Agent`s Handbook
You are reading a handbook that offers practical advice for chat agents who use Webim. This is a reference book, you can read it in any order. This handbook contains all or almost all the information you may need while using Webim as a chat agent.
Find a problem you need to solve or a task to accomplish in the following table of contents and read a corresponding "how to" topic:
- How to Log In for the First Time
- Setting Up Webim App for Windows
- Detecting New Visitors Who Need Assistance
- How to Select a Visitor on the List and Start Chatting
- How to Type In Your Answer or Choose a Template
- How to Process Offline Requests
- How to Change Your Status
- How to Chat with Other Agents
Download this "Agent's Handbook" in the Adobe PDF format.
How to Log In for the First Time
To get started as a chat agent, you need to log in to Webim Control Panel first. Perform the following steps:
- Ask your company administrator for a personal login (your email address used while signing up) and a password.
- Launch a browser. For Webim Control Panel, we strongly recommend and only support Google Chrome version 42 or up.
- Open the Webim home page https://webim.ru/. Webim main page opens.
- On this web page, click the following link in the page header: «Войти / Зарегистрироваться (Log In / Sign Up)». The page «Log In to Webim» opens:
Webim Login page:
- You may need to swtich to English now, if you see the page content displayed in another language. For this, click a flag in the page header and choose English on the context menu:
Switch to English:
- Enter your email address as a login and your password. Choose Status «Online». You may want to Remember your input. Then click Log In.
- If your login & password are valid, then the main page of Webim Control Panel opens and displays a menu with available commands:
Webim Control Panel main page:
This page displays several blocks. Each block stands for a commands, available for an agent (Workspace, Chat History, and so on).
Please note that administrator has more commands, when he or she logs in to Webim Control Panel, because an administrator has top privileges and manages other teammates: supervisors and agents.
When you click a block title, a corresponding page of Webim Control Panel opens. The main blocks also have short descriptive texts below their titles.
- Click the Workspace block. The page Workspace opens:
Initial Workspace of an Agent:
- Wait for a new visitor on your site.
Detecting New Visitors Who Need Assistance
When a new visitor opens your site and asks for assistance, Webim first of all needs to notify agents, by any means.
Agents who have Webim Control Panel opened in a browser (any other page but Workspace) will notice a red sign in a toolbar (highlighted on the following picture):
When you click the highlighted icon, Workspace opens.
Agents who have Workspace already opened, will notice a notification with a number of waiting visitors in a toolbar. Those visitors will be shown in the queue Waiting for an answer:
Agents who switched to another tab from Webim Control Panel in their browser, will notice a red blinking asterisk at the caption of the Webim tab, as well as a sound signal (earcon). Some examples with different browsers:
Agents who have their browser minimized or in background, will notice a push notification in the bottom right corner of a screen (supported for Google Chrome browser only, agent also needs to allow push notifications from Webim):
Agents who have previously installed Webim App for Microsoft Windows or Webim App for GNU/Linux Ubuntu, will notice push notifications from their apps:
Mouse click on push notifications opens agent's Workspace.
How to Select a Visitor on the List and Start Chatting
To start chatting with a visitor, perform the following steps:
- Open Webim Control Panel, choose the Workspace page.
- First time Google Chrome will ask you to Allow or Block push notifications for Webim:
Enabling push notifications for Webim in Google Chrome:
Click Allow.
- Select a visitor in the queue Waiting for the Answer, single-click a block with a selected visitor.
- Chat interface, information about a visitor and available commands will be displayed on the Workspace page:
Webim Workspace:
Workspace interface consists of the following components:
- A visitor list that contains the following visitor groups:
- Waiting for an Answer - visitors who need assistance right now;
- In Chat with You - you are chatting with visitors in this group now;
- Offline Requests - requests sent by visitors when all agents were “Offline” and messages sent by users of mobile apps;
- General Queue - this group appears only if Auto-assign is enabled in Additional Features (in Settings); Webim puts visitors in this group if all agents are busy (see Maximum chats per operator also in Additional Features);
- Other Requests - visitors who are now chatting with other agents; this feature is available for supervisors and administrators; for other agents, it is only available if the Hide another chats feature is disabled (see Additional Features);
- Others - visitors who left chats and/or site recently, visitors who browse your site and do not ask for assistance, and so on.
- Current chat history: log of all actions and messages of an agent and a visitor
- Switch between chats with visitors and with other agents
- Switch between chat and co-browsing modes
- Information about a visitor
- Web pages of your site that are currently opened by this visitor
- Your chat box where you type in messages
- A visitor list that contains the following visitor groups:
How to Type In Your Answer or Choose a Template
- When you are in chat with a visitor and Webim Workspace is opened in your browser (see above), start typing your message to the visitor in the chat box.
- While you type, Webim automatically suggests templates that contain this text:
Automatically suggested templates in your Webim chat box:
- Choose one of the templates on this list by pressing keys Up and Down on your keyboard or with your mouse.
- Press
Enter, and an answer which was carefully prepared beforehand will be sent to a visitor.
You can also add the text you typed in as a personal template by clicking Answer templates and choosing Add current message as a predefined template.
How to Process Offline Requests
Offline requests differ from online chats. Such a request can appear in one of the following cases:
- a visitor posted this request on your site by clicking an offline Webim button, when none of agents were online
- a visitor answered one of those automatic invitations, configured to appear when none of agents are online
- a visitor posted this request in a client mobile app for iOS or Android
An offline request does not imply an immediate answer. When some agent answers it, the answer will be sent by email (the send button in the chat box will turn to Send by Email):
If this offline request comes from a mobile app, the answer will be displayed in the same app.
An agent can identify a visitor who uses a mobile app by looking at the Landing Page in Contact Details. For those visitors it will display "iOS Client" or "Android Client" respectively.
How to Change Your Status
An agent can choose any of the following six statuses:
- Online
- Invisible
- Lunch Time
- Before Lunch
- Short Break
- Offline
To change a status, click an arrow located to the right from Online in the header of Webim Control Panel:
Status informs visitors and colleagues about the current work mode of an agent:
- Online - general work mode of an available agent
- Invisible - an agent can assist visitors, chat, have access to all data. Other agents see him/her, but visitors do not, and Webim does not automatically assign chats to such an agent. This status is appropriate for a team leader who does not chat with visitors directly in a normal situation, but when it is critical and all agents are busy or cannot help, this leader joins the conversation.
- Lunch - agents choose this status when they leave for a lunch during a day.
- Before Lunch - agents choose this status in advance before leaving for a lunch. In this mode Webim does not assign chats to such an agent. As soon as all active chats are closed, Webim changes this status to Lunch.
- Short Break - agents choose it when they are off for a short period of time (up to 15 min).
- Offline - an agent does not assist visitors at this time, have no access to chats with visitors and agents and to their data. However, this agent can access all other functionality of Webim Control Panel.
Functionally, there is no difference between Invisible, Lunch and Short Break. Names are different but not the system behaviour.
Webim tracks and saves data including agent status and its changes. This data can be displayed in the Statistics Module, see Stats by Operators Time table/report.
How to Chat with Other Agents
Webim Control Panel allows agents to chat with their colleagues as well as with visitors.
You can use it to take advice, broadcast news, or other information important for work.
To get into inter-agents chat, please open your Workspace and click Agents link at the page header:
Chat window opens:
Inter-agents chat is global, i. e. any agent can see each message by any other agent. There is a list of all agents to the right side of the screen. You can use it to quickly insert names of your cooleagues by clicking them.
If you miss inter-agents chat in your Webim Control Panel, please submit a request to our support service.