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Feedback - Omni Channel Routing



Posted Jul 25, 2023

Hello, 

Last week we launched Omnichannel Routing, which was successful overall. However, we did encounter one issue where tickets were being assigned to agents in different time zones who were not online. To address this, we quickly developed a script to set all agents to offline. It would have been helpful if this feature was built into the Omnichannel Routing settings. We struggled for about an hour with Zendesk Support before I found documentation from Zendesk suggesting that we either ask all agents to set themselves to offline (which is not feasible for a global company), or use an API call to set all agent statuses to offline. 

 

Aside from this issue, we have some feedback that we would like to share to help improve the functionality of Omnichannel Routing.

  1. Individual Capacity Rules for Agents
    We have received feedback from agents requesting more personalized capacity rules for ticket management. At times, the default group's capacity rules are too high for them and they would prefer to accept fewer tickets. While we could create a new group for these agents, this would result in an excessive number of groups, rather than managing capacity rules within the capacity rules UI.

  2. Buffer Time Before Assigning Tickets to Agents
    Our agents are currently receiving a high volume of tickets at once, sometimes up to 5-7 tickets when they set themselves to online. This can be overwhelming for the agent, and they have suggested that there be a buffer in place for ticket distribution to ensure a more equal distribution when another agent comes online. One solution could be to lower the agent's capacity to handle fewer tickets. Another suggestion is to implement a timer that prevents the assignment of new tickets for 5-10 minutes after an agent has been assigned a ticket. This will allow the agent to focus on the current ticket before receiving another one.

  3. Waterfall Email Tickets
    We have created a Workato recipe that regularly checks all open tickets every 10 minutes. If an agent assigned to a ticket is marked as "Away" or "Offline" within the last 10 minutes, the ticket is reassigned to the main group assigned by Omnichannel Routing. This is particularly important for tickets received through email, as assigning a ticket to an agent who is away from their computer or at the end of their workday can cause the ticket to go unattended.

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3 comments

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Barry Neary

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Adam

1. Individual Capacity Rules for Agents

Is it possible to create capacity rules for agent that want lower max capacities? Group them together and add them to a specific capacity rule? Or is there too much variation in what agents feel is their maximum capacity (requiring lots of individual capacity rules)?

2. Buffer Time Before Assigning Tickets to Agents

I guess this is linked to number 1 above - agents being assigned too much work at the one time. We could introduce a delay, but the fear is that will negatively effect metrics like time to first response. Certainly we can bring it up with our other customers and see if this is a widespread requirement

3. Waterfall Email Tickets

We have received requests to automatically reassign open tickets if agents go offline or away. We haven't implemented it yet (although we have implemented the ability to reassign if agent is away/offline and a ticket reopens) mainly becuase of a fear that agent accidently changes their status (or they close down their browser and are automatically set to offline, or a brief loss of internet causes them to be set offline as we think they are offline) and they come back online and all their tickets are gone. Also, some agents could potentially use this to get rid of tickets from their inbox. Do you think that reassigning after the agent has been in an away or offline status for X mins (configurable) would address this fear?

4. There should be the ability to create an Explore report to show all tickets assigned to agent in a time period. In the case of email tickets, you would also need to ensure that these tickets had the autorouting tag - let me pass this on to my Explore colleagues....

 

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4. Our managers would like to generate a report using Livedata for Omnichannel Routing in Explore. The report should display the number of tickets assigned to an agent via Omnichannel Routing on an hourly basis, regardless of whether the agent retains the ticket or not.

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Hi Barry Neary,

Thank you for responding to my feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to discuss it with me.

 

  1. Group them together and add them to a specific capacity rule? Or is there too much variation in what agents feel is their maximum capacity (requiring lots of individual capacity rules)? 
    I understand your point. However, I am worried that adding more groups to manage capacity may not be scalable in the long run. The current process of assigning agents to groups and being more specific with them seems to involve too much extra work. It would be better if managers could individually assess each agent's capacity and decide whether it should be increased or decreased. I will definitely consider discussing the possibility of adding more groups with our managers.

  2. We could introduce a delay, but the fear is that will negatively effect metrics like time to first response.
    I understand your concern regarding this matter. However, there are pros and cons to both approaches. If we assign too many urgent tickets to an agent simultaneously, they may struggle to provide the same quality of support for each one. On the other hand, if we incorporate a buffer time, it allows the agent to decompress and focus on one ticket at a time. Our Workato workflow was designed to automatically assign tickets to agents with this buffer time in mind. We have received positive feedback that this approach reduces stress and results in more thoughtful and deliberate responses. Additionally, we have observed situations where one agent receives several tickets at the start of their shift, while another agent receives none. Implementing a pause timer would help distribute the workload more evenly among the team and ensure a smoother flow of tickets.

  3. Do you think that reassigning after the agent has been in an away or offline status for X mins (configurable) would address this fear?
    I understand your concerns, but we have confidence in our agents to handle the tickets effectively. Additionally, our managers keep a close eye on the tickets and investigate any patterns or indications of an agent trying to pass on their responsibilities. We initially set our timer in Workato to 10 minutes but have now extended it to run every 30 minutes.

    If I were to specify the conditions for the Zendesk built version, they would be something like:
    IF
    - Time since assigned = 30mins
    - Last agent update = 30mins
    - Agent Status = AWAY or OFFLINE

    ACTION
    - Move the ticket back to the group for re-assignment.

  4. There is one more thing that I may not have mentioned earlier. We have created four automations to transfer a new ticket to the next level of our support hierarchy if the first level is already at maximum capacity. Although this process is functioning, it's not efficient because we're limited to the Zendesk automation running hourly. In case all four of our groups are full, it would take roughly four hours for the ticket to be transferred to each group. Here are the conditions we have set for this workflow:

    - Ticket SLA has breached
    - Assignee is null
    - Time since update is 1 hour

    Action
    - move ticket to next group

    Then so on up the chain of groups.

    Sometimes, when a ticket moves from one group to another, there can be delays if an agent becomes available in the previous group. This is because the ticket has to go through the other groups before it can loop back to the first one. Therefore, I suggest that Omnichannel routing should search for available agents in other groups when one group reaches capacity.


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