Omnichannel: Agent Panel Guide
This document explains the options for agents on Agent Panel of gloCOM/Communicator Desktop Application. This feature is available in PBXware Contact Centre edition for versions 7.1 and above.
Omnichannel is a robust application that extends the power of Contact Center features, allowing your customers to interact with your business across multiple communication channels like emailing, live chat messaging, SMS texting, Facebook and Whatsapp.
The Channels section of the Omnichannel software provides a user-friendly and efficient way to manage and organize the different communication channels that your customers use to reach out to your business.
WhatsApp Channel
WhatsApp messages are distributed in queues. Agents login into queues and work on the customers messages.
Based on the configuration, WhatApp messages could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the chats to themselves in order to work on them.
When an agent opens “Agent Panel” on the gloCOM/Communicator application, agent will be prompted with the following screen:
When a new message comes in, there will be a notification in the “Chats” section.
Once you open the “Chats” section, agent will be prompted with chat screen. In this case, we are talking about WhatsApp channel, so the message will come from WhatsApp channel.
If the agent opens up a message, agent will be prompted with the Chat Agent screen.
On the left side, there will be “My Chats” and “Unassigned Chats” section.
On the “My Chats”, agents can see the chats that have been assigned to them.
On the “Unassigned Chats”, agents can see the chats that are currently unassigned.
In the middle of the screen, there will be the current open message.
On the right side, there will be “Profile” and “Conversation History” section.
As previously mentioned, based on the configuration, chat messages could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the chats to themselves in order to work on them.
If the configuration is set to auto-assign, then the chats will be automatically assigned to the agents.
Agents will get a notification on their gloCOM/Communicator application that they have a new chat assigned to them.
If the configuration is not auto-assign, then an agent has the ability to assign a chat on themselves from the “Unassigned Chats” section in the bottom-left corner of the Agent Panel.
By navigating to the “Unassigned Chats” section, an agent can see which chats are currently unassigned. Also, an agent can see from which channel did the chat come from (LiveChat, Facebook, WhatsApp).
After selecting one of the unassigned chats, an agent will be prompted with the following screen:
Agent will be able to see the message(s) from the customer and a “Assign to me” button. By clicking on the “Assign to me” button, agent will assign the chat to themselves.
On the “Profile”, agents can see details about the customer, such as Name and Lastname, contact number or email.
Also, on top-right corner there are two buttons; first “Linked conversations” button that will show all conversations linked with this profile, and second “Add contact” button that will allow an agent to add the profile to the Contact list.
“Conversation History” section will show chat history with the customer, if it exists.
If it does not exist, it will show “No conversations”.
If it is the case of a returning customer, then a full customer history will be shown in “Conversation History” section.
There is a search button on top-right corner in order to search through the conversations based on the keyword or phrase.
Agent can respond on the customers messages on the middle screen.
By turning the slider on the bottom right, agent can change the nature of the messages from “Public” to “Private”.
Public messages will be seen by everyone involved in the conversation (customer and agent, and anyone who does the supervision of the chats).
Private messages will be seen only by agent and supervisor.
In the top right corner there are two buttons; “Open” and “Transfer”.
“Open” button is actually a drop-down menu that defines the status of chat/ticket.
“Transfer” button allows an agent to transfer the chat/ticket to another agent if the agent needs to step away from the desk.
To insert a canned response, agent can type in the macro word that represents the canned response message.
For example, if agent types in word “Inconvinience” – canned response message related to that macro word will be sent as a reply.
Agent can also search for canned responses by typing in the name or the content of the message.
As well, as they can use the existing WhatsApp templates available.
To use “Emojis”, agent would need to click on the emoji sign and select the desired emoji.
“Open” is the status of the chat/ticket which was just created/started.
Status of the chat/ticket can be changed by the agent in accordance to the most relevant state of the chat/ticket.
Once the chat/ticket has been solved, the status of the chat/ticket can be changed to “Solved”.
Once a status of a chat/ticket has been changed to “Solved” – the conversation closes.
There could be a “Customer Survey” set in the system settings to allow customers to leave a review for their interaction with an agent. Customer Surveys can help companies improve their business and products.
Once a conversation has been closed, an agent can not longer reply to the conversation as it can be seen on the picture below.
Live Chat Channel
Live Chat messages are distributed in queues. Agents login into queues and work on the customers messages.
Based on the configuration, Live Chat messages could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the chats to themselves in order to work on them.
If an agent has notifications turned on their gloCOM/Communicator application, agent will be prompted with the following pop-up message:
And after that, when an agent opens “Agent Panel” on the gloCOM/Communicator application, agent will have a notification in “Chats” section.
Under “My Chats”, agent will see the new chat message. Also, if you pay attention, there is different icon from chat that was started from WhatsApp channel, indicating that this chat came from a different channel – Live Chat.
When an agent opens up the message, they will be able reply and send messages to the customer in same way as they did with the WhatsApp channel.
When an agent opens up a Live Chat message, they will be prompted with the chat screen, same as when the message was from the WhatsApp Channel.
Same option for turning on Private messages is implemented here.
Same option for using emojis is also implemented.
They are able to use canned response in the same way as they were with the WhatsApp channel.
The only difference is that there no WhatsApp Templates they could use.
After the chat/ticket is solved, agents will not be able to send messages anymore.
On the profile section in the top-right corner, agents will be able to see details of the customer.
In this case, they will be able to see the Name, Last Name and email address as email address is needed for verification in order to start a Live Chat session.
One more thing that they will be able to see is a approx geographic location of the user who started the Live Chat session.
As previously said, on top-right corner there are two buttons; first “Linked conversations” button that will show all conversations linked with this profile, and the “Add” button.
If an agent clicks on the “Linked conversations” button, they will be able to link the conversation with a contact.
