Manage live conversations with customers
π£ Open Beta β Premium and Enterprise. Live chat with a human agent (including AI-to-human handoff) is in Open Beta. It's available to Premium and Enterprise tenants and is on by default for any new space, in both existing and new sites. Existing spaces stay off; an admin can turn it on at the space level.
This article explains what support agents do when a live chat conversation comes in. It covers setting your availability, accepting a conversation, talking with the customer, ending the conversation, and resolving the work item.
For an overview of how chat works in Customer Service Management, see About chat in Customer Service Management. For space-level setup, see Set up chat for your support team.
Before you start
Your admin has turned on chat in your space (see Set up chat for your support team).
You have the agent role in your space.
You're working from a desktop browser (chat for agents isn't supported on mobile in Open Beta).
Set your availability
Conversations can only be routed to you when your availability is set to Available. There are two states:
Available β new conversations are offered to you, up to your conversation limit.
Unavailable β new conversations skip you. Conversations you're already in stay active.
Change your availability at any time from the conversation panel. You can set your availability for an individual space or for all the spaces you work in.
β± If you don't accept or decline an offered conversation within 120 seconds, your availability is set to Unavailable. To start receiving conversations again, set your availability back to Available.
Accept or decline a conversation
When a customer starts a chat or hands off from the AI agent, the conversation is offered to available agents in the space in a round-robin pattern, up to each agent's conversation limit.
When a conversation is offered to you:
Choose Accept to take the conversation, or Decline to pass it on. You have 120 seconds to accept or decline.
If you decline, the conversation is offered to another available agent.
If you don't accept or decline within 120 seconds, your availability is set to Unavailable and the conversation is offered to another available agent.
If you're the only available agent and you decline, the conversation is offered back to you, because there's no one else available to take it.
Once you accept:
You're set as the assignee on the conversation work item.
The work item moves from Waiting for agent to Active.
One of your conversation slots is filled, which the routing system takes into account when offering you more conversations.
If the customer was handed off from the AI agent, the full transcript is visible to you.
π If no agent accepts within 20 minutes, the customer sees your fallback message and the conversation ends. See Set up your chat experience for the fallback message setting.
The conversation work item lifecycle
Every live chat conversation has a matching work item in your space. The work item moves through these statuses:
Status | What it means | Who moves it |
Waiting for agent | Conversation has started; no agent has accepted yet. | Set automatically when the conversation starts. |
Active | An agent has accepted. The customer and agent are talking. Messages, internal notes, and follow-up actions can be added. | Moves automatically when an agent accepts. |
Wrapping up | The customer-facing conversation has ended. The agent can still add internal notes and create follow-up work before resolving the work item. | The agent ends the conversation by choosing End conversation. |
Closed | The work item is finalised with a resolution. The conversation slot is released so the agent can take new conversations. | The agent resolves the work item and chooses a resolution. |
Talk with the customer
While the conversation is Active, you can:
Send messages to the customer through the conversation panel.
Add internal notes visible only to your team.
See typing indicators from the customer.
End and resolve a conversation
When the conversation is finished:
Choose End conversation to end the customer-facing conversation and move the work item to Wrapping up. The customer knows the conversation is over and isn't left waiting.
While the work item is in Wrapping up, add any final internal notes or create follow-up work as needed.
Resolve the work item and select the Closed status. This finalises the conversation work item and releases your conversation slot so you can take new conversations.
If any agent accepts the conversation before the chat ends, then upon ending it will transition to wrapping up so that the agent will have time to do final notes. If no agent accepts the conversation before the chat ends then it will jump straight to closed.
A conversation ends automatically if neither participant sends a message for 20 minutes. Both you and the customer are notified the conversation is inactive, and if there's still no activity it ends 10 minutes later. A conversation also ends automatically after a maximum of 24 hours, even if it's still active. After a conversation ends, the work item remains available for you to finish and resolve.
Be careful when changing workflows, statuses, or resolutions. They're configurable, but they're shared, global configuration. Changing them can have unintended side effects across other work item types and spaces, so change them only with careful consideration.
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