As your business grows, so does the volume and complexity of support tickets. More customers mean more inquiries, covering a wider range of topics, all coming in through different channels.
At some point, manually assigning those tickets becomes inefficient and unsustainable, leading to slower response times and frustrated customers. To keep up, you need a smart automated routing solution that ensures tickets reach the right agents at the right time.
That’s where Zendesk omnichannel routing can help. It enables customer service teams to scale ticket distribution across multiple channels.
In this article, we’ll break down how Zendesk omnichannel routing works, its key benefits, and best practices for setting it up in your Zendesk instance.
But first, let’s start with the basics.
What Is Zendesk Omnichannel Routing?
Zendesk omnichannel routing is a built-in feature enabling you to automatically assign support tickets from email, chat, messaging, and voice channels to the most suitable agent.
Unlike static assignment rules, it dynamically considers the current agent status, capacity, skills, and ticket priority to ensure that each request reaches the right agent at the right time.
Here’s how it works:
Requests are ranked based on pre-set criteria like urgency, complexity, or customer value.
Then, requests are matched with agents who have the right skills and expertise.
The system monitors agent status and workload—dynamically adjusting routing decisions to ensure optimal efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Omnichannel routing is available for all Zendesk users, but your account must meet the following requirements before you can start using the feature:
Zendesk Agent Workspace must be enabled in your Zendesk instance.
Messaging must be activated for live chat routing.
If you have a Chat subscription, either Native Messaging or Sunshine Conversations must be enabled.
Although powerful, omnichannel routing has a few restrictions to keep in mind before you dive deeper:
It doesn’t work well with voicemail-generated tickets and department restrictions (e.g., limiting agent access by brand).
It can only route new or open tickets—pending or on-hold tickets won’t be reassigned.
Skills added to tickets after creation won’t affect routing—only those assigned at ticket creation count.
Operating hours do not automatically update agent availability when using unified agent statuses. Agents must manually update their status. (Although, status is automatically switched to offline if an agent closes the Agent Workspace without signing out or loses network connection.)
And lastly, your light agents cannot be assigned tickets.
How Does Omnichannel Routing Work?
Zendesk’s omnichannel routing acts like a traffic controller, ensuring every customer inquiry reaches the best-suited agent as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It works behind the scenes to streamline ticket assignments so no request falls through the cracks.
Here’s a closer look at how it works:
An inquiry comes in.
Whether it’s an email, chat, or call—Zendesk generates a ticket for it.
And runs it through triggers, assigning the ticket to the right group, setting its priority level, and adding applicable tags.
The system evaluates it
Once triggers have been applied, the system evaluates the ticket against custom Zendesk omnichannel routing queues (if configured) and places it into the first queue that matches the conditions.
3. Omnichannel routing assigns the ticket
Then, omnichannel routing attempts to assign the ticket to an available and eligible agent. If no suitable agents are online at that moment, the ticket remains in the queue until an agent becomes available. There are two types of queues:
Standard omnichannel routing queue: If no custom queues are set up, all tickets are placed here and assigned based on the ticket’s group.
Custom queues (available on Professional and Enterprise plans): If you configure custom queues, tickets are routed to the first eligible queue based on predefined conditions you set. Keep in mind that when an agent can receive tickets from multiple queues, the system will assign work from the queue with the highest priority first.
4. Once a ticket is in the queue, Zendesk assigns it to an agent based on:
Agent availability: Zendesk uses a unified status across all channels. Agents with online status can receive any type of ticket, while those marked away can only receive email tickets.
Capacity limits: You can set the maximum ticket capacity for each channel (email, chat, voice) so agents will only receive new tickets if they haven’t hit their limit.
Assignment method: You can choose between two strategies here—highest spare capacity method (ticket assigned to agents with the most available capacity; if multiple agents have the same capacity, the agent who’s been the longest without an assignment gets the ticket) or round robin method (tickets assigned to agents who have gone the longest since their last assignment, as long as they still have capacity).
5. Once a ticket is assigned, it is removed from the omnichannel routing queue.
Typically, time-sensitive conversations (messaging and calls) are offered to agents rather than being automatically assigned. To ensure optimal response times, omnichannel routing includes smart reassignment logic:
Messages and chats can be reassigned to another agent in the group if the original agent does not accept the work within 30 seconds (this threshold can be customized on the Enterprise plan).
