In Zendesk's messaging for Web Widget, mobile SDKs, and social channels, when a customer requests assistance from a live agent during a conversation, a ticket is created, and agents are notified that a request has been received.
You can use ticket triggers to route the associated ticket to specific agents or groups, then use the chat routing rules defined in your Chat dashboard to determine which of those agents or groups are notified that a new conversation is waiting in the queue. You can create views to organize tickets submitted through a messaging channel.
You can also route messaging tickets using omnichannel routing, instead of using ticket triggers and chat routing rules as described in this article. See About omnichannel routing.
This article includes the following topics:
Overview of the routing flow in messaging
Before jumping into a discussion about routing incoming messaging requests, it’s important to understand the elements involved and where they fall in a messaging flow.
Elements directly (and indirectly) controlling messaging ticket routing
There are three elements that directly control how a messaging ticket is routed:
- Ticket triggers are applied to the tickets created when a messaging conversation is passed to an agent. They perform much like triggers applied to tickets created via other channels, but you may need to use them in other ways for messaging tickets. See Routing messaging tickets using ticket triggers for more information.
- Chat routing rules define how agents are informed that there is a messaging ticket waiting in the queue. Specific agents or groups can be notified, or all agents can see a broadcast notification. If a Support trigger has routed the ticket to a specific agent or group of agents, only agents assigned to the ticket will receive a notification. Agents must click the notification to enter the conversation. See Setting up notification routing for live chat and messaging for more information.
- Omnichannel routing allows you to direct tickets from multiple channels, including messaging, to team members based on their availability and capacity. On Professional and Enterprise plans, you can also route tickets based on priority and skills. See About omnichannel routing for more information.
Additionally, there are elements that do not directly control ticket routing, but can be referenced by ticket triggers, or can otherwise impact how a ticket is received by agents:
- Transfer to agent events (Web Widget and mobile SDKs only) in any conversation bot created in bot builder will hand off the conversation to an agent. This creates a ticket associated with that conversation. These events can be preceded by the Ask for details step, which uses custom ticket fields to collect information from customers that can be used when creating ticket triggers. For more information on these events, see Understanding answer step types.
- Default messaging responses can include the collection of customer details, which also uses custom ticket fields that can then be referenced in ticket triggers. See Working with the default messaging response.
- Chat triggers can fire when a conversation is passed to a live agent (via an agent transfer event), or when the customer enters a comment in a messaging conversation with a live agent. An agent does not have to be actively participating in the conversation for these triggers to fire, but the conversation must have been passed from the bot to agent control. Chat triggers in messaging are generally used for auto responders, which can inform your customers that agent assistance is not currently available. See Creating an out-of-office message for Web Widget and mobile SDKs.
Sample messaging flow
The elements described above influence the routing workflow at different points in the life cycle of a messaging conversation. It's important to know when they come into play so you can configure your routing workflow with confidence. In the example below, a messaging conversation goes through a basic messaging workflow, and the elements influencing the routing are highlighted in bold.
- Customer begins a messaging conversation via your messaging channel. For Web Widget and mobile SDKs, the bot is the first responder for the conversation and interacts with the customer based on the flow designed in the bot builder.
- The customer indicates they are unable to self-solve their issue in an agent transfer event and requests help from an agent. The bot is removed as the first responder for the conversation.
- A ticket associated with the conversation is created. Any chat messaging triggers for when a visitor requests a chat fire, and triggers with the conditionTicket | is | Created fire.
- An agent becomes the first responder for the conversation.
- Customer adds a comment to the conversation. Any Chat messaging triggers for when a chat message is sent fire.
- The associated ticket is added to the queue. Chat routing rules fire, alerting agents to the presence of a new conversation.
- An available agent accepts the ticket and enters the conversation based on your selected routing method OR, if no agent is available, the ticket remains unassigned and can be found in the ticket views according to your view configurations.
- Once the customer’s issue is resolved, the ticket is marked Solved.
- After a set period of time, an automation updates the ticket status from Solved to Closed, which ends the associated conversation as well. See Solving a ticket and understanding how it is closed for more information.
