Departments
Group agents into teams like Billing or Tier 2 so handoffs route by skill rather than by individual.
A department is a group of agents who share a focus — Billing, Tier 2 Support, Onboarding, whatever fits your team. Departments turn routing from "send this to Alex" into "send this to Billing," which is much easier to maintain when people change roles, take time off, or join the team.
Manage departments at Departments in the sidebar.
What a department gives you
Three things, in order of how often you'll use them:
- Routing. Widget handoff settings can point to a department instead of a person. Whoever's on shift in that department picks up the chat.
- Team metrics. Leads and supervisors see queue volume, response times, and resolution rates rolled up by department.
- Reassignment. Leads can move a chat between teammates or take it over without bouncing through admin.
Create a department
Open the departments page
Go to Departments and click New department.
Name and describe it
Pick a name your team will recognize at a glance, and add a short description of what work belongs to this department.
Add members
Pick teammates from your organization. You can add and remove members at any time.
Save
The department is live. Widgets can now route handoffs to it.
Department roles
Inside a department, each member has one of three roles:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Member | Pick up chats from the queue, reply, and end conversations. |
| Lead | Everything a member can do, plus see team metrics and reassign or take over a teammate's chat. |
| Supervisor | Everything a lead can do, plus edit the department's members and settings. |
A user can be in multiple departments, and their role can differ per department — for example, you might be a supervisor in Billing and a member in Onboarding.
Route handoffs to a department
Department routing is configured per widget. Go to Widgets → (widget) → Handoff → Route to department and pick the department that should receive chats from this widget.
The routing system then offers the conversation to anyone in that department who is online and accepting chats. If no one is available, the widget shows your configured fallback message — see Handoff overview for the wider flow.
If you're not sure how to split a team, start by mirroring how your team already triages tickets in email or another system. Most organizations land on two or three departments before they need more.
Lead and supervisor view
When you're a lead or supervisor, the queue gets two extra controls.
See teammate queues
Filter the queue to show conversations assigned to specific teammates. Use it to spot someone drowning, or someone idle.
Reassign and take over
Move a chat off a teammate's plate — either to another teammate or to yourself. The original assignee gets a notification so they're not surprised, and the new owner picks up where things were left.
This is most useful when:
- A teammate is on a long voice call and can't handle their text queue
- A chat needs domain expertise the original agent doesn't have
- An agent is going off-shift and hasn't released their open chats
Multiple departments per user
A single user can belong to several departments at once. That's good for small teams where one person covers multiple areas — they show up in every queue they're a member of, and their schedule and presence apply uniformly.
For larger teams, prefer narrower membership. Fewer departments per person means fewer notifications and a clearer focus during a shift.
What's next
Voice calls
Join an active voice conversation between a customer and the AI, then take over or assist in real time from your browser.
CRM overview
The Informly CRM keeps your accounts, deals, contacts, and follow-ups in one place so your sales and success teams work from the same data as your support team.