Customer service
WhatsApp Conversation Routing: Send Every Chat to the Right Team Automatically
When every new chat lands in one pile, the wrong person answers or nobody does. Here is how to group your agents, route by topic and working hours, and keep an owner on every conversation.
MonoChat Team Updated: 4 min read
On this page
WhatsApp conversation routing means deciding, by rule, which person or team receives each new chat. A small business can get by with one phone passed around. Once several agents share a number, the question changes from “who is online?” to “who should answer this?”. Without routing, chats sit unclaimed because everyone assumes someone else has them, or two people reply to the same customer.
This guide covers what to route on, how to build it in a shared inbox and what to check once it runs.
Why routing matters
- Faster first replies. A chat that arrives with an owner is answered sooner than one waiting to be noticed. See chat support metrics and SLAs for the numbers to track.
- The right skills. Billing questions, technical problems and sales enquiries need different people.
- No double replies. One conversation has one owner, so customers do not get two answers.
- Fair workload. Chats are shared across a team instead of landing on whoever is quickest to click.
- A plan for after hours. Chats outside opening hours get an honest reply and an owner for the morning.
What to route on
| Signal | Example rule | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Channel | Chats on the sales number go to Sales, chats on the support number to Support | The channel or channel type of the session |
| Customer tags | Customers tagged vip go to the senior team | Customer tags, see customer segmentation with tags |
| Time | Outside working hours, send an out-of-hours message | Working hours saved for your team |
| Customer’s answer | The customer taps “Billing” in a menu | A button or list reply earlier in the chat |
| Returning customer | A reopened chat goes back to the same team | The session’s history |
Start with one or two signals. Every extra rule is one more thing to maintain.
Build the routing in MonoChat
1. Group your agents into workgroups
Workgroups are named groups of users, for example Sales, Billing and Technical Support. Create them under Settings, Team, Workgroups, add the users, and give a user supervisor status inside the group where someone leads it. Our guide to roles and permissions in a team inbox explains what each person should be allowed to see and do.
2. Save your working hours
Set the hours for each day under Settings, Team, Working Hours. Flows can read them, so you change your hours in one place and every flow follows.
3. Build the assignment flow
In the flow designer, start from the New Session Created event, which fires when a new session starts with a customer. Then add conditions and actions:
- Within Working Hours checks the current time against the hours you saved, in your account’s time zone.
- Customer Tag, Channel and Channel Type conditions branch the flow by who is writing and where.
- Assign Session gives the session to an agent or a workgroup.
- On the out-of-hours branch, send a short reply with your opening time before or instead of assigning.
A simple first flow has three branches: in hours and sales number, in hours and support number, and out of hours.
4. Let the customer choose
When you cannot tell the topic from the number or the tags, ask. A message with up to three reply buttons, such as “Sales”, “Billing” and “Support”, costs the customer one tap, and the flow routes on the answer. Our guide to WhatsApp interactive messages covers buttons and lists.
5. Hand over from an AI agent
If an AI agent answers first, route the conversation to a workgroup when a person is needed, and pass on what was already said. Read AI-to-human handoff for the triggers worth using.
6. Reassign by hand when needed
Rules never cover everything. The assignment dropdown at the top right of the inbox lists every user and workgroup, so an agent can pass a chat on, and a supervisor can reassign a whole workgroup’s chats in bulk. If a bulk assignment goes to a workgroup with no agent available, MonoChat reports an error instead of failing silently.
A routing checklist
- List the teams that answer customers today and what each one handles.
- Create a workgroup for each, with at least two people so absence does not stall it.
- Save your working hours and decide what the out-of-hours reply says.
- Build the flow with the fewest rules that work.
- Test it from a phone that is not yours: one chat in hours, one out of hours, one with a tagged customer.
- After a week, look at unassigned chats and reassignments. Many reassignments mean a rule routes to the wrong team.
Common mistakes
- Too many workgroups. Five teams of one person each is a rota, not a routing problem.
- No out-of-hours branch. The customer writes at 22:00 and hears nothing until someone opens the inbox.
- Routing on tags nobody sets. A tag only helps if a flow, an agent or an import sets it. See customer segmentation with tags.
- Forgetting the unassigned view. A new contact starts unassigned. Check the Opened list regularly, in case no rule matched.
How MonoChat helps
MonoChat puts WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and web chat messages in one shared team inbox, with workgroups, working hours and flows for routing. You can connect the WhatsApp Business API to your own number. Start on the free Basic plan (one agent, one channel) at app.monochat.ai, and see the pricing page for larger teams.
Sources
Put this into practice with MonoChat