Pull-mode Requests
Overview
List
Most small-scale businesses or certain channels with asynchronous activities require customer requests to be broadcast to a List to be picked up/pulled by agents as per their convenience. Lists allow the system to park requests of certain channels. Agents who are then subscribed to the List get notified about each incoming request being landed on the List. See Agent - List Subscription.
To learn how to create new lists and assign them to certain channels, see Admin Guide -> Pull Mode
Request
A Request (a List entry or a new conversation in the list) can be in any one of the following states:
- UNREAD - until no agent has joined the conversation
- ACTIVE - when at least one agent has joined the conversation
- INACTIVE - when there's no agent currently present in the conversation but, at least one agent had joined this request earlier and left without closing it. In this case, if a customer sends a message to request a new agent, no new notification is published on the List since the conversation is already listed there.
- CLOSED - upon closure of the request when the request was removed, i.e. when the conversation is closed.
Agent-List Subscription
Agents subscribed to a List get real-time notifications of new conversations being landed on the List. Agents may subscribe to one or multiple Lists to answer requests published on those lists. One or more agents may Join a request simultaneously and may also choose to leave at any time.
To see how agents subscribe to Lists and join pull-based conversations, see Agent Guide -> Pull-based Lists
See also, Pull-mode vs Precision Routing to get a complete understanding of the workflow of communication of pull-based chats.
Workflow
Example Use case:
The customer posts a comment on the company's Facebook Social Media page.
Admin Configurations
The same level of configurations are done in Unified Admin, for this scenario as done for Push-based Routing, except for the following differences:
- The admin creates an MRD to capture Social media requests from customers.
- Links the MRD with the Channel Type
Facebook
. - The admin creates a new List,
L1
. - Creates a new Channel
C2
, sets the Routing Mode as Pull (instead of Push) and, maps the ChannelC2
to the ListL1
. - This channel is now set to receive all customer comments posted on the Facebook page. The channel then publishes all new requests on the List
L1
.
Workflow
- A customer, John Williams, posts a new comment on the company's Facebook page.
- The system receives the comment and publishes this as a new chat request to the List associated with the channel.
- All agents who are subscribed to the List get the new incoming request notification.
- One or more agents join the conversation.
- The agent(s) who have joined the conversation get subscribed to the Conversation notifications and will see notifications such as, Agent joining, and Agent leaving that are flown through during the conversation.