And calls are returned to the queue if an agent declines or doesn’t answer within 30 seconds. The system then assigns the call to another available agent, continuing in a round-robin fashion until the maximum queue waiting time expires.
Here's an example of omnichannel routing in action:
Let’s say a customer from Italy is experiencing an urgent account access issue and emails your support team for help.
A trigger you have set up automatically fires, applying:
An auto-routing tag to mark the ticket for omnichannel routing.
Priority of Urgent.
Level 1 support group.
Requirement for troubleshooting technical skills.
Once the trigger processes the ticket, Zendesk omnichannel routing takes over, placing it in a queue based on the ticket’s priority (Urgent) and its eligible-for-routing timestamp (tickets with the oldest eligible-for-routing timestamp are routed first).
Omnichannel routing then evaluates the ticket against available agents:
It detects five agents available for work.
Then, this is narrowed down to three agents who speak Italian (a required skill for the ticket).
Of those three, two agents also have the necessary technical troubleshooting skills.
Finally, the system selects the agent with the most spare capacity for handling email tickets and assigns the case to them.
Zendesk Omnichannel Routing Features
While omnichannel routing features vary by plan, all Zendesk users have access to essential routing capabilities to manage workload efficiently, such as:
Zendesk omnichannel routing across email, messaging, and calls to unify support operations.
Capacity-based assignment that considers agent workload and availability (giving tickets to agents with the most availability) or round-robin distribution for even workload sharing.
Message reassignment to ensure that no conversation gets left behind if the first agent offered the ticket doesn’t accept it.
Default unified agent statuses to manage availability and focus mode. With focus mode enabled, agents can be online for both voice and chat but only receive tickets from one channel at a time. For example, if an agent is on a call, Zendesk omnichannel routing by chat won’t take him into consideration until the call is complete.
For teams on the Growth plan or higher, Zendesk adds time-based routing, allowing you to prioritize tickets based on service level agreement (SLA) breaches so you can resolve urgent issues before they escalate.
And larger teams on Professional and Enterprise plans gain access to a few additional routing tools, including:
Reassignment of reopened tickets when the original agent is unavailable—a game changer for larger teams where someone is always out of office and another agent needs to step in quickly.
Custom omnichannel routing queues to tailor workflows based on team structure and priority needs.
Custom agent statuses to better reflect your team’s processes like taking out-of-the-queue time for Help Center maintenance or going on holidays.
Zendesk Omnichannel Routing Examples
Now, let’s take a look at a few more examples of how Zendesk’s omnichannel routing works in real-world scenarios.
Skills-based routing: matching customers with the right expertise
(Source)
Imagine a customer reaching out via live chat to report a bug on your checkout page. Instead of landing with a general support agent who might not have the necessary expertise, omnichannel routing classifies the inquiry as a technical issue.
The system then scans your team for agents with the right skills who are trained in troubleshooting software errors. Then Zendesk omnichannel routing for chat automatically assigns it to a qualified agent, ensuring the customer gets proper help right away.
This leads to faster resolutions, fewer escalations, and a better customer experience.
Zendesk omnichannel routing by capacity and agent status to prevent overload and reduce wait times
In a busy call center, sometimes an agent can be handling back-to-back calls while others are available.
When a customer dials your phone number, the system evaluates each agent's status: Who is online? Who has the fewest open tickets? Who just wrapped up a conversation and is ready for the next one?
Instead of blindly assigning calls in a round-robin fashion, the system ensures that work is evenly distributed, preventing agent burnout, reducing customer wait times, and improving key service metrics like first reply time.
After all, long response times are one of the biggest drivers of customer frustration.
Routing by conversation priority to fast-track urgent issues and meet SLAs
Not all support requests are created equal. Some require immediate attention, like when a company’s software crashes.
With priority-based routing, Zendesk can automatically push urgent inquiries to the front of the queue.
For example, if a customer submits a ticket through your web form and marks it as High Priority due to a system outage, the routing system can override the standard first-come, first-served order, sending the request to the first available and qualified agent.
This helps ensure that critical issues are resolved swiftly and SLAs are met.
*Priority-based routing is available on the Growth plan and higher.
AI-powered intelligent routing
Zendesk’s intelligent triage can take things a step further by using AI to analyze customer intent, sentiment, and language before assigning tickets.
