When one person handles WhatsApp there is nothing to distribute. With three, the classic problem appears: two reply to the same conversation and a third goes unanswered. This guide prevents that.
Who it's for: whoever administers the account, to set it up; and any agent, for the day-to-day. Screen: your inbox.
Before you start
- Decide who handles what. If it's two people and everything is the same, assigning conversations to yourself by hand is enough. If there's sales on one side and support on the other, it's worth setting up teams.
- Be clear about your service hours. That's what decides what happens to whatever comes in during the night.
Steps
Take a conversation
- In the Unassigned («Sin asignar») tab, open the one you want to handle.
- At the top, where the assignee is shown, pick yourself.
- Done: it moves to Mine («Mías») and the rest of the team sees it's taken.
That's the whole mechanism. The rest is about avoiding having to do it by hand every time.
Hand it over to someone else
Same assignee box: you pick whoever it should go to. The whole conversation travels with its history, so whoever receives it sees everything that was discussed.
Before handing it over, it's worth leaving a private note («nota privada») explaining where things stand. The person receiving it appreciates it, and people outside never see it.
Set up teams
If you have more than two or three agents, grouping them by responsibility saves arguments.
- Go to Settings → Teams («Ajustes → Equipos») and create one. For example, Sales and Support.
- Add the right people. Someone can be in several.
- When assigning a conversation, you can pick the team instead of the person.
Let it distribute itself
This is what really changes your day. In each channel's settings you can enable new conversations to be distributed automatically among the agents who are online, in turns.
With that, "Unassigned" stops filling up: every conversation that comes in already has an owner.
What you see when you're done
Every conversation has a visible owner. The Unassigned tab stays close to zero, and in Reports → Agents («Informes → Agentes») you see how much each person handled and how long they took on the first reply.
If something goes wrong
- You assign to a team and it's left without an owner: the team exists but doesn't have automatic distribution enabled. Enable it or assign to a specific person.
- Automatic distribution isn't distributing: it only considers agents who are online. If nobody has marked themselves available, there's no one to assign to.
- Two people replied to the same thing: it happens when people work from "All" («Todos») instead of "Mine". Get the team used to taking the conversation before writing.
- You can't create teams or change settings: those screens are only for whoever administers the account.
When to ask 24/7 Support for help
If automatic distribution is enabled and everything still lands in "Unassigned", or if you assign to someone and that person doesn't see it in their inbox. 24/7 Support: https://whatsappmarketing.zendesk.com/hc/es