Guided Mode improvements
Introduction
We're using Guided Mode quite extensively. All of our regular (customer service) agents are on Guided Mode, with the exception of supervisors, trainers/coaches and back office employees.
The idea of Guided Mode is great and the basics are there, but I think it needs to become more mature. I was hoping it would be actively developed, but since it's release nothing has changed much (besides being renamed from Play Only to Guided Mode).
We're at the point that we're going to reconsider if we're going to stick with Guided Mode, or switch back to an assignment algorithm on the API. My preference is native functionality over custom made logic.
This feedback is basically a repetition of some of the beta feedback and what has been posted in the announcement thread.
Feedback
Your assigned tickets view
Currently you're unable to edit the 'your assigned tickets' view. There is no grouping of tickets, you cannot alter the ordering of tickets. This makes it hard for our agents to get an overview, as tickets are all over the place. Grouping on the status of the ticket would already make this more clear.
Ability to create more regular views
Right now Guided Mode agents have only one 'hardcoded' view, all other views are considered to be playlists. It would be great if a view could be set as regular view (or the other way around and be set as playlist).
Skip reason
Agents can leave the reason blank. We'd like to see this mandatory. Even better would be if an administrator could make a predefined list, where the agent can still choose 'other' and has to fill in an explanation.
API sorting and filtering
We've developed an app to give our supervisors more insights about the skipping behavior. It also gives them the ability to see the skips from a ticket perspective, instead of the user perspective. I've intentions to release this app on the marketplace, but currently it's technically highly inefficient.
The reason is that the endpoint returns all skips in seemingly random order. When your account has thousands of skips, it will take quite some time to acquire or refresh the data. We work with a 15 minute cache now, but it's still quite unacceptable. This is also hammering the API for no good reason.
It would be great if /api/v2/skips.json could be ordered, or at least be ordered descending on created_at by default. This would make paginating and retrieving the latest skips much easier.
Also the ability to filter on a specific ticket or a ticket endpoint would be great. Currently there's only the agent point of view:
/api/v2/users/{user_id}/skips.json.
I'd love to see something like:
/api/v2/tickets/{ticket_id}/skips.json.
Automatic assignment
Agents can be very creative in their cherry picking methods. Currently they can just close the ticket, start the playlist again, and with a little bit of luck your fellow coworker is working on that ticket you've just skipped.
So we've got an app that 'virtually assigns' the ticket to the agent. It helps a little bit, but still it would be better if the ticket is really assigned to the agent and only falls back to the group once it has been skipped.
One playlist vs. multiple
This might be specific to our use case, so I saved it for last.
Multiple playlists don't prevent cherry picking for us. We want our agents to work from one playlist and one playlist only. This is resulting in quite some challenges when it comes to the view's conditions. As you can have multiple AND condition, but just one set of OR conditions.
It would be great if multiple views could be combined in one playlist. Or that views can have a more advanced set of conditions, like:
A should be true AND B should be true AND ((C should be true AND D should be true) OR (E should be true AND F should be true))
Conclusion
It would be great to hear if Guided Mode will be improved in the near future, and what the road map would roughly be. It has much potential, but also many shortcomings in it's current state.
With kind regards,
Sebastiaan
--- 2018 update ---
Most of the feedback hasn't been implemented, but two things that can make your life easier:
Skipper - A Zendesk app I've made to give more insights in your agent's skipping behaviour.
Playlist - An alternative to Guided Mode, posted by Au Finh in this thread. Don't have experience with it, but thought it was fair to mention.
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We are using Zendesk with views at the moment but are in the process of moving a bigger team working with one of our brands over to Zendesk. In their current support system they have a button that the agent press to get a number of random tickets assigned to them. They can't chose them in any way. We would like to implement something similar, but have decided to try guided mode first. But we too see issues with it. Like the mentioned way to avoid a ticket by closing an start over.
Also, some view doesn't make sense to have guided, an option to set if a view should be view or guided mode would be great.
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We are nearly ready to implement guided mode, however we have a high volume of duplicate tickets that should be merged. Since our agents will be assigned tickets upon login, there isn't an opportunity for them to triage and merge tickets. So far, we've determined that an admin can attempt to triage but timing could be an issue.
Has anyone else encountered this issue and what are your workarounds or solutions?
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Hi @sebastiaan! First of all, thank you for this, and thanks to @linda and @michelle for your follow-ups.
We don't have Guided Mode improvements per se on the roadmap right now, but we are starting a problem-focused research effort focused on how tickets get assigned. We're looking at Guided Mode as part of that.
If anyone reading this would be interested in participating in our research, I've got a sign-up link where you can provide contact details.
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Thanks Kristen, I've signed up!
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I see that there's a ticket perspective endpoint now:
https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/ticket_skips#list-skips-for-the-current-accountWould have been nice if that was mentioned somewhere (or I just missed it).
Any info on sorting the /api/v2/skips.json endpoint? Would be great if it was sorted by created_at in descending order by default, or at least not in some random order (if that's still the case).
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+1 for:
Your assigned tickets view
Currently you're unable to edit the 'your assigned tickets' view. There is no grouping of tickets, you cannot alter the ordering of tickets. This makes it hard for our agents to get an overview, as tickets are all over the place. Grouping on the status of the ticket would already make this more clear.
Ability to create more regular views
Right now Guided Mode agents have only one 'hardcoded' view, all other views are considered to be playlists. It would be great if a view could be set as regular view (or the other way around and be set as playlist).
