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Enable Focus Mode in Omnichannel (Or fix the functionality outside omnichannel)

Completed


Posted Oct 27, 2022

Bring Back the Functionality of Focus Mode for Messaging and Talk 

Feature Request Summary: 

Messaging and talk are both live channels and it is not possible to simultaneously have a verbal conversation in talk while having a typed conversation with a different customer in messaging. 

Description/Use Cases: 

Prior to the launch of messaging, focus mode allowed agents to be online for both talk and chat at the same time. They would only receive one type of live contact at a time, allowing for them to handle either calls or chats at any given time, and to switch back and forth between the channels based on routing. For small teams, this flexibility removed the need to schedule one or two agents to calls and one or two agents to chat, and meant that when volume shifted to be higher on one channel over another, this need was easily met by the systems already in Zendesk.

With messaging, this functionality broke. Prior to omnichannel, agents would get locked into messaging and calls would not route to them if focused mode was enabled. With the launch of omnichannel, now both calls and messages will route at the same time which is equally as problematic, if not moreso.

Business impact of limitation or missing feature:

Focus mode was a useful feature that allowed for flexibility of scheduling and variety of work in an agent's workflow. Omnichannel reflects that one person can't handle 2 calls at once, but still routes messaging - a live channel, to someone who is on a call. This is counter-intuitive and I don't know what the purpose of a unified status is if it's not going to actually intelligently route work to agents who are available to handle it. (It's meaningless to be online for messaging and talk if the system is going to route to both channels at the same time.)

This seems like a major oversight in the development of a feature that our team had been looking forward to in hopes that it would solve an ongoing significant product issue.

Other necessary information or resources:

A community manager indicated that return of focus mode was planned for messaging and talk on this post but no update has been provided recently. Seeing as this problem was not remedied with Omnichannel, and Omnichannel forces disabling focus mode (which doesn't matter since it's broken for anyone using messaging anyways) it would be good to have some guidance around the planned resolution: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4412161208218-Focus-mode-for-active-Messaging-and-Talk-users?page=1#community_comment_5070312720538 


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28 comments

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Trudy Slaght

As you mentioned, focus mode for messaging and talk within omnichannel roiuting engine is definitely on the roadmap but we dont have a specific date for expected release yet.

Alternatively, an agent could use their status to indicate that they should not be assigned a message whilst on a chat (or vice versa). You could setup two custom stauses: message only and voice only and when agent took a message or a call they could set themselves offline for the other channel by selecting one of these two statuses.

Not ideal, I know as the agent would need to take a manual action.

Barry

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Hi Barry,

I'm glad this is on the road map, but we have disabled omnichannel routing for now. While the focus mode malfunctions outside of omnichannel, it's malfunctioning is better than how omnichannel works. Having to manually change status based on what has been assigned is not a reasonable ask of an agent to do repeatedly throughout the day. I hope returning this functionality is a high priority - it seems like a major oversight that it wasn't considered in the initial launch of omnichannel.

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+1

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Cody

Zendesk Luminary

Agreed, this fix is very much needed.  Asking the agent to manage their status during and after calls / messages is not a reasonable ask if we are wanting to make the agent experience better in order to provide better service to the customer.  

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We would also like this feature to work in omnichannel. Our routing issues will be resolved with omnichannel but as mentioned above this is useless if we lose focus mode. 

This issue was first raised 8 months ago, when can we expect this improvement?

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi 

This is on the roadmap - currently at Q1 2024 (potential EAP release in Q4)

Barry

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We are in the same position, we have trialed omnichannel for the past month but are not able to transition to it until focus mode is enabled. 

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Is this still on track for Q1 24 and potentially an EAP Q4 ?

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Hi Barry Neary - is there any update on timing for this feature? Still Q1?

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi, we are doing final planning for 2024 now, so hopefully will be able to update on this in the coming weeks

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any update on when focus mode will be supported in omnichannel?

I am considering switching from chat to messaging and omnichannel will solve a lot of issues I am having with  trying to make sure customers get answered quickly  and tickets dont remain in one agents bucket if they are helping others, but without focus mode it doesnt seem I will be able to effectively stop agents from getting a call while taking real time messages from customers. We still want our agents to answer messages like they are chats and help the customer in real time so this would be needed functionality

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Shawna James

Community Product Feedback Specialist

Hi Joe, thank you for continuing to engage here. Barry's most recent update of this being included in 2024 planning is still the most accurate udpate to this feature request. We appreciate you continuing to share your use cases and support with this request. We look forward to having another update for you once our planning solidifies. 

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Definitely a +1 on this.

This will solve a problematic scenario in our use case as well where only 1 agent is available at a time. 

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+1

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Q1 2024 is here and looking forward to focus mode for omni! Would appreciate being part of any beta testing, if it's available. 

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We need it too.

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi All

We are actively developing it right now - expect to release in March, but it may slip to April

 

Barry

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Shawna James

Community Product Feedback Specialist

Thank you for the update Barry! I wanted to take a moment reference our guidelines on this thread to help clarify our processes here with customer product feedback. Please note, roadmap timelines are always estimates and can change for various reasons. Going forward we will be sure to be more clear about timeline estimations and provide updates when changes to the timeline come up so as to avoid confusion in the future.
 
Thank you again for your continued engagement and feedback here. We look forward to sharing more information with you soon!

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+1 we are waiting too.  Routing 2 live channels to 1 agent at the same time doesn't even make sense....unless you don't support live channels.  I don't understand how such a critical business rule was missed.  Looking forward to the deployment!

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Stacey Page

Zendesk Luminary

Is there any update on the release? 

 

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi

We are in final testing for Focus mode - expected release in the next few weeks (but no guarantees!)

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Thanks Barry, this is great news! We have been eagerly awaiting this! 

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Focus mode is an extremely essential feature for Omnichannel. Eagerly waiting for this feature to be released. Could you please notify me when we have this in production

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I saw the announcement for focus mode and OCR, however I still cannot see the option on our account - has rollout completed? If so, can you send a screenshot of where the option is meant to be please?

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Matthew Sammut 
 

Rollout is now complete - do you have OCR switched on?

It should appear in the routing config screen within OCR section of admin centre:

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

George Parackel : its now released

 

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi, this feature is now released for omnichannel routing

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Shawna James

Community Product Feedback Specialist

Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to provide us with this feedback and others here on this thread for your thoughts and engagement.
 
As Barry mentioned, this feature has been released. More information can be found here and instructions for set up can be found here.  Thank you again for sharing your feedback and for being valuable Zendesk Community members!
 
At this time I am going to close this post for comment. Should any other feature requests on this matter come up, please feel free to create a new post. Thank you!
 

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