How ticket distribution works

Index:

1. Introduction
2. Selection and Prioritization of attendants
3. Ticket prioritization
4. Disabling manual ticket self-assignment (the "Attend" button)
5. Ticket ordering

Introduction

Blip Desk's ticket distribution always tries to balance the service load among all available agents. To do this, every ticket to be distributed is sent to an attendant according to a series of criteria.

 

Selection and Prioritization of attendants

When a new ticket arrives to be distributed, the first point to be observed is the queue that will handle this ticket. Queues for each attendant can be managed according to This article.

The status of each attendant at the moment is then observed, Only those with ‘Online’ status will be able to receive a new ticket.

Observation:To see all the statuses available to agents and how they work, see This article.

And lastly, only attendants who have at least 1 slot available will be considered. The available service slot is the number of simultaneous services allowed (configured on the attendant screen) minus the number of tickets currently being handled by the attendant.

All attendants who meet these 3 criteria will be able to receive the new available ticket. However, to balance the service load among attendants, some criteria are used to choose the most appropriate attendant, among all those who are eligible.

 

Ticket distribution criteria for eligible agents

Currently, there are two distribution modes available. You can choose which one to use according to your team's strategy.

1. Standard mode: Prioritize agents with fewer active tickets

This is the distribution mode that is configured by default on the platform. In this model, the system evaluates how many active tickets each agent has and delivers the new ticket to whoever has fewer calls in progress. 

In the event of a tie, that is, if two or more agents have the same number of active tickets, the system considers the time since the last ticket received as a tiebreaker — prioritizing who has not received tickets for the longest time.

This mode is recommended for operations that want to keep attendants equally busy and avoid overloads.

2. Alternative mode: Prioritize agents who have not received tickets for the longest time

In this model, the system delivers the new ticket to the attendant who has not received a ticket for the longest time, promoting a fairer rotation among team members. If two or more agents have not received service for a long time, the system will use the number of active tickets as a tiebreaker.

This mode is ideal for operations that value attendant downtime as the main balancing factor.

How to Configure

To choose the distribution mode:

1. Access the Portal;
2.  Choose your bot;
3. Access the option Service, located in the top menu;
4. Access the General Settings to bot;
5. Go to the section Ticket distribution;
6. No field Distribution mode, select the desired option;
7. Click Save to apply the change.

 

Ticket prioritization

Tickets are normally prioritized to be distributed in order of creation on the Blip platform, if it is possible to find an attendant capable of receiving them. This means that the first ticket to be created, if there is an agent who can receive it, will be the first to be distributed.

However, when a ticket is transferred to another queue, it is closed with the status of Transferred and a new ticket is opened for the desired team. In this case, the new ticket has the same “priority” that the original ticket would have.

• Example 01:There are tickets A and B, created on the platform in this order. If ticket A is transferred, thus creating ticket C, the new ticket C will have priority to be distributed before ticket B, as it was created by a transfer of a ticket that was originally created before ticket B.

 

I.e, transferred tickets carry the creation time properties of their originating ticket.

• Example 02: There is a ticket A that has already been attended to and needed to be transferred to another queue. When transferred, it is now a new ticket, ticket B. This ticket B carries a higher priority than the other tickets.”common” from this new queue.

Observation: If there is already a ticket in this queue with high priority, ticket B will respect this order. Maintaining +1 priority only for other tickets "common".

In other words, the ticket that has already been served and transferred arrives in the other queue with priority given to tickets. ”common”, except for tickets that are already in the queue with high priority.

 

Configuring direct transfer permission

You can transfer tickets directly to a specific attendant or queue.
To activate this feature, follow the steps:

1.  Access the Portal;
2.  Choose your bot;
3. Access the option'Service', located in the top menu;
4. No left side menu, click on ‘General settings’.

 

 On this screen, there are two options that can be enabled:

• Direct ticket transfer: Allows transfer of tickets only for available queues and attendants.
• Ticket transfer: Allows ticket transfer for available and unavailable queues and attendants.

Legend: Enabling functionality for direct transfer

 

How to transfer tickets:

1. In the view of the Service Manager/Supervisor: To transfer a ticket, simply go to the menu‘Monitoring’ and select the ticket in question. When opening the conversation thread, click on‘button with arrows’ and choose whether the transfer will be to a queue or attendant. Select the recipient queue or attendant and confirm with the ‘Transfer ticket’ button.

 

2. From the attendant’s perspective:To transfer a ticket, simply select the ticket in question to open the conversation thread. At the top you will find a button with arrows"transfer", then decide whether the transfer will be to a queue or attendant. Select the recipient queue or attendant and confirm with the button ‘Transfer ticket’.

 

Configuring the maximum automatic dispensing quantity

In this configuration, you can define the maximum number of tickets to be automatically distributed to each agent.

Example:I want to define that each attendant should receive a maximum of 10 tickets.

To configure this quantity, go to the menu'Service', then access‘General settings’, There you will have an option called ‘Automatic distribution’, then enable the setting, define the maximum number of tickets and save.

Ready! Now, all your agents are set to receive this defined amount.

 

 

If you want to customize some agents to receive a different maximum amount than the others, take the following route:

Yet on menu 'Service', between on the page 'Attendants', select the attendants that will be modified, click on the pencil icon to edit their settings, define the number of ‘simultaneous tickets’ and hello.

Ready! Now, these selected agents will have a different maximum number of tickets than the others.

Observation: If you customize the maximum number of some attendants and need to reset the ‘Automatic distribution’ (for all attendants), in the menu ‘General settings’, The agents that you had already personalized will not suffer these impacts, thus maintaining the amount that you had already personalized for them.

 

Disabling manual ticket self-assignment (the "Attend" button)

There are use cases in the Desk where tickets might represent new leads for the operation. For these cases, it's also possible to configure your Desk to disable manual ticket assignment by the attendant, meaning to deactivate the "Attend" button so that the attendant doesn't have more tickets than the quantity defined by the Automatic Distribution in the "Attendants per Ticket" field.

To do this, simply follow the path General Settings > Ticket Distribution > "Disallow attendants from requesting tickets manually". When this setting is enabled, the "Attend" button will not assign new tickets to the attendant, restricting it only to tickets directed by the Automatic Distribution, which will respect the defined limit.

 

 

 

Ticket ordering (attendant view)

It is now possible to sort open tickets on Blip Desk in two different ways:

• Sort by most recent open ticket: the most recently opened tickets are at the top;
• Sort by most recent message: tickets with the most recent message received are at the top;

It's a way to give flexibility in how you want to view your ongoing services.

 

To activate changing the sorting mode, open the Desk, click on the gear icon and choose the ordering you prefer:

 

 

For more information, visit the discussion on the subject in our community or the videos on our channel. 😃