Engage Digital | Intro to categories

Categories are labels assigned to messages that are handled on the platform. You can use categories to identify the message channel as well as what those messages may be about. Categories have several purposes:

Statistics and reporting based on a theme
Organizing agents by skills
Organizing folders by categories
Dispatching messages in Routing mode
Allowing agents to see the categorization of a message

For example, you create a parent category called support issues, with subcategories such as security issue, configuration issue, technical question, and feature request. You use these categorizations of messages to route messages to the agents most capable of handling the messages. For example, when a message is categorized as a security issue, you configure a rule to route the message to your Security team.

There are several types of categories that you can configure. A skill category is used to route interactions. An analytics category is only for reporting purposes and will not be used to route interactions. A disposition category adds a category at the conclusion of a case.

If you are using the Routing mode, creating skill categories is crucial for routing messages to agents correctly. Messages are routed, in part, due to categories. If you are using the Inbox view, you can create folders using queries based on categories to show messages with a better organization making it easier for your agents to intervene on messages.

Parent categories and subcategories

Parent categories are the top-level labels assigned to messages that are handled on the platform. Parent categories provide a grouping, or organizational structure for messages, while subcategories provide the specific categorization that is needed for the fine-grained distribution of messages. Parent categories also provide the configuration settings which are inherited by the child subcategories.

For example, in the previous example of a parent category called support issue, the support issues parent category provides a useful grouping of the most common support issues the business sees, while the subcategories help effectively dispatch messages to specific agents or teams trained to handle those issues.

You can organize categories into hierarchies of up to six levels consisting of parent categories and nested subcategories. Creating this parent category and subcategory structure allows you to have better organization across your account. Additionally, when you have integrated the application with your customer relationship management software, you may want to configure a consistent set of categories across the applications.

Agent use of categories

While handling messages in the Routing mode or Inbox, an agent can see the category or categories that have been assigned to a message. This provides a visual indicator of the subject matter of the message when working on a message, or browsing a message to work in the Inbox view.