Channels

One queue. Six ways in.

Most platforms bolt each channel on as its own product with its own rules, its own reporting and its own idea of who is available. Here a chat and a phone call enter the same flow, wait in the same queue and reach the same person.

The same routing, whatever the transport

Skills, strategy, priority, overflow and service level are properties of the queue — not of the channel that happened to arrive.

ChannelHow it arrivesAnsweredHandled as
VoiceA phone number pointed at a flowImmediately, by AI or a personLive
Web chatA widget key pointed at the same flowImmediately, by AI or a personLive
SMSYour number, two-wayImmediately, by AI or a personLive, then a ticket if it goes quiet
WhatsAppBusiness messagingImmediately, by AI or a personLive, then a ticket if it goes quiet
Messenger & InstagramConnected page or accountImmediately, by AI or a personLive, then a ticket if it goes quiet
EmailYour support addressBy AI or a person, against a response targetTicket, with a sticky owner

A chat widget key points at a flow the same way a phone number does, so you can point both at the identical flow and maintain one set of logic. Every channel can be handled by the AI or by a person — that is a branch in the flow, not a property of the channel, so you can put the AI on WhatsApp and keep the phone on your team, or the reverse.

Channel by channel

What each one actually does here, rather than a logo grid implying they are all equivalent.

Voice

Real telephony, not a browser toy

SIP and RTP end to end, with your own carrier or numbers from us. Encrypted signalling and media on the desktop clients. Attended and blind transfer, multi-party conference, hold, mute, disposition codes and wrap-up. Recording is configured per flow, with a spoken disclosure where consent law requires one and a pause control so card numbers are never captured.

Web chat

A widget that behaves like a conversation

Typing indicators, a pre-chat form, file attachments, sound cues, and an end-of-chat rating that feeds the same CSAT reporting as voice. The widget key points at a flow exactly as a phone number does, so the same greeting, the same business hours and the same queue serve both.

SMS

Two-way, on your own numbers

Routed through the same queues as everything else. A conversation that goes quiet becomes a ticket rather than vanishing, and a customer who replies days later lands back on the same thread instead of starting again with someone new.

Email

Tickets with a sticky owner

A reply comes back to the person who answered it. Signatures layer per agent over an account default, CC and BCC work properly — BCC in the envelope only, never as a header — and attachments resolve from the same store the chat widget uses.

WhatsApp

A first-class channel

Business messaging routed by the same engine, not a forwarded inbox someone checks between calls.

Social

Messenger and Instagram

Conversations from a connected page or account land in the queue beside everything else, so a customer who asks on Instagram is not a lower class of customer.

What makes digital actually work

The difference between a channel that is listed and a channel that is usable is almost entirely in the edge cases.

Handoff keeps the thread

Move a conversation to another agent or another queue and the history moves with it — the customer never re-explains.

Offers that don't go stale

An unaccepted chat offer is pulled back after a timeout, the customer keeps their place in the queue, and the next agent is tried.

Nobody offers a ghost

If the customer has closed the tab, the conversation ends rather than occupying an agent who is waiting to talk to nobody.

Response targets

Set a first-reply and next-reply target per queue. A breach is recorded and raised, not discovered later.

Collision detection

If two agents open the same ticket, each sees that the other is there, so the customer does not receive two different answers.

Async that resumes

A customer who replies days later returns to the same thread and, where it makes sense, the same agent.

How capacity actually works

The single most common way omnichannel goes wrong is treating a phone call and a chat as the same unit of work. They are not.

A voice call takes all of someone's attention. A chat takes a fraction of it.

So agents carry two separate capacities: one voice call, and a number of concurrent chats you set. An agent holding three chats still receives a phone call. An agent on a phone call keeps their existing chats flowing but is not offered a new one until the call ends — interrupting a live conversation to start another is how quality collapses.

That is standard practice in the industry, and it is worth stating explicitly because a platform that ignores it looks better on a capacity chart and worse on the phone.

One agent, at one moment
StateVoiceNew chat?
AvailableOffered
Holding 2 chatsOffered
Holding 2 chatsRingingOffered
On a callTalkingPaused
At chat capacityPaused
Existing chats keep flowing in every row. Only new offers pause.

Where the agent works

Every channel in one place, with the same controls.

In the browser

A full workspace with real WebRTC calling — nothing to install, which matters for a team that changes shape often.

On macOS and Windows

Native desktop softphones with encrypted signalling and media, for people who live on the phone all day.

One inbox

Calls, chats, messages and email tickets side by side, with transfer, conference, hold and disposition working the same way across them.

There is no mobile app today.

Put every channel in one place

One team, one queue, one report.

Email and web chat are free — you are never charged per message.

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