While not a default feature of omnichannel routing, intelligent triage can be layered on top to enhance your ticket routing workflows.
For example, when a frustrated customer submits an email in Italian, reporting that the item they received is broken, Zendesk's intelligent triage can automatically detect Damaged Item intent and negative sentiment and route the ticket to an Italian-speaking agent.
*Intelligent triage insights are only included in the Zendesk Advanced AI add-on.
Configuring Zendesk Omnichannel Routing
Once you’ve set up omnichannel routing, you can stick with the default configuration or fine-tune the settings to better match your team’s needs.
Understanding these options helps optimize your ticket distribution and ensure that agents handle customer inquiries as efficiently as possible.
Here’s a breakdown of the key configuration settings and when they’re most helpful.
Global routing options
Global routing options apply across all omnichannel queues, affecting how tickets from emails, messaging, and calls are assigned.
Assignment method
You can choose between two strategies here:
Highest spare capacity method (ticket assigned to agents with the most available capacity; if multiple agents have the same capacity, the agent who's been the longest without an assignment gets the ticket);
Zendesk round robin routing method (tickets assigned to agents who have gone the longest since their last assignment, as long as they still have capacity).
Focus mode
When enabled, it ensures agents only receive work from one real-time channel (e.g., chat or calls) at a time, preventing distractions and improving resolution times for urgent conversations.
Email tickets will still be assigned concurrently, as they are typically less time-sensitive.
Ticket sorting (available on Growth and above)
This option allows you to sort and assign tickets based on either priority and date created (the default setting), ensuring that critical issues are handled first.
Or based on the nearest SLA breach, which is helpful for teams operating under strict SLAs that need to minimize the risk of breaches.
Skills-based routing (available on Professional and above)
This feature helps make sure that tickets go to agents with the right skills, so customers get the best help possible. If you’re thinking about using it, don’t forget to set a skills timeout.
That way, if no agents with the exact skills are available, the ticket can be reassigned after a set time instead of sitting in the queue indefinitely. Without a timeout, tickets could get stuck waiting for the perfect match.
Reassigning reopened tickets (available on Professional and above)
When a solved, pending, or on-hold ticket reopens, this setting determines if it should be reassigned to a different agent based on their current availability.
This helps prevent delays when the original agent is at capacity or vacationing.
Messaging routing options
For messaging tickets, you have a few additional settings to customize:
By default, messaging tickets are offered to agents. But you can choose to automatically assign them, which is useful for high-volume teams that need fast response times as well as for reducing cherry-picking. (Available on the Team plan and above.)
You can also decide if inactive conversations should be counted toward agent capacity. When this setting is enabled, both active and inactive messages count toward an agent’s workload. If inactive messages are excluded, they are still assigned to agents but won’t impact their workload calculations. (Available on the Team plan and above.)
Lastly, if an agent hasn't addressed a chat within a set time, you can automatically reassign unanswered messages to another agent to ensure that customers aren't left waiting too long. The time limit is 30 seconds for professional plan, and you can set a custom time for the enterprise plan. (Available on Professional plans and above.)
Call Routing Options
For teams using skills-based call routing, a skills timeout setting can help ensure calls don’t wait indefinitely. When it’s enabled, calls can “overflow” to agents without the exact skill if needed.
You can also take advantage of custom Zendesk omnichannel routing queues (available on the Professional plan and above) to set up primary and secondary agent groups. And create a smooth escalation path, ensuring that calls get to the best available agent with minimal wait time.
Email Routing Options
Additionally, for email tickets, you can decide whether to automatically open new assignments in a new tab for agents. If disabled, agents will still receive notifications but must manually check their views for new tickets.
This option is useful if you want to minimize distractions for agents and for teams where agents typically handle multiple tasks at once.
5 Best Practices for Getting Omnichannel Routing Right
Zendesk’s omnichannel routing comes packed with features and customization options.
But with so many possibilities, careful planning is key—otherwise, you risk misrouted or lost tickets, delays in response times, and frustrated customers.
To help you set up ticket routing the right way, here are five best practices to follow as you plan and configure omnichannel routing in your Zendesk instance.
Define your goals before configuring routing
Before diving into configuration, take a step back and define what you want to achieve. Your routing setup should align with your company's priorities and customer service goals.
