The Settings section found under Configuration > Chat > Settings lets you define how the chats will behave in the application. Only admins have access to this section.
Chat routing - to ensure fast and accurate communication, LiveAgent assigns chats to agents who've had previous communication with chatting customers. Besides random assignment, there are also 3 other options for advanced chat routing:
- Random Assignment - new chats will be assigned randomly to one of the agents available for chat. This strategy helps you to assign in the long term about the same amount of chats to each of your agents.
- Average Utilization - new chats will be assigned to the agent with the lowest number of running chats to keep the same utilization of all available agents. This strategy helps you to load-balance the number of concurrent chats between all available agents.
- Max Utilization - new chats will be assigned to an agent with the highest number of running chats to keep utilization at maximum. Once the agent has no free chat slots, a new chat will be routed to the next available agent. This strategy helps you to maximize load for chatting agents and let other agents work on offline tickets.
- Ring-to-all - new chat will ring to all agents available for chat until one of them will answer it.
- Priorities - new chat will be assigned to an online agent with free chat slots and with the highest priority (lowest number).
Routing time defines after how many seconds of ringing the chat should start ringing to a different agent. The default setting is 30 seconds so if agent A doesn't pick up the chat in 30 seconds and there is agent B available the chat gets routed to agent B while agent A will have 1 missed chat counted in his report.
Inactivity time defines the number of minutes after which chat will be recognized as inactive and slot will be released for the next chat. (Inactive chats remain open till agent end them manually)
Breathing time is time-out in seconds (0 - 600). Temporary sets agent to 'Breathing Out' status after finishing a chat so the chat slot remains occupied and the next chat won't start ringing for the time being. IMPORTANT NOTE: breathing out time is applied only on chats that were assigned to the agent during the chat. The agent can assign the chat to himself/herself using the "Assign to me" button or an admin can set up an automated rule that every time an agent picks up a chat it will be automatically assigned to them.
Show customer typing text if activated it will enable the agent to see what the customer is typing in real-time before the message is sent.
State after chat ends has two options and selects the state in which a chat ticket is after the chat is ended. The options are Answered and Resolved. This is mostly a cosmetic option, but if you are using "First resolve" SLA you might want to have Answered selected here since the ticket might not be actually resolved after the chat has ended and the agent might need to transfer the ticket to technicians for example. If an agent has assigned the chat to himself/herself during the chat, then the chat ends in Open state.
State of missed chats has two options and selects the state in which a missed chat ticket is created if there is no contact information. The options are New and Deleted. So for example, if a new/unknown customer would start a chat and will not fill in any email address in a pre-chat form and would cancel the chat before being connected with an agent the resulting ticket can be created either in New or Deleted state.