Chat allocation

If it seems that chats are allocated unevenly or a wrong agent is offered a chat, possible explanations may be:

• Agent has changed their status to an absence profile or is not ready.

• Agent is not serving in the queue.

• Agent has different levels of skills defined.

  Example:

  • Agent A has a skill level of 2, Agent B a skill level 5, and a skill requirement is 4. Agent B will always be allocated chats first until the maximum number of chats is reached because of the higher skill level.
  • Agent A is serving in a queue that has a skill requirement 4, and skill reduction is used. Agent A will not be allocated a chat until the skill requirement is reduced to 2.

• The system has the setting Busy during wrap-up enabled, and agent hasn't ended the wrap-up. Staying longer in wrap-up will delay the time for the next conversation if the maximum number of simultaneous chats is reached.

• Agent has a different value in the Maximum number of chat sessions setting.

• Agent has handled a chat. This resets the waiting time. Other actions that do this are:

  • outgoing call ends
  • outgoing social chat ends
  • incoming conversation is handled
  • incoming conversation is rejected

  The time an agent logs out of Communication Panel (CP) is used to calculate the first waiting time of the day. The example below shows how this may affect allocation.

  Example:

  Agent A with low skill levels has logged out of CP at noon and logs in the next morning at nine. Agent B with higher skill levels has logged out at five and logs in the next morning at nine. Although Agent B is available, Agent A is allocated the conversation. This happens because Agent A has a longer waiting time.

• Agent rejects the offered chat either by:

  • not accepting within offering time
  • clicking Decline
  • changing status to Not ready
  • changing profile to absence profile
  • leaving the queue

• The system has preferred/required agent feature in use.

• The system has conflicting settings that cancel each other out. For example, if you use skills and you change the weight value setting Importance of Contact Waiting Time to 20, the importance of the conversation's waiting time increases so much that skills are practically ignored. So when you define settings affecting allocation, make sure you understand what effects they have.