Also as previously said, agents have the option to add the profile of the customer to their own contacts.
In order to do that, they need to click on the “Add” button on top-right corner of the “Profile” section.
If an agent chooses to do that, they will need to fill out a form with the customer information shown below.
Added profiles are saved under Dashboard → Contacts.
If a customer is being unprofessional or aggressive, agent has an option to ban the customer.
In order to do that, they would need to navigate to the “Options” button (three dots) in the top-right corner and click on the “Ban customer”.
List of banned customers can be found under Settings → Security → Banned Customers.
If the agent is interested in their own performance, they can see those information by navigating to:
Dashboard → My Performance
or if they are interested in which queues they are member of by navigating to:
Dashboard → Queues
Email Channel
Emails are distributed in queues. Agents login into queues and work on the customer inquiries.
Based on the configuration, emails could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the email to themselves in order to work on them.
If an agent has their notifications turned on, they will be getting a pop-up message about new email.
Once they open up their Agent Panel, on the left side, there will be a notification related to the email – in the “Email” section.
Once an agent clicks on the “Email” section, they will open up the email sub-menu. In the sub-menu, they will be able to see all the information related to the emails.
In the “My Emails” will be emails that are assigned to them. As previously mentioned, emails could be auto assigned or agents could manually assign the emails to themselves.
As shown on the picture above, there is a one new email assigned to this agent.
On the email, following is shown:
sender email address
email subject
which queue email belongs to
date and time
Agents could directly close or transfer an email by clicking on the more options (…) and close or transfer the email from this section.
Situations in which those are suitable options are up to the agents themselves.
Once a agent opens up an email, they will be prompted with a new screen.
Subject – subject of the email
Body – body of the email
From – email address did the email come from
To – email address to which the reply will be sent to
Reply All – to reply to all email addresses involved in the thread
Reply – to reply only to the email address who have sent the email originally
Forward – to forward the email to another email address
To reply to an email, agents will have to click on the “Reply” or “Reply All” button. Once they do, they will be prompted with the following screen.
They will have a window to write a message.
If they want to cc an email, or bcc an email, options for those are in top-right corner.
If they want to add an attachment, they could click on the “paperclip” button on the bottom.
After that, they will be prompted with the new window to select a file they want to attach to the email.
Once they are satisfied with their response, they could click on the “Send” button on the bottom-right corner to send an email or on the “Discard” button to delete an email.
Once the response is sent, the email screen will be looking like this.
Difference between Live Chat channel or WhatsApp channel and Email channel is that in the email channel, once an agent gets an email – they will have to click on “Reply All” or “Reply” in order to answer to the customers email.
Agent will not be able to send messages “on the fly” like they are able to do in WhatsApp or LiveChat channels.
Once they get another reply from the customer, the email screen will look like this.
And after an agent replies again to the customer, the email screen will look like this.
After the customer inquiry is completed, the email/ticket status can be changed to “Solved”.
After the email/ticket status has been changed to “Solved”, the “Transfer” button will be greyed-out.
If an agent is interested in their Conversations, they could click on the “Conversations” button on the left side. That will open up a new dashboard.
On this dashboard, there will be information about all their conversations, from all the channels they are involved with.
They can either click on the “Active” button to show active conversations.
Or, they can either click on the “Closed” button to show closed conversations.
SMS Channel
SMS are distributed in queues. Agents login into queues and work on the customer inquiries.
Based on the configuration, SMS could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the SMS to themselves in order to work on them.
If an agent has their notifications turned on, they will be getting a pop-up message about SMS.
Once they open up their Agent Panel, on the left side, there will be a notification related to the SMS– in the “Chats” section.
Under “My Chats”, agent will see the new chat message. Also, if you pay attention, there is different icon from chat that was started from WhatsApp channel or Live Chat channel, indicating that this message came from different channel – SMS channel.
If an agent clicks on one of the chat messages, they will be prompted with the SMS message in the middle screen. In the middle screen, they will be able to see the SMS message content and the ticket related to it.
They will be able to change the status of the ticket as they could as for the other channels, as well to transfer the ticket to another agent/supervisor.
SMS chats could be auto-assigned or agents could manually assigned the SMS chats to them in order to work on them.
After they assign a chat to themselves, they will see a message that a chat has been assigned to them.
Agents will be able to reply to the messages in same way that they could for the other channels.
After the agent replies, they will be able to see their reply in the middle screen.
On the right side, on the “Profile” section, they will be able to see the profile of the customer that sent the SMS message.
They will be able to add the customer to “Contacts”.
They will be able to Link the conversation to the contact.
They will be able to block the customer.
Basically, agents will be able to do all the options as they were able to do with other channels.
Facebook Channel
Facebook messages are distributed in queues. Agents login into queues and work on the customers messages.
Based on the configuration, Facebook messages could be auto-assigned or agents can manually assign the chats to themselves in order to work on them.
When a new message comes in, there will be a notification in the “Chats” section.
Once you open the “Chats” section, agent will be prompted with chat screen. In this case, we are talking about Facebook channel, so the message will come from Facebook channel.
If the agent opens up a message, agent will be prompted with the Chat Agent screen where they will be able to see the message that came from Facebook channel.
The messages that come from Facebook channel will have the Facebook icon as an indicator.
Once a message comes to the Facebook channel, it will open up a chat/ticket. Agents can transfer the chat/ticket in the same way they were able to do for the other channels – by clicking on the “Transfer” button on top right.
In order to transfer, there has to be other agents logged-in in order to be able to take a chat/ticket.
All other options that are mentioned before are also available for the messages from Facebook channel.
On the profile section, agents will be able to see from which Facebook page has the message came from.
Agents will be able to Link the conversations, add the user to contacts, block the user, see the chat history, basically everything they were able to do as with the other channels.