Assign chats automatically and see who is waiting

Send chats that need a person to the next teammate online, set yourself Away, and see how long each visitor has waited.

When a visitor needs a person, Assistly can hand the chat to the next teammate who is online, in turn, and your inbox shows how long each visitor has been waiting for a reply. It's part of the paid plans (Starter and up), and it's off until the admin turns it on.

Turn it on

Open Team.
Under Assignment and reply timers, turn on Assign new chats automatically.
Pick when a waiting chat gets highlighted: after 2, 5, 10 or 15 minutes (5 unless you change it).

Only the admin can change these settings.

Which chats get assigned

A chat goes to a teammate when it needs a person: the visitor asked for one, wants to change a booking, sent a picture the AI couldn't read, or asked something the AI couldn't answer. Chats the AI is handling well stay with the AI and nobody gets them.

Chats go round robin: the admin and each team member get one in turn. Only people who are online get chats. You're online while you have the Assistly dashboard open (and for 10 minutes after you last used it), unless you set yourself Away.

If nobody is online, the chat stays unassigned and your usual alerts still go out: the email, phone alerts and any Slack, Teams or Discord alerts you set up.

A chat that already has someone on it keeps them. You can still pick anyone under Assigned to, assign many chats at once from the list, or take over any chat, exactly as before.

Away

Each person has their own Away switch on the Team page. While you're Away you get no new chats. When you switch to Away, your open chats that are still waiting for a reply move to the next teammate online (or stay unassigned if nobody else is online). Switch it off when you're back.

Reply timers

In the inbox list and at the top of a conversation you'll see Waiting 6 min on chats where a visitor is waiting for a person. Once a chat waits longer than the time you picked, the timer turns orange so it's easy to spot. The timer stops when someone on your team replies, hands the chat back to the AI or closes it.

See who got it

Every automatic assignment is written into the conversation's notes, with the name and the time, so everyone can see who got the chat and when.