Consider:
Customer needs: Would customers benefit more from fast response times, or should tickets be routed based on agent expertise, language, sentiment, or complexity?
SLAs: Do you have strict response time requirements? Should tickets be prioritized by SLA urgency or handled in a first-come, first-served manner instead?
Team structure: Do you organize agents by specialty (e.g., billing, tech support), ticket severity, or customer tier? Or does everyone work from a single queue and you won’t need to configure custom queues?
Skills-based assignment: What agent attributes determine ticket assignment: seniority, product knowledge, language skills, or channel expertise? Should certain agents always (or never) handle specific topics? Consider what routing rules or triggers you plan to use to add required skills to your incoming tickets so they can be routed to the correct agent.
Workload management: Do your reps sometimes struggle with focus or efficiency? Would setting capacity limits help ensure fair distribution and prevent burnout?
Before jumping into your Zendesk settings, take a moment to answer these questions and consider what routing option best fits your team’s goals—whether it’s Zendesk omnichannel routing by skills, intent, SLA urgency, or agent capacity.
Balance fairness and efficiency
Zendesk offers two ways to assign tickets:
Capacity-based assignment, where agents receive tickets based on their workload.
Round-robin assignment, where tickets are evenly distributed among agents.
While round-robin ensures fairness, capacity-based assignment can be useful for high-performance teams—allowing a rep working on a complex issue to pause new assignments until they catch up, while other “lucky” reps with simpler tickets that day keep going.
That said, consider the impact on your top performers. Will they feel penalized for being more efficient? An open discussion with your team can help strike the right balance.
Solving a complex issue or dealing with a rude customer over chat isn’t exactly fun. Some reps would jump at the chance to tackle challenges while others would do what they can to avoid tricky conversations.
If you enable messaging reassignment timing—where a ticket is reassigned if it isn’t addressed within a set timeframe—keep an eye on how it plays out with your team.
Sometimes, even with a solid routing setup, customer chats mysteriously get dodged, with agents finding ways to avoid accepting them.
If you notice this happening with complex chats, consider enabling auto-accept for messaging tickets. This helps prevent sneaky avoidance patterns, ensures fairer distribution, and keeps things running smoothly.
Set a skills timeout to balance workload
Skills-based routing is great for ensuring customers get expert help. But what happens when skilled agents are overloaded, and specialized tickets sit untouched for hours?
That’s where skills timeout setting can be helpful. It ensures that if a ticket requiring specialized knowledge (like API troubleshooting) isn’t picked up within a set timeframe, it can be reassigned to another agent who might not be an expert but can still take a first stab using internal documentation.
For example, instead of that API troubleshooting ticket sitting idle for an hour, a tech-savvy agent can step in, attempt an initial resolution, and escalate if needed.
This helps to balance workload, reduce wait times, and improve the customer experience.
Enable ticket reassignment for reopened cases
Agents aren’t online 24/7, and they (hopefully!) take time off. But customer inquiries don’t always arrive when the original agent is available.
That’s why setting up automatic reassignment for reopened email and messaging tickets is a smart move:
Since chat requires immediate attention, it’s best to route reopened cases to an available agent—even if the original agent is away on a short break.
Emails, on the other hand, can typically wait if the agent is stepping away for a bit. But if they’re on vacation for two weeks, reassignment ensures customers don’t experience unnecessary delays.
To minimize handoff friction, you can require agents to leave detailed internal notes before logging out and use a custom ticket field or tags like do-not-reassign for cases where continuity can be helpful.
You can also decide whether reassigned tickets should be prioritized over new ones—either by following the standard queue logic or using custom queues, depending on your service level objectives.
More Ways to Automate Your Support Workflow
With Zendesk omnichannel routing, your team can deliver faster, more efficient support across all channels. But why stop there?
You can take automation even further with add-ons like Swifteq, which fills functionality gaps with tools like ChatGPT integration, Merge Zendesk Tickets and Macro Export.
Ready to level up your Zendesk support operations? Book a free demo today and see how Swifteq can give you even more control over support automation, ticket management, and overall customer experience.
Written by Maryna Paryvai
Maryna is a results-driven CX executive passionate about efficient and human-centric customer support. She firmly believes that exceptional customer experiences lie at the heart of every successful business.