Departments, triggers and operating hours in live chat

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Departments, triggers and operating hours are chat's own versions of routing, automation and business hours.

Departments

Chat's routing unit, separate from Support groups. A visitor is directed to a department, and agents belong to one or more.

  1. Create departments in the chat settings.
  2. Assign agents.
  3. Optionally offer the choice on the pre-chat form.

Keep the number small. A visitor choosing between six departments is being asked to triage their own question.

Chat triggers

Separate again from ticket triggers and from messaging triggers. They act on what a visitor is doing: time on a page, which page, whether they have chatted before.

Used mainly for proactive invitations. The same caution applies as anywhere: specific and occasional beats general and constant.

Operating hours

Chat has its own, set per department. So one department can be available while another is not, which is useful and easy to get out of step with your Support schedule.

Where both exist, check they agree. Two sets of hours that disagree produce a customer told two different things on one site.

Three separate systems

Worth saying plainly: chat departments are not Support groups, chat triggers are not ticket triggers, and chat hours are not your Support schedule. Anything you configure in one has no effect in the others.

That duplication is one of the practical reasons teams consolidate onto messaging.

See also

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