Departments

Deliver the conversations to the right operators faster by enabling the Departments in your Tidio panel. 

In this article, you'll learn:

• What are the benefits of adding the Departments
• How to add operators to the departments
• How to assign chats to the right operators (using Pre-Chat Survey)
• How to assign chats to departments via chatbots
• How to reassign conversation to departments

Benefits

Save operators' time

Answer your customers quicker by focusing only on the relevant chats. No more chats' reassigning. 

Relevant conversations only

No more unnecessary interruptions during your work. Let your visitors find the right operator and enjoy less notifications and fewer chats. 

Keep your inbox organized

See only the chats from the scope of your expertise. Let other departments handle the rest of the conversations.

Add Departments

To start using Departments, go to Settings > General > Team > Departments section, where you can group your operators into specific departments.   

Click on Add new department, set the department's name and operators who will operate in it. You can assign as many operators to the department as your business needs (one operator can be added to multiple departments). 

Save the settings. 

Great! A new department was successfully added.

You can come back to this view and edit added departments anytime. To edit - click on the edit button on the right. You'll be able to add operators and change the department's name. To delete the department - click on the trash bin icon.

There is no limit on how many departments your project can have.

All unassigned chats from the deleted department will be automatically transferred to the General Department. All the open conversations will show the old (deleted) department name. No chats are deleted during this process. 

When all operators assigned to a department are deactivated - the department will not be shown to the visitors and in the Routing Rules settings. 

Notifications

If your Tidio project has enabled departments, you will be notified only about the conversations from the department to which you are assigned. You'll receive push-up notifications from the Tidio panel and offline email notifications. 

Please keep in mind that if your email address is added manually in the Forward email notifications section - you will also receive offline email notifications about all conversations from all departments.

Assign the conversations to departments

Via Pre-Chat Survey & Routing Rules 

The purpose of Routing Rules is to give visitors an option to choose the department they want to reach.

To set the Routing Rules for departments, head to Settings > Channels > Appearance > Routing Rules for Departments. 

Enable the Display on the Pre-Chat Survey toggle.  

In the Routing Rules settings, you can set a Survey Field - a text that appears for your website visitors before clicking on the drop-down menu with the available departments. If not changed - your website visitors will see the "Select Department" text by default. 

In the next step, you'll set Routing Rules for the chosen departments. That's also a space where you can specify how you would like to name specific departments. 

The displayed text is the department's name your visitors will see in the Pre-Chat Survey. If the displayed text field is empty - your visitors will see the name you set in your department's settings, 

This section allows you to be creative. You can also use the displayed text space to create an alternative text (alias) and enter a topic for the conversation. For example, you can set the displayed text as Pricing Questions, but the actual department the message will go to will be the Sales department. 

By clicking on the Add new routing rules, you will be able to add more routings to the departments. You can add more than just one routing to the same department. 

You can also click on the Go to departments' settings to edit or delete the departments. In that section, you can also add or remove the operators. 

Make sure to save the settings after each change. 

Now, you'll see the chats and get notified only from the departments you are assigned to. You'll see a label under each incoming chat conversation with the department name on it. 

Automatic via the chatbot

If you feel like your visitors can use a help of a human operator - you can also assign your visitors' conversations with the bot to specific departments by using the Reassign to a Department node inside your chatbot.  Your visitors can still continue with the chatbot, but the operator will be notified and can join the conversation. 

The Reassign to a Department node allows you to specify the department to which the chat will be transferred to continue the conversation with an operator. 

Inside the node, you can select an already existing department or add a completely new department. 

Let’s see how it works on an example. 

Example

Imagine a user coming to your website with a particular goal in mind. You can let the visitors choose a topic they would like to discuss by using one of the decision nodes, and thanks to the Reassign to a Department node, it will be transferred to the correct department with the operators knowledgeable in the chosen subject. 

Take a look at how the bot presents in our Visual Chatbot Editor: 

Reassigning conversations to Departments

Manually from the Conversation section

As an operator, you can reassign your chats, emails, Instagram & messenger conversations to another department similarly as you would reassign a chat to a different operator. 

To reassign the conversation to another department, click on the three dots menu in the upper right corner of the conversation panel and select reassign. 

You’ll see a new window where you can select the department to which the conversation should be transferred. 

Conversation transferred to a chosen department will be displayed as unassigned. Only operators from that specific department will see the conversation and will be able to assign it to themselves.