Setting up service departments

Setting up service departments

Assign your agents to departments based on the types of questions you commonly receive from customers. For example, you might have a department dedicated to helping with Shipping and Returns questions.

You can set departments to appear on your chat widget. When customers initiate a chat, they can choose the department most relevant to their question and be routed to an agent from that department.

This ensures your customers are connected with the most knowledgeable support straight away.


Creating a new department

Once you've created a channel, you can set up departments for it.
  1. Visit Settings > Service Departments and click Add Department.
  2. Enter a Department name that is clear and customer-friendly.
  3. Set Department hours. By default, its hours will be set to match your general chat service hours. To set custom hours:
    1. Uncheck the box next to Same as chat service hours.
    2. For each day of the week, set the department's opening and closing times. Uncheck any days that the department is offline.

    3. Click Save. In your list of departments, this department will now show Custom hours under the Department hours column.
  4. Under Department members, add at least one agent to your department by searching for his or her name. Note that you can only add agents who have access to live chat. Agents can work in multiple departments.
  5. Click Save.
If a customer starts a chat outside a department's operating hours, he or she will not see or be able to select that department.

Editing department settings

In Settings > Service Departments, you'll see a list of all your current departments. Click any department to edit its name, hours, or team composition.

Managing an agent's assigned departments

Agents can work in more than one department. View a specific agent's profile and add or remove departments from their workload.

  1. Go to Settings > Users and click the name of the agent you want to manage. A page will open with the user's permissions and details. 
  2. Under Service departments, select the departments you would like this agent to participate in. Click Save.



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