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Overview

Intelligent conversation assignment ensures customers get help quickly from the right team member. Configure assignment rules to balance workload and route conversations based on expertise, availability, and business logic.

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Assignment Strategies

Round Robin

Distribute conversations evenly across team

Load-Based

Assign to agents with lowest workload

Skill-Based

Route based on expertise and tags

Priority-Based

VIP customers go to senior agents

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Round Robin Assignment

Evenly distribute conversations in rotation: 
{
  "strategy": "round_robin",
  "settings": {
    "skip_offline": true,
    "skip_at_capacity": true,
    "max_concurrent_per_agent": 10,
    "reset_on": "daily" // or "weekly", "monthly"
  }
}
How it works:
  1. New conversation arrives
  2. System checks next agent in rotation
  3. If agent is available and under capacity, assign
  4. Otherwise, move to next agent
  5. Cycle repeats
Best for: Teams with similar skill levels handling general inquiries.

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Load-Based Assignment

Assign to the agent with the fewest active conversations: 
{
  "strategy": "load_balanced",
  "settings": {
    "consider_priority": true,
    "priority_weight": {
      "urgent": 3,
      "high": 2,
      "normal": 1,
      "low": 0.5
    },
    "max_per_agent": 15,
    "rebalance_threshold": 5 // Reassign if difference >5
  }
}
Calculation example: 
Agent   Active  Weighted Load  Next Assignment?
Sarah   8       12 (6×2 high)  No
John    5       5 (all normal) ✓ Yes (lowest)
Alice   7       11 (4×2 + 3×1) No
Best for: Varying conversation complexity, keeping team balanced.

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Skill-Based Routing

Route based on agent expertise:
1

Define Skills

Skills Configuration
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Technical Support
├─ Members: Alice, Bob, Charlie
└─ Auto-assign when tags: technical, bug, api

Billing
├─ Members: Sarah, Diana
└─ Auto-assign when tags: billing, payment, refund

Sales
├─ Members: John, Emma
└─ Auto-assign when tags: sales, demo, pricing

General Support (Fallback)
└─ All active agents
2

Tag Conversations

Tags trigger skill-based routing:
Customer message: "My API integration is broken"

Auto-tagging detects: "technical", "api"
→ Routes to Technical Support team
→ Assigns to Alice (least busy technical agent)
3

Configure Fallback

{
  "skill_routing": {
    "enabled": true,
    "fallback_strategy": "round_robin",
    "fallback_after_seconds": 120,
    "allow_cross_skill": true // If all specialists busy
  }
}

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Priority-Based Assignment

VIP customers get premium treatment: 
{
  "priority_routing": {
    "enabled": true,
    "rules": [
      {
        "condition": {
          "tags": ["VIP", "Enterprise"],
          "or": true
        },
        "assign_to": {
          "agents": ["senior-agent@company.com"],
          "fallback_team": "Tier 2 Support",
          "max_wait_seconds": 60
        },
        "notify": {
          "method": ["desktop", "email", "sms"],
          "message": "VIP customer needs assistance"
        }
      },
      {
        "condition": {
          "priority": "urgent",
          "unassigned_for_seconds": 300
        },
        "escalate_to": "team_lead",
        "notify_manager": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

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Advanced Assignment Rules

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Time-Based Routing

Route based on time of day: 
{
  "time_based_routing": {
    "timezone": "America/New_York",
    "rules": [
      {
        "days": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
        "hours": { "start": "09:00", "end": "17:00" },
        "assign_to_team": "Day Shift",
        "strategy": "load_balanced"
      },
      {
        "days": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
        "hours": { "start": "17:00", "end": "21:00" },
        "assign_to_team": "Evening Shift",
        "strategy": "round_robin"
      },
      {
        "days": ["Saturday", "Sunday"],
        "hours": { "start": "10:00", "end": "18:00" },
        "assign_to_team": "Weekend Support",
        "max_per_agent": 5
      }
    ],
    "fallback": {
      "outside_hours": "create_ticket", // or "assign_to_on_call"
      "auto_response": "We're currently offline. We'll respond when we're back."
    }
  }
}

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Language-Based Routing

Assign based on customer language: 
{
  "language_routing": {
    "enabled": true,
    "detect_from": ["message_content", "contact_preference"],
    "mappings": {
      "es": {
        "team": "Spanish Support",
        "agents": ["maria@company.com", "carlos@company.com"]
      },
      "fr": {
        "team": "French Support",
        "fallback_to_english": true
      },
      "en": {
        "team": "General Support"
      }
    },
    "fallback": "General Support"
  }
}

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Customer History Routing

Route to previous agent: 
{
  "history_routing": {
    "enabled": true,
    "prefer_previous_agent": true,
    "within_days": 30,
    "conditions": {
      "previous_csat": ">= 4", // Only if good experience
      "agent_available": true,
      "agent_under_capacity": true
    },
    "fallback": "load_balanced"
  }
}

