How does Routing / Assign work?
Routing (also called Assign) can be used to assign operators to be notified for incoming messages. This helps websites with a lot of chats to balance them inside your team inbox.
The Routing feature is available in Crisp Unlimited.
Some people call our Routing feature "Assign". We will refer to "Assign" as "Routing" in this article. This feature is even more powerful if you bring everyone around crisp team inbox so you can route conversations towards the right department.
Routing works on the conversation level. In the Crisp Inbox, a conversation can be unassigned or assigned. The assignment status of a conversation affects how operators are notified of incoming messages in that conversation.
The operators need to enter assign mode in their Crisp Inbox, so that they see the conversations they are assigned for. They also will only get notified of new messages in the conversations they are assigned to. This allows your support to scale as your conversation volume grows, by performing a Round-Robin between your operators (see the automatic assign feature below).
Operators can also leave the routing mode anytime, and see all conversations (even those for which another operator is assigned). Crisp will remember the routing mode settings so that it is recovered when the operator reloads or open the Crisp Dashboard.
When a conversation is assigned, email and mobile (push) notifications will be only sent to the assigned operator for routed conversations. Conversations with no assigned operator will get notifications sent to the whole team.
Routing mode can be entered by hovering the routing icon with your mouse, and selecting "Assigned to me", as shown in the image below. You can find this icon in your Crisp Inbox, in the bottom left corner.
The routing mode can be left anytime by toggling back to "All conversations".
By default, no automatic routing is performed (we'll get to it below). You can still manually assign an operator to a conversation.
Simply go to the conversation, and in the user information right bar, click on "Assign" and pick the target operator.
Conversations can also be automatically assigned, based on custom rules. It is for instance possible to assign based on Customer Data, Segments, Language, Location. Multiple rules can be created allowing you to assign messages across different teams.
There are two kind of conditions:
- Simple Condition: Distributes load across different members
- Advanced Condition: Distributes load across different members matching a condition
You can create your Routing rules in the Routing settings for your website:
Go to your Crisp Dashboard
Go to Settings, then Websites, then select your website
Scroll down to Message routing rules
Click on Routing rules
Click on Add a routing rule
Make sure the "Auto-assign conversations according to configured rules" option is enabled in the General routing settings. It must be active for your rules to be used.
The automated routing system allows to create advanced combinations. Here is how it works:
The system checks rules one by one
It picks only online agents
It checks rules from the top to bottom.
If the current rule has online agents, it picks an online agents randomly.
If none of the agents are online it goes to the next rule and then goes back to step 4.
Here are a few examples of possible rules:
- Rule 1: Advanced Condition. Check "vip" segment: Two agents are selected
- Rule 2: Advanced Condition. Check "billing" segment: One agent is selected
- Rule 3: Advanced Condition. Check "german" language: Two agents are selected
- Rule 4: Simple Condition. Four agents are selected
In the case above:
- If a customer has the tag vip, then the first rule will match. If one of the two agents are online, then of of them will be selected.
- Otherwise, it will check rule 2, 3, 4. If the customer is not having billing segment and not speaking german, then it will go to Rule 4, and it will fallback to the 4 selected agents.
Routing rules can be combined with the Crisp Chatbot. It is for instance possible to create messaging scenarios or advanced conditions : How to create a department routing Chatbot?
General routing settings lets you adjust the way Routing behaves on your website:
If you want to enable auto-assigning and use your configured rules, enable the "Auto-assign conversations according to configured rules" option. You can disable it to temporarily disable automatic assigning.
If an operator was assigned a few days ago to a conversation, and no activity occurred in that conversation since, the conversation can automatically be re-assigned to another operator. The option to enable this is available in your General routing settings (see image below). Of course, if an operator was removed from the website team, the conversation will be assigned to another operator of the team once a new message is received.
if an operator was assigned but was offline You can now choose to re-assign automatically the conversation to another agent that is online and available to answer customers.
