Route Web Chat to an Agent Stack

By default, conversations from a Web Chat widget land in the default team’s queue. If you want an Agent Stack to handle them autonomously — answering common questions, escalating to a human only when needed — you flip routing to AI in the widget’s Routing tab.

Before you start

• The widget exists. If not, create one first.
• The Agent Stack you want to route to is already built and tested in Settings → Agent Stacks.

Steps

1. Open Settings → Web Chat and click your widget.
2. Open the Routing tab.
3. Enable AI routing for this widget.
4. Pick the main agent — the top-level Agent Stack that owns incoming conversations. The picker shows every Agent Stack in your tenant.
5. Save.

The next conversation that starts from this widget goes straight to the Agent Stack, not to the human team’s queue.

Verify it worked

• Open your site, start a chat from the widget, and send a message.
• The Agent Stack should reply within a few seconds.
• In Atender’s inbox, the conversation shows the Agent Stack as the responder rather than appearing on the team’s queue.

How escalation works

The Agent Stack handles the conversation until one of its escalation triggers fires. Escalation typically means:

• The Agent Stack hands the conversation to a specialist agent inside the same stack, which is invisible to the visitor — they see one continuous chat.
• The Agent Stack hands the conversation to a human team for further handling. At that point the conversation appears in the team’s queue and an agent picks it up.

Escalation triggers are configured inside the Agent Stack itself — see Agent Stacks.

Mixed routing

A widget routes to either the default team or an Agent Stack — not both at the same time. If you want some conversations to skip AI (for example, “billing” inquiries should go straight to humans), build that logic inside the Agent Stack. The stack can escalate certain topics immediately rather than attempting to handle them.

When to use AI routing vs team routing

• AI routing is right when you have an Agent Stack that’s been tested against your real use cases, your knowledge base is in good shape, and you want first response in seconds rather than minutes.
• Team routing is right when human judgment is required from the first message — high-touch sales, sensitive complaints, regulated industries.

You can always switch back — toggle off AI routing and incoming conversations will go straight to the default team.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The Agent Stack dropdown is empty. Fix: You haven’t built any Agent Stacks yet. Go to Settings → Agent Stacks and create one.

• Symptom: Routing is set to AI but conversations still go to the team. Fix: Confirm you saved after enabling AI routing. If you did, the widget may be cached — hard-refresh the visitor-facing page or test from a private browsing window.

• Symptom: The Agent Stack replies, but escalation to a human isn’t working. Fix: Escalation behavior is internal to the Agent Stack. Open the stack in Settings → Agent Stacks and review its escalation rules.

See also

• Agent Stacks
• The Web Chat widget