Can I turn off Chat if my queue is too busy?

Question

I have a limited number of agents online in Chat and want to stop new chats from coming in if all agents are serving chats. Is it possible to turn off the Chat function after a certain number of customers are chatting in?

Answer

It is not natively possible to disable Chat after a certain number of visitors are actively chatting with agents. There are two main workarounds to this limitation:

Option 1: Use a Chat trigger to reply to customers. For more information on how to implement this workaround, see the following:

• Recipe: Auto-reply to a customer requesting a chat when your queue is large
• Send messages to your customers waiting in the queue

Option 2: Use the real-time APIs with the widget Javascript APIs to create custom code. Leveraging these APIs can show or hide the widget based on the current number of chats in the queue.

Note: Custom API code requires developer resources and is not directly supported. If you do not have a developer on hand, contact the professional services team.

For more information about monitoring live chat or messaging, see this article: How can I oversee conversations in messaging and live chats?