The Routing feature is available in Crisp Unlimited.
Some people call our Routing feature "Assign". We will refer to "Assign" as "Routing" in this article. This feature is even more powerful if you bring everyone around crisp team inbox so you can route conversations towards the right department.
How does Assignment work?
Routing works on the conversation level. In the Crisp Inbox, a conversation can be unassigned or assigned. The assignment status of a conversation affects how operators are notified of incoming messages in that conversation.
The operators need to enter assign mode in their Crisp Inbox, so that they see the conversations they are assigned for. They also will only get notified of new messages in the conversations they are assigned to. This allows your support to scale as your conversation volume grows, by performing a Round-Robin between your operators (see the automatic assign feature below).
Operators can also leave the routing mode anytime, and see all conversations (even those for which another operator is assigned). Crisp will remember the routing mode settings so that it is recovered when the operator reloads or open the Crisp Dashboard.
When a conversation is assigned, email and mobile (push) notifications will be only sent to the assigned operator for routed conversations. Conversations with no assigned operator will get notifications sent to the whole team.
How can an operator view only its own conversations ?
Routing mode can be entered by hovering the routing icon with your mouse, and selecting "Assigned to me", as shown in the image below. You can find this icon in your Crisp Inbox, in the bottom left corner.
The routing mode can be left anytime by toggling back to "All conversations".
How to manually assign a conversation?
By default, no automatic routing is performed (we'll get to it below). You can still manually assign an operator to a conversation.
Simply go to the conversation, and in the user information right bar, click on "Assign" and pick the target operator.
How to automatically assign a conversation?
Conversations can also be automatically assigned, based on custom rules. It is for instance possible to assign based on Customer Data, Segments, Language, Location. Multiple rules can be created allowing you to assign messages across different teams.
There are two kind of conditions:
- Simple Condition: Distributes load across different members
- Advanced Condition: Distributes load across different members matching a condition
You can create your Routing rules in the Routing settings for your website:
Go to your Crisp Dashboard
Go to Settings, then Websites, then select your website
Scroll down to Message routing rules
Click on Routing rules
Click on Add a routing rule
Make sure the "Auto-assign conversations according to configured rules" option is enabled in the General routing settings. It must be active for your rules to be used.
Routing under the hood:
The automated routing system allows to create advanced combinations. Here is how it works:
The system checks rules one by one
It picks only online agents
It checks rules from the top to bottom.
If the current rule has online agents, it picks an online agents randomly.
If none of the agents are online it goes to the next rule and then goes back to step 4.
Here are a few examples of possible rules:
- Rule 1: Advanced Condition. Check "vip" segment: Two agents are selected
- Rule 2: Advanced Condition. Check "billing" segment: One agent is selected
- Rule 3: Advanced Condition. Check "german" language: Two agents are selected
- Rule 4: Simple Condition. Four agents are selected
In the case above:
- If a customer has the tag vip, then the first rule will match. If one of the two agents are online, then of of them will be selected.
- Otherwise, it will check rule 2, 3, 4. If the customer is not having billing segment and not speaking german, then it will go to Rule 4, and it will fallback to the 4 selected agents.
Routing rules can be combined with the Crisp Chatbot. It is for instance possible to create messaging scenarios or advanced conditions : How to create a department routing Chatbot?
How to configure general Routing settings?
General routing settings lets you adjust the way Routing behaves on your website:
If you want to enable auto-assigning and use your configured rules, enable the "Auto-assign conversations according to configured rules" option. You can disable it to temporarily disable automatic assigning.
If an operator was assigned a few days ago to a conversation, and no activity occurred in that conversation since, the conversation can automatically be re-assigned to another operator. The option to enable this is available in your General routing settings (see image below). Of course, if an operator was removed from the website team, the conversation will be assigned to another operator of the team once a new message is received.
if an operator was assigned but was offline You can now choose to re-assign automatically the conversation to another agent that is online and available to answer customers.
Updated on: 06/03/2024
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