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+1 for
Automatic assignment
Agents can be very creative in their cherry picking methods. Currently they can just close the ticket, start the playlist again, and with a little bit of luck your fellow coworker is working on that ticket you've just skipped.
So we've got an app that 'virtually assigns' the ticket to the agent. It helps a little bit, but still it would be better if the ticket is really assigned to the agent and only falls back to the group once it has been skipped.
Hey Sebastian, I have a question, we do have an app that virtually assigned the ticket to the agent upon open, but we had to disable it due to it causing collisions with agents handling the ticket. Have you encountered this type of issue in your app?
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Hello Ramon,
Short answer is no. We didn't experience this, or my agents never complained to me about this ;)
All my (support) agents are in Guided Mode, and work from the same playlist. So collisions shouldn't occur. When an agent presses F5 and has a ticket open, collisions can still happen.
The app I use is pretty simple, but it's ZAFv1, so it can't be used for new uploads.
(function() { return { events: { 'app.activated' :'assignTicket' }, assignTicket: function() { if (!this.ticket().assignee().user()) { this.ticket().assignee({ groupId: this.ticket().assignee().group().id(), userId: this.currentUser().id() }); } } }; }());Should be quite easy to rewrite to ZAFv2, although I'm afraid the performance will be less. As you need to retrieve the 'ticket' and 'currentUser' data through 'promises'.
With kind regards,
Sebastiaan
P.S.
For people interested in the 'Skipped Tickets App' I was refering to about a year ago; it will hit the marketplace within the coming weeks (named Skipper). It's currently in Zendesk's approval process. It won't be a free app, like most of my others, it will come for a fixed price per account per month.
Here are some screenshots:
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Hey Sebastian,
Cheers for the info. However, looking at it, agents can still just close the tab and since they don't click submit the assignee change the app does will not persist right?
Good job on the skipped tickets app btw.
Best,
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Hello Ramon,
That's correct, they do get the popup that the ticket has unsaved changed though.
We call it 'virtual assignment', we've tried real assignment with an app, but ran into trouble. When the agent skips the ticket, there's no event an app can hook on to. So when the ticket is skipped, it's still assigned to the skipping agent. Preventing it to be offered to another agent working in the same playlist.
So that's basically the reason for my suggestion about automatic assignment. When Zendesk would assign the ticket to the agent and only release it when the agent skips the ticket (with manditory reason), it would prevent these scenarios of cherry picking.
With kind regards,
Sebastiaan
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Yeah that makes sense and it is the exact same issue we are having ourselves. Let's hope this is included in the roadmap.
Cheers!
Ramon
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very good request. We have also big problem that agents found many workarounds for cheery picking. They use Search filter tickets by unassigned and group, or also if you select one of fields it's already possible go to the next ticket and it wont be counted as skipped. It's possible to turn off window and turn it on after someone takes the old ticket. I think the best way is assign tickets automatically and in any way agent leaves the window it has to be counted as Skipped. Also so weird that it's not possible to pull report for skipped tickets. It's so simple to add one TAG and it would be enough for everything.
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@Sebastiaan, how it's called the app that makes virtual assignment?
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Hello Mindaugas,
I've missed your question, that one isn't available on the marketplace, but I can share it with you. Drop me a message at sebastiaan@codecairn.com!
With kind regards,
Sebastiaan
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A general remark; I'm also getting some questions lately about the Skipper app. As the last time I've mentioned it, it wasn't available on the marketplace yet. It's available on the marketplace for some time now, with a 10 day free trial:
https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/skipper/ -
I’m very excited to let you all know that the Playlist Ticket Assignment is now published on the Zendesk App Marketplace! First of all, I’d like to thank everyone that’s contributed to this thread. Much of the app was inspired by your feedback, so it wouldn’t have been possible without your input.
Playlist Automated Ticket Assignment
If ticket assignment is still a pain point for your organization, I recommend checking out Playlist Ticket Assignment at https://myplaylist.io
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This thread is getting older, so I thought I repeat the three most important issues for us:
Your assigned tickets view
Currently you're unable to edit the 'your assigned tickets' view. There is no grouping of tickets, you cannot alter the ordering of tickets. This makes it hard for our agents to get an overview, as tickets are all over the place. Grouping on the status of the ticket would already make this more clear.
Ability to create more regular views
Right now Guided Mode agents have only one 'hardcoded' view, all other views are considered to be playlists. It would be great if a view could be set as regular view (or the other way around and be set as playlist).
Skip reason
Agents can leave the reason blank. We'd like to see this mandatory. Even better would be if an administrator could make a predefined list, where the agent can still choose 'other' and has to fill in an explanation.
There's also the desire that people that use Play Mode (so not Guided Mode), will have their skips registered and can provide a reason. Currently only skips from people on Guided Mode are registed, but from Play Mode it isn't.
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Our round robin option is now officially live! In addition to the Playlist button, you'll now be able to set up rules to push tickets to agents in round robin fashion.
Check out the demo.
Features
- Runs every 2 minutes
- Use a classic, round robin model or route tickets to least loaded agents first
- Use existing views to set up queues
- Drag and drop to change priority of queues
- Agents can set their status to Online, Away, or Invisible
- Managers can manage agent statuses under the Team tab
- Set an inbox limit to control how many tickets agents can work on at a time
This has got to be the easiest solution for evenly distributing tickets to agents in Zendesk.
Try it for free: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/playlist-ticket-assignment
Por favor, entrar para comentar.
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