Home / Features / Routing and teams

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Twelve ways to decide who gets the conversation.

Round robin is fine until somebody is on holiday and somebody else speaks Spanish.

A handoff is only as good as the person it lands on. AidEcho routes by skill, language, current workload, department, seniority, or whoever served that customer last, with a capacity limit per teammate and a policy for when nobody is free.

Routing decides which teammate receives a conversation when the assistant hands it over. AidEcho offers twelve modes, including by skill, by language, least busy, by department, most senior first and same teammate as last time, with per-teammate capacity limits and a configurable policy for when nobody is online.

01 / What it does

The rules you can route on.

Every team splits work differently. A two-person shop wants least-busy. A clinic wants departments. An agency wants the person who knows that client.

By who they are

Skill, language, seniority, or the department the conversation was routed to.

By load

Least busy, round robin, or first in first out, with a cap on concurrent chats per person.

By history

Same teammate as last time, so a returning customer is not re-explaining to a stranger.

By permission

Roles decide what each person can see, including whether they can reveal a customer contact detail.

02 / All twelve

Every mode, in plain language.

These are the exact options in your settings, described the same way they are described there. Pick one per website and change it whenever your team changes.

manual

Your team claims chats

Chats wait in a list and your team pick them up themselves.

fifo

First in, first out

The longest-waiting chat goes to the next teammate who frees up.

round robin

Take turns

Share chats evenly, one to each available teammate in turn.

least busy

Whoever is least busy

Send it to the available teammate with the fewest open chats.

least recent

Whoever is free longest

Send it to the available teammate who has waited the longest.

random

At random

Pick any available teammate.

skills

By skill

Send it to a teammate whose skills match the topic, else whoever is least busy.

language

By language

Send it to a teammate who speaks the visitor language, else whoever is least busy.

priority

Most senior first

Send important chats to your most experienced teammate who is free.

sticky

Same teammate as before

Keep a returning visitor with the teammate who last helped them, if free.

smart

Smart match

Balance skill, language and seniority against how busy each teammate is.

broadcast

Offer to everyone

Ring the whole team and let the first to grab it take the chat.

03 / In practice

Routed by language, without anybody choosing.

Hallo, mein Paket ist seit zwei Wochen unterwegs.

Das tut mir leid. Standardlieferungen dauern 3 bis 5 Werktage, zwei Wochen ist deutlich zu lang.

Source: /versand
Können Sie nachsehen, wo es ist?

Einzelne Sendungen kann ich nicht einsehen. Ich verbinde Sie mit jemandem aus dem Team, der Deutsch spricht.

Routed by language

EM

Hallo, Elena hier. Ich habe Ihre Bestellung gefunden und schaue mir das sofort an.

settings / live chat
Assignment mode, capacity per teammate and offline policy
desk / inbox
The queue showing what is waiting and who owns what

04 / How it works

Capacity, presence and what happens at midnight.

Routing is not only about matching. It is about not drowning one person while another is idle, and behaving sensibly when the office is empty.

  • A cap per teammate Set how many live conversations one person can hold before the next is queued.
  • Presence aware Away, busy and offline are respected, and an idle teammate flips to away automatically.
  • Nobody free Queue it, take an email, or return it to the assistant. Configured per website.
  • Owner drops out If somebody disconnects mid-conversation it is reassigned or requeued rather than sitting silent.

05 / Straight about the limits

What routing does not solve.

It puts the right conversation in front of the right person. It cannot conjure a person who is not there.

  • Needs Skills and languages set on each teammate for those modes to do anything useful.
  • Cannot Beat capacity. If everyone is at their limit the conversation queues, honestly, rather than being dumped.
  • Will not Route on something you have not configured. Departments have to exist before they can be routed to.
Can I speak to someone in the returns team?

Everyone in returns is at capacity right now. You are third in the queue, or I can take an email and have them come back to you within the hour.

Source: /contact

07 / Questions

Answers, before you ask.

What are the routing modes?

Manual, first in first out, round robin, least busy, least recent, random, by skill, by language, by seniority, same teammate as last time, a blended smart match, and broadcast to everyone with first claim winning.

Can I limit how many chats one person handles?

Yes. Set a maximum number of concurrent conversations per teammate, and anything beyond it queues rather than piling on.

What happens if the person handling a chat disconnects?

You set the policy: reassign to someone free, put it back in the queue, return it to the assistant, or leave it with them. There is a grace period so a brief drop does not trigger it.

Can a client or contractor see only their own conversations?

Yes. Permissions are per website, so you can give someone access to one site and nothing else, which is how agencies run client access.

Put the conversation in front of the right person.

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