Understanding what happens to messaging requests by default
Using the out-of-the-box configurations for your conversation bot, ticket triggers, chat triggers, and chat notification routing, incoming requests for agent assistance from the messaging channel have a simple, functional routing process.
- Customers are handed off from the bot to the agent, who picks up the conversation in the Agent Workspace. No information is collected through custom ticket fields.
- Tickets are not assigned to any agent or group, and appear in two default views, Unassigned tickets and All unsolved tickets.
- A notification is broadcast to all agents, informing them that a request has been received.
- If a ticket request remains unassigned in the queue for more than 10 minutes, it is moved to the Unassigned tickets view.
Using ticket triggers to route messaging tickets
Ticket triggers allow you to automatically route tickets to specific agents or groups. In messaging, you can use the following data as trigger conditions to automatically route messaging tickets to specific agents or groups:
- Data collected via custom ticket fields as part of an Ask for details event created in bot builder, or as part of the default messaging response. This data can include customer location, the nature of their issue, or any information you want to gather.
- Channel | is | Messaging set as the ticket submission channel, to create routing rules that apply only to messaging tickets. If you do not specify messaging as the channel, all incoming tickets will have this trigger applied. Any triggers with other channels specified (email, for example) that do not include messaging will not fire.
There are three main parts to setting up this routing flow:
- Creating a custom ticket field
- Adding the custom ticket field to your conversation flow
- Building a trigger to route your ticket
For a step-by-step example, see Recipe: Routing messaging tickets using ticket triggers.
Using Chat routing rules to notify agents
Chat routing rules determine which agents, or groups of agents, are notified that a messaging conversation has been received. Routing rules are set at the account level, and applied to all brands associated with your account.
There are two basic methods for notifying agents of incoming messaging requests:
- Broadcast, where all agents are notified of all incoming requests, and agents self-assign these requests through the Agent Workspace. This routing option is enabled by default.
- Assigned, where conversations are passed to specific online agents or groups.
One of these routing rules is applied at all times -- you cannot opt out of routing rule selection.
Chat routing rules are applied after any ticket triggers fire. If you are using a support trigger to route incoming messaging tickets to specific agents, notifications are only sent to agents that are eligible to accept the ticket.
- If no specific agent or group is assigned the ticket, a broadcast notification will be received by all messaging agents, and an assigned notification will be received by the next eligible agent, according to the assigned routing rules.
- If a specific agent or group is assigned the ticket, a broadcast notification will be received by all messaging agents specified in the trigger, and an assigned notification will be received for the specified agent, or the next eligible agent in the group, according to the assigned routing rules.
Other chat routing settings such as hybrid assignment and reassignment are supported.
Skills-based routing is not supported for messaging conversations.
For information on configuring basic routing options, see Setting up automatic notification routing.Using omnichannel routing to route messaging tickets
With omnichannel routing, you can direct tickets from email, calls, and messaging to agents based on their availability and capacity. On Professional and Enterprise plans, tickets can also be routed based on priority and skills. This means your most important tickets are assigned to the agents who are best equipped and available to work on them.
Before using omnichannel routing for messaging, consider the following:
- You can't activate omnichannel routing if you're using live chat.
- The Zendesk Agent Workspace must be activated to use omnichannel routing.
- When using omnichannel routing, tickets originating from a variety of native and social messaging channels are routed as "messaging" tickets.
- Omnichannel routing can be used in combination with ticket triggers to route messaging tickets.
- Broadcast and hybrid modes for messaging aren't supported.
- On Professional and Enterprise plans, you can configure how inactive messages are evaluated for agent capacity.
- See Requirements and limitations of omnichannel routing for a complete list of requirements and limitations.
Routing messaging tickets to a view
You can also route messaging tickets to a view, allowing admins and agents to easily locate tickets submitted through the messaging channel. The Chat routing rules will still apply to tickets routed to views. In the example screenshot below, the view is also restricted to a messaging-specific agent group.
