Agents
Understanding agents and knowing how to manage them is essential to using Sendbird Desk efficiently. This guide will equip you with the fundamentals you need to know about agents.
This user guide contains the following information:
- Agent, admin, and bot
- Teams
- Connection statuses
- Agent levels
- Active statuses
Agent, admin, and bot
Agents are largely divided into two categories: live agents and virtual agents. Live agents consist of human agents whose roles are divided into Admin and Agent. Virtual agents is another term used to describe Bots so that they can be distinguished from human agents. The following shows differences between the two live agent roles and a more detailed breakdown of bots.
- Agent: While an agent is an umbrella term used to refer to all types of agents, including admins and bots, non-admin agents who use the agent view of the dashboard are also simply referred to as agents.
- Admin: Admin is an agent who has administrative privileges to manage overall dashboard settings, tickets, and agents and uses the admin view of the dashboard. Admins can have their own tickets and interact with customers as agents can. The shield icon next to the agent name indicates an admin role.
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Bot: Bots are automated agents that handle repetitive tasks and simple inquiries, allowing live agents to address more complex issues. You can create three types of bots on the dashboard. Bots can be identified by the robot icon next to their display name.
- AI chatbot: Sendbird AI chatbot can be connected to Sendbird Desk under Settings > Desk > Bots on our dashboard. To learn more about how to connect an AI chatbot to Desk, see the AI chatbot page.
- Custom bot: Integrate your own chatbot or a third-party bot to Sendbird Desk by registering a webhook URL.
- FAQ bot: Sendbird Desk’s FAQ bot parses through the uploaded CSV file to answer frequently asked questions. To learn how to create an FAQ bot and upload CSV files, see the user guide for FAQ bots.
Teams
Agents can be divided into teams and receive tickets based on their teams. In Settings > Teams, admins can create a team and designate an agent to the team. By default, the newly created agent’s account falls under the Default team.
Agents can belong to more than one team and should belong to at least one team to receive tickets through the auto ticket routing function. If an agent doesn’t belong to any team, they can only receive manually transferred tickets.
Keep in mind that the team of a ticket and that of a ticket’s assignee isn’t always the same. When a ticket is transferred to an agent in a different team, the assignee of the ticket changes but the ticket’s assigned team remains unchanged. To learn more about how to assign tickets to a team, see the Team assignment guide.
Connection statuses
Agents have 3 types of connection status as below:
- Online: Indicates that the agent is connected to Desk and can receive tickets.
- Away: Indicates that the agent is temporarily unavailable for customer support. This status is only applicable to live agents. Bots cannot be Away.
- Offline: Indicates that the agent isn’t connected to Desk. The agent can only receive manually assigned or transferred tickets from other agents. Before setting an agent’s status to Offline, you need to either leave an agent’s active tickets in current teams or transfer them to another team.
Agent levels
There are a total of five levels in the agent leveling system and you can determine the maximum number of tickets an agent can be assigned to based on their level. The order of the levels is as follows, from lowest to highest.
Novice Ⅰ > Novice Ⅱ > Intermediate > Advanced > Expert
Note: Bots don't have levels and newly created agents go under intermediate.
You can level your agents in the Level column on the Agents page. The level of each agent can be found in the Agents list, on an agent’s profile, and during the search process.
Meanwhile, set the maximum number of tickets that agents at each level can receive in the Settings > Automation page. This can optimize the ticket flow and ticket resolution time as you can tap into the different level of expertise and capacity among agents.
You can further categorize your agents and set the maximum number of tickets they can be assigned to based on their level of experience. On top of the existing two levels, which were Intermediate and Expert, three new levels have been introduced to the settings: Novice Ⅰ, Novice Ⅱ, and Advanced.
The basic logic and management of these levels remain the same. You can level your agents in the Level column on the Agents page. Meanwhile, set the maximum number of tickets that agents at each level can receive in the Settings > Automation page. This can optimize the ticket flow and ticket resolution time as you can tap into the different level of expertise and capacity among agents.
Active statuses
Agents have four types of active statuses. The definition of each status is the same for live and virtual agents except Waiting.
- Activated: Indicates that the agent’s account is activated in Desk. Activated agents can receive tickets and chat with customers. This activation is separate from user activation at the application level.
- Deactivated: Indicates that the agent’s account is deactivated in Desk. Deactivated agents can no longer receive tickets or access Desk and are removed from their teams. Before deactivating an agent, you need to either leave an agent’s active and idle tickets in current teams or transfer them to another team. Deactivated agents can be activated again on the dashboard. Agents can be reactivated on the dashboard.
- Waiting: For a live agent, the status indicates that the account isn’t activated because the agent signed up but never visited Desk. Once the agent visits, the account is automatically activated. For bots, the status indicates that the bot is created but can’t be activated due to incomplete settings.
- Paused: Indicates that an agent’s account is paused in Desk. Paused agents remain in their teams but can’t receive tickets.