Use Operator Routing to assign conversations to the right teammate and keep ownership clear inside the Crisp Inbox.

Routing helps your team distribute conversations more clearly as support volume grows. You can assign conversations manually, let agents pick unassigned conversations, or use automatic routing rules to send conversations to the right operator based on your setup.

Routing is especially useful when several agents work from the same Inbox and you want every conversation to have a clear owner.

This guide is split into practical sections:

• How assignment works → understand assigned and unassigned conversations
• Choose the right assignment method → decide between manual assignment and automatic routing
• Focus on your own conversations → use the Assigned to me view
• Assign a conversation manually → choose the right teammate yourself
• Set up automatic routing rules → create rules to assign conversations automatically
• How automatic routing chooses an agent → understand rule order and fallback behavior
• Review the general routing settings → control how routing behaves over time
• Assign conversations to offline operators → keep ownership even when agents are offline
• Best practices → build a clean routing setup

How assignment works

Routing works at the conversation level. In practice, a conversation is either assigned or unassigned.

When a conversation is assigned, one operator becomes responsible for the reply. This helps keep ownership clear and avoids notifying the whole team unnecessarily.

When a conversation is unassigned, the broader team can see it and pick it up.

This becomes especially useful when several agents work in the same Inbox and you want to avoid duplicate replies, missed conversations, or unclear ownership.

Choose the right assignment method

You can organize conversation ownership in different ways depending on your support workflow.

Manual assignment is useful when a human decision is needed. Automatic routing is useful when you want Crisp to distribute conversations based on rules.

Focus on your own conversations

Agents can switch the Inbox view to Assigned to me so they only see the conversations that belong to them.

This helps operators focus on their own workload without being distracted by conversations assigned to other teammates.

You can leave that view at any time and switch back to All conversations.

There is also a dedicated Assigned to me inbox in the Crisp sidebar that gathers conversations assigned to you from the main inbox.

Assign a conversation manually

If you do not want to rely on automation for a specific conversation, you can assign it yourself.

To assign a conversation manually:

1. Open the conversation you want to assign.
2. In the right sidebar, use the Conversation Routing option.
3. Select the teammate who should own the conversation.

Manual assignment is useful for handoffs, expertise-based routing, VIP customers, or any case where a human decision is better than an automatic rule.

Set up automatic routing rules

Crisp can also assign conversations automatically based on rules.

Go to Settings → Inbox Settings → Operator Routing to create and manage your routing rules.

You can create rules based on criteria such as custom data, segments, language, or location.

Crisp supports two main rule types:

• Simple condition → distribute load across selected team members
• Advanced condition → distribute load across selected team members only when a condition matches

Crisp lets you add up to 20 conditions per routing rule. Each condition can also contain up to 20 values.

This is useful when you need more precise routing logic, for example if you want to route conversations based on several segments, languages, countries, or custom data values.

For example, you can create routing rules to:

• Assign French-speaking visitors to French-speaking agents
• Assign VIP customers to a specific support team
• Assign technical questions to technical support agents
• Assign conversations based on user segments or custom data

How automatic routing chooses an agent

Routing rules are evaluated in order, from top to bottom.

At a high level, Crisp does the following:

• Checks the first routing rule
• Looks for eligible operators inside that rule
• Picks one of the matching operators
• Falls through to the next rule only if no one eligible is available

That means rule order matters. Put your most specific routing logic first, then keep broader fallback rules lower in the list.

For example:

1. Route VIP customers to the account management team
2. Route French conversations to French-speaking agents
3. Route all remaining conversations to the general support team

This helps Crisp try the most relevant assignment first before using broader fallback rules.

Review the general routing settings

The general routing settings let you decide how assignment behaves over time.

Go to Settings → Inbox Settings → Operator Routing to review these options.

The main settings to review are:

• Enable routing rules → turn your configured routing rules on or off
• Re-run rules 24h after last operator reply → reassign conversations when ownership becomes stale
• Re-run rules if assigned operator is offline → avoid leaving a conversation blocked on an unavailable teammate
• Assign to operators even if they are offline → allow routing rules to assign conversations to offline operators

These settings help you decide whether routing should prioritize immediate availability, long-term ownership, or both.

Assign conversations to offline operators

By default, routing is usually designed to assign conversations to available operators.

You can now enable Assign to operators even if they are offline if you want routing rules to assign conversations to operators even when they are not currently online.

This option is disabled by default.

Go to Settings → Inbox Settings → Operator Routing, then enable Assign to operators even if they are offline.

When this option is enabled, routing rules stop skipping offline operators. This is useful when ownership matters more than immediate availability.

For example, you may want to use it when:

• A customer should always be assigned to their account manager
• A technical topic should always go to a specific expert
• A VIP customer should always be routed to the same teammate
• Your team prefers clear ownership, even if the assigned operator replies later

Best practices

A good routing setup should be simple, predictable, and easy to maintain.

Recommended practices:

• Start with a small number of routing rules
• Put the most specific rules at the top
• Keep broader fallback rules lower in the list
• Use segments and custom data when routing needs more context
• Decide whether availability or ownership matters more for your team
• Test routing behavior with real conversations before adding more rules
• Review routing rules regularly as your team changes

Avoid creating too many overlapping rules. If several rules are too similar, it becomes harder to understand why a conversation was assigned to a specific operator.

If you also use Hugo AI Agent, combine Operator Routing with Hugo Routing to make sure conversations are assigned to the right human when escalation is needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions which were not covered in this article? Here is a collection of the most frequently asked questions on this topic.

Can new conversations from the same customer be forced to go back to the same agent?

No. Routing works at the conversation level, not at the contact level.

If the same visitor starts a brand new conversation, that new conversation can be assigned differently depending on your current routing setup.

Does routing replace sub-inboxes?

No. Routing and sub-inboxes solve related but different problems.

Routing decides who owns the conversation. Sub-inboxes decide where the conversation lives.

Many teams use both together.

What happens if no operator matches a routing rule?

If no eligible operator matches a rule, Crisp can fall through to the next routing rule in the list.

This is why it is useful to keep broader fallback rules lower in your routing setup.

Should I use Operator Routing or Hugo Routing?

Use Operator Routing to assign conversations to human teammates inside the Inbox.

Use Hugo Routing when you want Hugo AI Agent to decide how conversations should be routed or escalated based on AI logic.

Updated on: 07/07/2026