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AurionAI

Answer live chats

9 min readBy Emmanuel Yazbeck

Who sees this: Inbox — profiles Helpdesk and AI Voice + Helpdesk. Roles: Agent, Supervisor, Admin and Owner can get and accept live chats. Only Supervisor, Admin and Owner see the list Waiting chats. Read-only users never get live chats.

A visitor in the chat widget can ask to talk to a person. When someone in the right team is available, AurionAI offers the chat to an agent. The agent who accepts it is the live agent: the bot stops answering and the agent chats with the visitor in real time in the Inbox. This article shows how to get, answer, transfer and end a live chat.

Prerequisites

  • Your organization uses the Helpdesk or AI Voice + Helpdesk profile.
  • The Aurion Inbox is your organization's customer service tool. Without it, live chat cannot be turned on and the bot answers every chat.
  • An administrator turned on Live chat with agents in Live Chat, and chose a team for IT chats, for customer service chats, or for both.
  • You are a member of that team.
  • It is inside the business hours of that team.

Steps

Make yourself available

AurionAI offers a live chat to you only when all of these are true:

  • Your status is Online, or another status that receives conversations. To change it, select your status in the top bar. Read Set your status.
  • AurionAI is open in your browser and you are signed in. Any page of AurionAI counts, not only the Inbox. When you sign out or close AurionAI, you get no more offers after about two minutes.
  • You have fewer live chats than the limit Live chats per agent. The limit is 3 unless your administrator changed it. When you are at the limit, new chats go to colleagues.

To get a desktop alert even when the browser is in the background, select Enable desktop alerts at the top right of the page, then allow notifications in your browser. The button shows only until you answer the browser's question.

Accept or decline an offer

When a chat is offered to you, you hear a short tone (your browser plays it only after you have clicked once on the page) and the pop-up New live chat appears at the top right of any page. It says A visitor is waiting for an agent. and counts down the seconds you have left.

  1. To take the chat, select Accept. The conversation opens in the Inbox and the chat is live with you.
  2. To let a colleague take it, select Decline. AurionAI offers the chat to the next available colleague and does not offer it to you again.

You have 30 seconds to answer, unless your administrator changed Time to accept an offer (seconds). If you do not answer in time, the offer goes to the next colleague. If you miss two offers in a row without answering, AurionAI sets your status to Away and shows You were set to Away after missed chat offers. Set your status back to Online when you are ready.

Take a chat from the waiting list

Supervisors, administrators and owners see the panel Waiting chats at the top right of any page while at least one visitor waits. Oldest chats are first. Each row shows the visitor, IT support or Customer service, and how many minutes the visitor has waited. Offered to an agent means the chat is offered to an agent right now.

  • To take the chat yourself, select Take. The conversation opens and the chat is live with you.
  • To give the chat to an agent, select Assign. In Assign to, choose a person, then select Assign chat. The button stays grey until you choose a person. You can assign the chat only to a member of its team who is online, available and below the live chat limit; otherwise you see an error. The agent gets the message A supervisor assigned you a live chat with a tone and the button Open chat.

If someone else took the chat first, you see This chat is no longer waiting.

Chat with the visitor

When the chat is live, a bar at the top of the conversation shows Live chat. In the conversation, you see everything the visitor wrote to the bot before you joined. If AurionAI has a summary of the conversation so far, the bar shows it under AI summary.

  1. Click in the box Type your reply…. It is a chat box: there is no subject, no recipient and no signature.
  2. Type your message and press Enter to send it. Press Shift + Enter for a new line.

Your messages appear in the widget at once, with your name. They are not sent by email while the chat is live. You can still use saved replies, knowledge base articles, AI help and private notes in the same way as in other conversations.

While the visitor types, the conversation shows that the visitor is typing. The visitor also sees when you type. When you have the conversation open on screen, the visitor's last message shows as read in the widget.

