Configuring the chat session settings for support agents

As an administrator, you can configure chat session settings for support agents. With this, the support agents can automatically accept the chats, set the status to offline, available, or unavailable, and transfer time out.

Alternatively, you can enable the system configuration settings to override the agent chat auto-assign settings. You can also configure an alert banner that is displayed to agents when they leave the chat session inactive. 

Important

  • In Live Chat, Support Agent Console in BMC Remedy Mid-Tier is replaced by Live Chat in Smart IT.
  • These configuration settings apply to Live Chat in Smart IT.

Related topics

 To configure the chat session settings for support agents

Configuring these settings will enable support agents to set their status and automatically accept the chats.

  1. On the IT Home page, in the Applications tab, select Live Chat > Administration Console.
  2. Select General Settings > Support Agent Console. 
  3. In the Other Settings section, select the checkbox corresponding to the chat setting you want to enable. 
  4. Click Apply. 

The following image is an example of the chat session settings:

Configure chat session settings.png


The following table describes the fields in the chat session settings that you can configure for support agents:

Setting

Description

Agent Auto Accept

Important: For the chats to be automatically assigned to agents, you must enable the Agent Auto Accept setting.

You can enable the Agent Auto Accept setting to help reduce the users' wait times. This setting controls whether chat requests from self-service users are automatically assigned to support agents.

  • Enabled—Chat requests are automatically assigned to an available agent as defined in the support queues. If no support queues are defined, chats are routed randomly to different agents based on availability.
  • Disabled—Chat requests are not automatically assigned. Agents must manually select a chat from the session queue in the Support Agent Console.

To learn more about the chat auto-assignment, see Automatic-assignment-of-incoming-chats.

Set Agent Unavailable on Close

You can enable this setting to set the agent's chat session status to Offline when the agent selects Close. This setting allows the agent time to complete the incident request ticket after a chat session closes.

If an agent has multiple sessions, only the session in which the agent clicked Close is marked as Offline. After the status is set to Offline, the agent cannot be assigned new chats. However, the agent can open and continue working on already assigned chats.

After completing work on all the assigned chats, the agent can change the status to Available.

Note: Clicking Leave, Transfer, or Abandon does not set the status to Offline.

Set Agent Unavailable on Start

You can enable this setting to let the agents manually set the status to Available to receive new chat requests on logging in or closing an existing chat session.

With this setting, when the agent logs in, the status appears unavailable, and the agent is not immediately presented with the next chat request. 

This allows the agent to complete any follow-up work to the chat session. After completing the work, the agent can manually set the status to Available in the chat session, indicating that the next chat request can be assigned.

List Check Frequency

Sets how often the Support Agent Console checks for updates to the chat session queue.

Time format

Specifies the format of the queue wait timer as one of the following values:

  • Relative—For example, 10 minutes in queue.
  • Absolute—For example, 10:00

Default value: Displayed blank, which is equivalent to Relative.

To enable the system configuration settings to override the agent settings

Enabling these settings will let administrators override the support agent's settings.

  1. On the IT Home page, in the Applications tab, select Live Chat > Administration Console.
  2. Select Self Service Portal > Configuration > System Configuration.

  3. In the Configuration box, enable the following settings:

    Field

    Description

    Value

    <adminOverrideAvailableFor>true</adminOverrideAvailableFor>

    This enables supervisors to override the maximum chat assignment for the agents.

    When set to 'true', support agents cannot set the number of maximum chats by themselves; only supervisors can change the number of maximum chats to be assigned to an agent.  Administrators can change this setting from the Monitoring Dashboard.


    Important: To leverage this capability, the Agent Auto Accept setting in the Support Agent Console must be enabled.

    Default Value-  False 

    <autoAssignReleaseThreshold>-1</autoAssignReleaseThreshold>

    This enables supervisors to set the maximum wait time for the auto-assigned chats to get the answer from the support agent.

    Setting this value will release the unanswered auto-assigned chats to the queue on reaching the threshold value. After releasing these chats to the queue can be re-assigned to the available support agent.

    Default Value- -1

    This means the chats will not be released by the system automatically.

  4. Click Save in the System Configuration window and then Apply in the Administration console.

The following image is an example of the system configuration settings:

system_config_settings.png


 

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