• Ramin Shokrizadeh

  • June 17, 2016 13:27

  Zendesk Product Manager

  Hi there Andy,

  Thanks for the feedback around the department picker in the widget. Ultimately, you want the default selection to be empty so that they are required to make a selection?

  Are your agents getting incorrect chats that are meant to be assigned to another department? How frequently does this happen). Are your department names generic or specific?

  We have no immediate plans to change the dropdown behaviour but you could use the Javascript API to set the visitor department and hide the dropdown based on the page they are on or the information they have selected on your website.

  You can get the API doc information here: https://api.zopim.com/files/meshim/widget/controllers/liveChatAPI/Departments-js.html

  Thanks,

  Ramin

• Lea Thompson

  • February 08, 2017 19:20

  Hi Ramin,

  Yes, customers just leave the default, selected department in the Chat Widget when they start a chat. It's wrong at least 50% of the time.

  Our chat isn't dependent on which page the customer is on, if they need technical support with our products they need to choose "Tech Support". And if they have product or purchasing questions they need to choose "Sales". Using the JavaScript API won't resolve this for us, we need the customer to be forced to choose.

• Ramin Shokrizadeh

  • February 09, 2017 03:22

  Zendesk Product Manager

  Hi Lea,

  Thanks for explaining the issue here. We are not expecting to change this behaviour anytime soon so I can offer you two workaround solutions to explore:

  1. Create a new department called "-choose a department-" with all your agents in it. Then, use the JS API to set that department in the pre-chat form to this new department. Having this text might enforce the visitors to select the department from the dropdown.

  2. Use the Web SDK to build a custom widget experience that has its own logic around department selection and validation. The Web SDK is offered only to Premium customers and you can get more info here: api.zopim.com/web-sdk

  I would personally try 1 because it is the cheaper workaround and other customers use it today.

  -Ramin

• Lea Thompson

  • February 13, 2017 21:30

  Hi Ramin,

  I did create a new department called "-choose a topic-" like you suggested. But fully a third of our customers are now starting chats with the that department instead of actually choosing anything. It's doesn't solve the issue and still creates extra confusion for our customers when they end up with the wrong person.

• Helix Leisure

  • January 25, 2022 04:29

  any  update to this ? 
  what's the workaround? 
  
  

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