Process email interactions from the Control Panel

If your Contact Center admin has enabled the new email experience, when an email is offered, you can accept, reply to emails, and view the thread in the Control Panel. The new email experience aims to improve how emails are handled in 8x8 Contact Center by allowing agents to:

• View the sender’s email address in the same panel.
• Handle emails and view the thread in same panel.
• See attachments easily and the email they are associated with.
• Have their productivity reported in Analytics.

Accept email interactions

8x8 Contact Center directs emails to agents via an email queue. The agent must be in the Available state to receive the incoming emails. When an incoming email is offered to an agent, a notification appears indicating an incoming request. The agent can accept, or if permitted by administrators, reject the request. On accepting, the agent's status changes to Busy. On rejecting the email, the agent's status changes to Working Offline.

Prerequisites

To receive emails, an agent must be:

• In the Available status.
• Assigned to an enabled email queue.

Note: You can view or edit your queue assignments under My assigned queues. For details, refer to view your assigned queues.

If an email queue has pending emails, you can:

• Accept one email at a time.
• Pull all queued emails at once.

Notes:
- Pulling emails is a privilege given by the administrator in Configuration Manager.
- You cannot receive emails (including attachments) larger than 30 MB via email channels.

Accept one email at a time

1. Log in to 8x8 Agent WorkspaceThe brand new interface for 8x8 Contact Center agents to receive and process customer interactions..
2. Click Ready to work to start the session.
3. Click My assigned queues and make sure you are part of the email queue. To learn more, refer to View your assigned queues.
4. Click the Change status icon and change your status to Available.
   If you have an incoming email, the email notification in the Control Panel indicates the incoming email interaction.
5. Preview the customer or case data, and click to accept the email. Accept the interaction before the acceptance timer ticking down around the accept call icon expires.
6. Your status changes to Busy. A case tab pops in the Display Panel.
7. Click Reply from the Control Panel.
   

Note: Clicking displays more options such as Forward or Transfer the email.


8. Type the response in the Control Panel.

Note: To preview the original email, click the Show trimmed content icon in the message panel.

9. Click next to the contact’s name.
10. Select a From address for your reply.
11. Click to send the email.
    The post-processing time initiates if your administrator has set it up for your tenant. Post-processing gives you time to wrap up notes for the chat. While in post-processing, you can view the chat transcript by clicking Email transcript from the top of the Info section on the Control Panel.
    
12. Click Wrap up.

Note: If post-processing times out your status will change to Available.

13. The case is updated with the reply email and the app sets your status to Available. Click Work Offline if you need more time to complete any post-processing task.

Pull emails

Note: You can only pull emails if your administrator grants you permission.

You can pull emails from your assigned queues at any time, even if the queues are not enabled, regardless of your status or the limit set by the admin for handling blended interactions.

Let's say you are on the phone with a customer who says they sent two emails with pictures of a damaged product they received to the support email address. The emails were routed to the email queue, but you are not enabled to serve emails at the moment. As an agent, you can pull the emails simultaneously from My assigned queues, to assess the damage and speed up the resolution of the case. Click Stop new to prevent the system from offering new interactions, select the emails you wish to pull, and click Accept interaction. The emails open separately in the Control Panel, and you can reply to the emails individually.