Transfer the chat to a colleague

  1. In the live chat bar, select Transfer.
  2. In Transfer to, choose a person or a team.
  3. Select Transfer chat. The button stays grey until you choose a person or a team.

The visitor sees You are being transferred and waits again, first in line. The bar shows Live chat: the visitor is waiting for an agent and you no longer have the live chat controls. AurionAI offers the chat to the person you chose, or to an available member of the team, but not back to you. When a colleague accepts, the chat is live with them and you can only add private notes.

Turn the chat into a ticket

Only the live agent can do this.

  1. In the live chat bar, select Convert to ticket.

AurionAI creates a ticket and ends the live chat. A customer service chat becomes a ticket in the Inbox. An IT chat becomes a ticket in your organization's IT service management tool. A message gives the ticket number, and the visitor sees it in the widget. After this, your replies to the visitor go by email again.

End the chat

  1. In the live chat bar, open Status after the chat and choose what happens to the conversation:
    • Keep the status
    • Mark as resolved
    • Mark as closed: only Supervisor, Admin and Owner see this choice.
  2. Select End chat.

The bar shows The live chat has ended. The reply box becomes the email reply box again. A supervisor, an administrator or an owner can also transfer or end a chat that is live with someone else.

What the visitor sees

  • While waiting: their place in the queue and the estimated wait, the note A human may read this chat., and two buttons: Leave a message instead and Back to the assistant. The bot does not answer while the visitor waits.
  • When you join: a line saying that you joined the chat, then your messages with your name and photo.
  • During the chat: the button End chat. The visitor can end the chat at any time.
  • After the chat: The chat has ended. If your administrator turned on Ask for a rating, the visitor sees How was this chat? with Good and Bad, can add a comment and select Send rating. The visitor can also select Email me a copy to get the conversation by email. Then the bot answers again.

If the same visitor comes back within 24 hours and asks for a person again, the chat is offered first to the agent of their last live chat. The live chat bar then shows the previous chat with its rating, and the link Open previous chat.

Idle timers

  • The visitor stops writing. When you have written and the visitor does not answer for 5 minutes, the widget asks Are you still there? If the visitor still does not answer after 5 more minutes, the chat ends.
  • You stop answering. When the visitor has written and you do not answer for 3 minutes, you hear a tone and see A visitor is waiting for your reply. After 3 more minutes, the team's leads, supervisors, administrators and owners get a notification and an email.

Your administrator can change these times in Live Chat.

Only the live agent writes to the visitor

While a chat is live with a colleague, you can open the conversation and read it, but you cannot write to the visitor:

  • Instead of the reply box, you see This chat is live with another agent. You can add a private note. Select Private note to write a note for your team. The visitor never sees it.
  • On an AI Resolution Suggestion card, Send as Reply is refused with This chat is live with another agent. The visitor gets nothing.
  • On a Resolved by AI – pending review card, Mark as resolved is refused with This chat is live with another agent. The conversation is not resolved.
  • The Inbox has no button to reply to many conversations at once. A reply to many conversations sent through the AurionAI API is refused for this chat with "This chat is not live with you." and nothing on this chat changes. The other conversations still get the reply.

This also applies to supervisors, administrators and owners. They can transfer or end the chat, but only the live agent can write to the visitor.

If something goes wrong

  • You never get an offer. Check that your status is Online, that you are signed in, that you are a member of the team chosen for live chat, that it is inside the team's business hours, and that you are below your live chat limit.
  • Another agent took this chat. A colleague accepted the chat before you, or the offer moved on. Nothing to do.
  • Close the open tasks first, or end the chat without resolving it. The conversation has open tasks. Close them, or choose Keep the status and end the chat.
  • Your status changed to Away by itself. You missed two offers in a row. Set your status back to Online.
  • Something went wrong. Please try again. Try again. If the chat was transferred or ended in the meantime, the bar shows the new state.

Still stuck? Submit a request or .