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 routed 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 goes to the department specified in the trigger even if that department is offline. This can cause issues with lost chats. For more information, see the article: Why do triggers route live chats 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. For more information, see the 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. See the image below for an example of this setup:
If the chat was started by a proactive chat trigger instead of by your visitor, this will bypass any other routing triggers you have in place. In this case, the chat will route to any available agent regardless of the 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.
6 Comments
Hey Erik Lynch, I am testing the visitor department routing in Sandbox and created this trigger. See below condition:
Run Trigger: When a Chat Message is sent
Meet all
Visitor Page URL>Contains>(the URL where chat originated)
Visitor Tag>contains>(our end user do have specific tags)
Action:
Set Visitor department>(specific department
Add Tags>(Specific Tag)
Apparently it's not working at all. Tried and tested so many conditions.
We'll continue to assist you on the ticket that you raised with us related to this issue. Kindly check your email for updates. Thanks!
For anyone coming across this.
We have had this issue for such a long time with zero resolution, department is being set in the widget code but intermittently passes the department with a null value. The resolutions in this article are not everything there is to it.
Something is broken underneath.
How are you exactly passing the departments in the chats when the chats come in? You mention that is being set in the widget code - do you have any customisations set in your own script? Feel free to share the details.
Joey, did you have any success finding out why that was happening? My company is using the chat widget and we set the department via the API. We will intermittently have issues where the department is not set and the chat will be sent to our default which is a problem.
Our code looks like this:
(function() {window.opener = null;
window.$zopim||(function(d,s){var z=$zopim=function(c){z._.push(c);},$=z.s=d.createElement(s),e=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];z.set=function(o){z.set._.push(o)};z._=[];z.set._=[];$.async=!0;$.setAttribute('charset','utf-8');$.src='https://v2.zopim.com/?3XwTShAYzG4dmNuhM8rHkll6wjX9mXIN';z.t=+new Date;$.type='text/javascript';e.parentNode.insertBefore($,e)})(document,'script');
$zopim(function(){
$zopim.livechat.addTags('webcode: 0-015C');
$zopim.livechat.setOnChatStart(function(){$.post('https://{{devURL}}/zchat/start',{e: $zopim.livechat.getEmail()},null,'json');});
$zopim.livechat.setOnChatEnd(function(){$.post('https://{{devURL}}/zchat',{v: $zopim.livechat.getName()},null,'json');});
$zopim.livechat.window.setOffsetVertical(2);
$zopim.livechat.window.setPosition('tl');
$zopim.livechat.window.setSize('medium');
$zopim.livechat.window.show();
$zopim.livechat.departments.filter('');
$zopim.livechat.departments.setVisitorDepartment('SpecificDepartment');
$zopim.livechat.theme.setColor('#0076bf');
$zopim.livechat.window.setTitle('SpecificDepartment');
$zopim.livechat.concierge.setAvatar('https://{{devURL}}/images/rs/zopim_chat/chat_logo.png');
$zopim.livechat.theme.reload();
});
})();
Hello Pat Behrens - this is what we are currently doing and using.
Chat Department Routing via API - https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/widget/settings/#departments
NOTE: we have visitor tag as the main identifier for us to route chats to their respective departments
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