Talk call back request while agents are offline

Hi @mokebo,

Thanks for your feedback!

Most of our customers use the state 'offline' for agents that won't be available anytime soon, like when they are off-hours, on leave, etc., i.e. when they are not expected to receive any calls. If a caller requests a callback while all agents are offline she might expect that callback to be actioned soon, when, in fact, this would not be true for most cases. In this situation, asking the user to leave a voicemail would probably be more recommended.

I suppose we could create a state like "callback only", where only callback requests would be passed to agents, but wouldn't these callbacks, ringing through all agents until someone picks them up, disrupt your agents as much as the inbound calls you wish to avoid? Let me know what you think.

One possible workaround is to set your agents as 'Away' instead of 'Offline'. Agents that are 'Away', still won't receive inbound calls or callbacks, but if a caller does request a callback a ticket will be created after 60 minutes, unassigned, in the backlog. You could easily filter them by the subject "Callback Request" and agents could deal with them on their own time.

Widson Reis

Hi Widson,

thanks for your reply!

I suppose we could create a state like "callback only", where only callback requests would be passed to agents, but wouldn't these callbacks, ringing through all agents until someone picks them up, disrupt your agents as much as the inbound calls you wish to avoid?

--> we would like to receive callback requests in a written form, let's say a customer tonight at 9pm has a more complex question and would like us to call him about it. So instead of going through the regular contact form and writing out his question, he could simply leave his number (perhaps also the hours of the day where he's available) and we would call him back the next working day.

One possible workaround is to set your agents as 'Away' instead of 'Offline'. 

--> would the agents be "away" when they are signed out as well? 

Perhaps it would be easiest if we could adjust a callback request to our contact form - do you know if that's possible? Add a check box "I would like to be called", leave the phone number and a time frame:

Best regards,

Kristin

Hi @kristin26,

It looks like you could achieve what you want by configuring a callback request widget. It would look something like the picture below. You can learn all about it in this article. 

Hi @widson,

looks like we're moving in circles... The widget only appears when an agent is online?

Best regards,

Kristin

Hi Kristin,

Yes, the callback widget only appears if there's at least one available agent to call back the customer and, again, offline agents are not considered to be available. I thought you would like to use the widget in conjunction with the status 'Away', which seems to be the only workaround available at this moment.

Back to the widget, when all agents are offline the Callback Request widget is replaced by the regular Help/Contact Us widget. This widget is highly customisable so your idea of adding an 'I want to be called back' checkbox to it is a great one.

We are taking your feedback though and will rethink the behaviour of the callback request to directly support use cases like yours. 

Hi @widson,

here's my question regarding the away status:

One possible workaround is to set your agents as 'Away' instead of 'Offline'. 

--> would the agents be "away" when they are signed out as well? 

Our agents would never be online, we could set the status of one (or all) agent(s) to "away" but will this status remain, even outside their working hours (Mon-Fri around 8am - 2pm), meaning the a customer can reach the widget on Tuesday 8pm or on a Sunday?

Back to the widget, when all agents are offline the Callback Request widget is replaced by the regular Help/Contact Us widget. 

--> we noticed that it's not replaced, but if one of our agents is online the phone icon is added to the questionmark!

Thanks for sending the link

This widget is highly customisable

we'll check this out!

Best regards,

Kristin

Hi Kristin,

When an agent sign out their state changes automatically to 'Offline'. However, and this is something you can explore in the short term, if instead of signing out the agent shuts down the computer or quits the browser their state won't change (this will change in the near future, though). Additionally, an admin can change the state of any agent, even if they are not logged. 

Best regards,
Widson