You may need to delete agents when they leave your team. In such cases, what should you do before deleting the agent? What impact will the deletion have on the reporting statistics? Can the agent’s history chats and tickets be tracked? This article explains the impact of the deletion, and the best practices you should take before deleting an agent.

The Impact of Deleting Agents

Deleting an agent affects the data displayed in the Comm100 system, and an agent’s access on your integrated platform in some cases. Please be aware of the impact before making the decision.

Impact on History Chats

The history tickets and chats of a deleted agent are still saved in the Comm100 system. 

You can find the agent’s history chats in the Live Chat > History > Chats tab, with the agent marked as deleted. However, the deleted agent option disappears from the Agent drop-down list, so you cannot filter out the agent’s chats alone. To filter the chats handled by deleted agents, you need to export all the chats first, and use the filter function in Microsoft Excel.

Impact on History Tickets

Comm100 Ticketing & Messaging system saves all the incoming tickets. On the Agent Console, all the tickets appear in the default All View. Deleting an agent does not remove the history tickets in the View. 

If you delete the default All view, you need to make sure there is a View that includes the tickets assigned to the deleted agent; otherwise, you will be unable to track the history tickets.

Impact on Reporting Statistics

Comm100 provides various reports covering aspects of chat volume, agent performance, and visitor satisfaction. You can view live chat and ticket reports from multiple perspectives, such as by time, by department, by campaign, and by agent.

For reports showing overall chat statistics, which are based on the site, deleting agents does not change the numbers. For example, in the Real Time report, the chat numbers remain the same after the deletion. Similar to the case of history chats, the agent disappears from the Control Panel after deletion, so you cannot view the history data of that agent alone. Therefore, after you delete an agent, you may find that the sum of the chats of each agent does not equal the total chats number.

For reports showing agent performance, which are based on existing agents, deleting agents directly changes the numbers. For example, in the Workload report, the total, average, and percentage numbers are calculated based on existing agents only; the history chats of deleted agents are not counted.  

Impact on Mapped Cisco Agents

If you are using Comm100 Live Chat on Cisco Finesse, and the agent you want to delete is mapped with a Cisco agent, deleting the Comm100 agent will break the mapping relationship, and the previously mapped Cisco agent will be denied access to Comm100 Agent Console. To learn more about mapped Cisco agents, see this article.

Actions to Take Before Deleting Agents

Before performing the delete action, you must ensure that the agent will no longer be involved in your service system. To achieve this, you need to reassign the ongoing tickets already assigned to the agent, change routing rules for future chat requests and tickets, and check the settings which may involve the agent.

Reassign Agents’ Tickets

Reassign the agent’s tickets that have not been resolved to ensure effective follow-ups.

Follow these steps to reassign the agent’s ongoing tickets:

1. Log in to Comm100 Agent Console.
2. In the Ticketing & Messaging tab, click the Manage Views button.
   
3. Click New View in the Manage Views window.
4. Create a View for the unresolved tickets assigned to the agent using Assignee and Status as the condition. The following shows an example.
   
5. Select all the tickets in the View, and click the Edit button.
   
6. Choose another agent in the Agent Assignee dropdown list.
7. Click OK. The agent’s unresolved tickets are now reassigned successfully.
   
   

Change Routing Rules

Change routing rules involving the agent to ensure that the chats and tickets routed to that agent will go to other team members. Otherwise, the chat requests and tickets from your clients may have no response.

Follow the steps to change routing rules:

1. Log in to Comm100 Control Panel.
   
   Note: You need to use an account with the permission to manage agents. Admin account is recommended.
2. From the left navigation menu, go to the corresponding menu based on your needs.
   • To reassign an agent’s chats, go to Live Chat > Campaign > Routing Rules.
   • To reassign an agent’s tickets, go to Ticketing & Messaging > Settings > Routing Rules. If you are using multiple campaigns, make sure to choose the correct campaign from the drop-down list. 
3. In the Routing Rules list, locate the custom rule that routes chats to the agent you want to delete.
   
   Note: If you are using Business Plan with no custom rules, check if your chats are being routed to the agent you want to delete, and change the agent if it is the case.
   
   
4. Click the edit button in the Operations column.
5. On the Edit Rule drawer, select another agent from the drop-down list and click OK.
6. In the When Visitors Fail to Be Routed Based on Any of the Custom Rules section, make sure the chats are not being routed to the agent to delete.
   
   The routing rules are now changed successfully.
   
   

Check Settings in Related Modules

Apart from reassigning the agents’ chats and tickets, you also need to check other settings which may involve the agent, and make necessary modifications before deleting agents.

• Live chat shift arrangement
  Check agent schedules in Live Chat > Settings > Shifts. Make sure your team will stay organized to serve your customers after removing the agent.
• Segmentation settings
  In Live Chat > Settings > Segmentation, check if the agent is being notified for a visitor segment and make necessary modifications.
• Trigger actions
  In Ticketing & Messaging > Settings > Triggers, check that the agent is not involved in the Action settings of a Trigger.
• SLA Policy conditions
  In Ticketing & Messaging > Settings > SLA Policies, check that the agent is not used as a condition of an SLA policy. Deleting the agent used as an SLA condition may invalidate the SLA policy.
• Bot actions
  If you are using Bot, you also need to check Bot action settings. On the Control Panel, check the settings of Task Bot and Chatbot, make sure that the agent is not involved in a bot action, for example, in the Transfer chat option.