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Manual Assignment

Override automatic assignment:
  • Quick Assign
  • Assign with Notes
  • Bulk Assign
Conversation #12345
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Currently: Unassigned

Quick Assign:
● Sarah Johnson (3 active) ✓ Available
● John Smith (5 active) ✓ Available
● Alice Brown (10 active) ⚠️ At capacity

[Assign] [Auto-Assign]

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Auto-Assignment Configuration

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Global Settings

Auto-Assignment Settings
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Status: ☑ Enabled globally

Default Strategy: [Load Balanced ▾]

Apply to:
☑ New conversations
☑ Unassigned >5 minutes
☑ Reassigned conversations
☐ Reopened conversations

Exclusions:
☑ Conversations manually assigned
☑ Conversations with specific tags: [VIP ▾]
☐ Conversations from specific sources

Business Hours:
⦿ Respect individual agent schedules
○ Use team schedule
○ Always assign (24/7)

[Save Settings]

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Team-Specific Rules

Team: Support Team
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Override global settings: ☑

Strategy: [Skill-Based ▾]
├─ Primary: Skill match
├─ Secondary: Load balanced
└─ Tertiary: Round robin

Capacity per Agent:
Min: [2] concurrent conversations
Max: [12] concurrent conversations
Optimal: [8] (target before assigning to next)

Priority Handling:
Urgent: Assign immediately, notify via SMS
High: Assign within 2 minutes
Normal: Standard assignment
Low: Batch assign every 15 minutes

[Save Team Settings]

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Assignment Notifications

Configure how agents are notified: 
{
  "notifications": {
    "new_assignment": {
      "channels": ["desktop", "email"],
      "urgent_channels": ["desktop", "email", "sms"],
      "sound": true,
      "template": "You've been assigned conversation #{{id}} from {{customer_name}}"
    },
    "reassignment": {
      "notify_previous_agent": true,
      "notify_new_agent": true,
      "include_context": true
    },
    "batch_assignments": {
      "enabled": true,
      "group_within_minutes": 5,
      "max_in_batch": 10
    }
  }
}

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Assignment Analytics

Track assignment effectiveness: 
Assignment Performance
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Last 30 Days:

Assignment Metrics:
├─ Total Assignments: 1,247
├─ Auto-Assigned: 1,089 (87%)
├─ Manual Assignments: 158 (13%)
├─ Reassignments: 64 (5%)
└─ Average Time to Assign: 2.3 minutes

Strategy Breakdown:
├─ Load Balanced: 45%
├─ Skill-Based: 30%
├─ Priority-Based: 15%
└─ Manual: 10%

Performance by Strategy:
                  Avg Response  Resolution Rate  CSAT
Load Balanced     3.1 min       89%             4.6
Skill-Based       2.8 min       94%             4.8
Priority-Based    1.5 min       87%             4.7

Optimization Opportunities:
⚡ 12% of conversations reassigned - review initial routing
⚡ Skill-based routing shows best CSAT - consider expanding
✓ Load balancing working well

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Reassignment Rules

Automatic reassignment triggers: 
{
  "auto_reassignment": {
    "enabled": true,
    "triggers": [
      {
        "condition": "agent_no_response",
        "timeout_minutes": 15,
        "action": "reassign_to_available",
        "notify_manager": true
      },
      {
        "condition": "agent_goes_offline",
        "action": "reassign_active_conversations",
        "to": "team_members",
        "max_to_reassign": 5
      },
      {
        "condition": "conversation_unresolved",
        "timeout_hours": 24,
        "escalate_to": "senior_agent",
        "increase_priority": true
      },
      {
        "condition": "customer_requests_reassignment",
        "action": "assign_to_team_lead",
        "flag_for_review": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

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Testing Assignment Rules

Simulate assignments before enabling: 
Assignment Rule Tester
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Test Scenario:
Customer: VIP customer from previous conversation
Tags: technical, urgent
Time: Monday 3:00 PM EST
Language: English
Priority: Urgent

Current Team State:
Sarah (Technical): 5 active, available
John (General): 3 active, available
Alice (Technical): 10 active, at capacity

Test Result:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✓ Would assign to: Sarah Johnson

Reasoning:
1. VIP + Urgent → Priority routing
2. Technical tag → Skill-based routing
3. Sarah: Technical skill + under capacity
4. Assignment time: < 30 seconds

[Run Test] [Save as Test Case]

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Best Practices

Start Simple

Begin with round robin, add complexity as needed

Monitor Metrics

Track assignment effectiveness weekly

Balance Workload

Ensure no agent consistently overloaded

Respect Expertise

Route specialized questions to experts

Set Capacity Limits

Prevent burnout with max concurrent limits

Test Before Deploy

Simulate rules before enabling

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Next Steps

Team Management

Manage team members and permissions

Monitoring

Monitor system performance

Integrations

Connect external tools

Features: Assignment

Learn more about assignment features