What omnichannel routing is and what it replaces

Plan requirement

Subscription Suite Growth or higher, Support Professional or higher
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Omnichannel routing hands work to agents rather than letting them pick, across email, messaging and calls in one system.

What it replaces

Without it, agents work from views: they look at a list and choose. That is fine for a small team and produces two problems at scale. The easy tickets get taken first, and nobody can tell who is actually busy.

With it, Zendesk assigns work based on who is available, what they can handle, and how much they already have.

The pieces

  • Queues. Which tickets are waiting and in what order.
  • Capacity rules. How much each agent can hold at once, per channel.
  • Agent statuses. Whether someone is available, and for what.
  • Skills, optionally, so work goes to someone who can do it.

All four work together. Turning routing on without setting capacity gives you assignment without any sense of load.

Why omnichannel

It considers email, messaging and calls together. An agent on a call is not also handed three chats, which is what happens when each channel routes independently.

When it is worth it

Once you have more than a handful of agents, or more than one live channel. Below that, views work and routing is configuration you have to maintain for no gain.

The clearest signal is agents cherry-picking, or a queue where the oldest tickets keep getting older while new ones are answered.

See also

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