Routing exists to save two people time
Good routing saves the visitor a re-explanation and saves the agent a transfer. Bad routing adds a dropdown, a queue, and a handoff to reach the same outcome. Before you build any routing rule, name the moment it prevents: the billing question that lands on a salesperson, the enterprise lead that waits behind password resets. If you cannot name it, you do not need the rule yet.
Departments: only if they route to different people
A department picker is worth it when "Sales" and "Support" genuinely reach different queues staffed by different people with different goals. It is theater when every option lands in the same place — you have added friction to the visitor and learned nothing. Keep the list short (two or three), label it in the visitor's words, and make sure each choice changes who answers.
Skills-based routing: match the question to the expert
As a team grows, not every agent is equal on every topic. Tagging agents with skills — and tagging conversations or tickets with the skill they need — lets the hard API question find the person who can actually answer it, instead of bouncing through two transfers first. Start with the three or four topics that most often need a specialist; over-tagging just recreates the same queue with more labels.
Let intent do the routing before the visitor does
The best routing often needs no dropdown at all. The page a visitor is on, a proactive invitation they accepted, or what they type first is a stronger signal than a menu they click impatiently. A chat opened on the pricing page is probably sales; the AI layer reading the first message can hand off with context already attached.
Design the transfer, not just the assignment
- Carry the context. A transfer that makes the visitor repeat themselves undoes the point of routing. Pass the transcript and any tags along.
- Name the wait. "Connecting you with our billing specialist — one moment" turns a silent pause into a promise.
- Have a fallback. If the target queue is empty, the chat should land somewhere staffed, not vanish.
Measure whether it worked
Track transfers per chat and time-to-right-agent. If routing is healthy, most conversations resolve where they land and transfers are rare. Rising transfers mean your rules are guessing wrong — simplify them. In MyLiveChat, departments and agent assignment are configurable, so tightening a rule is a settings change you can test against the next week of traffic.