.
• Chats are routing to offline agents.
• Chats are not being routed to a department when they should be.

Resolution steps

Make sure the issue is not caused by online status

The routing issue may be caused by a department's offline status. When chats are routed with triggers, the chat will be routed to the department specified in the trigger even if that department is offline. This can end up with lost chat trouble. For more information, see the article: Chat routing via triggers to departments with no available agents.

Make sure your pre-chat form is working correctly

If you use the pre-chat form to allow customers to choose a department, make sure the pre-chat form is enabled and working correctly in your account. Also, make sure the department option is not hidden on the pre-chat form as described in this article: Can I hide the department field on the pre-chat form?

Make sure your trigger is set up correctly

If you use a trigger to route chats to departments, make sure you are using the correct department condition in your trigger. Learn more about the three different department conditions and how each one works in this article: Should I use the department, department status, or visitor department condition in my Chat trigger?

When you use the Set visitor department action in a Chat trigger, make sure you have Run trigger set to When a visitor has loaded the chat widget. Department routing does not work if Run trigger is set to When a visitor requests a chat or When a chat message is sent. 

If the chat was started by a proactive chat trigger instead of by your visitor, this will bypass any other routing triggers you have active. In this case, the chat will route to any available agent regardless of department. If you want chats started with a proactive message to route correctly, make sure your proactive chat triggers include the action Set visitor department as well.