Setting up email channels in Zoom Contact Center

Zoom Contact Center admins can enable the Google or Office 365 Email channel to receive and respond to consumer emails through Zoom Contact Center flows. This allows integrating email engagements into existing workflows to provide a unified cross-channel experience. Consumers benefit from personalized and automated email responses.

After setting up the email channel, agents can use email controls in the Zoom desktop app.

Requirements for setting up email channels

• Pro, Business, or Education account
• Account owner or admin privileges; or relevant role/privilege (Queue Management privilege)
• Zoom Contact Center license
• Zoom Contact Center Premium or Elite package
• Owner or admin access to an Office 365 or Google account
• Email queue created
• Flow created in email channel

How to change email queue settings

After creating an email queue, you should pay attention to the following settings. Learn more about queue settings.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin or another role with the privilege to edit queue settings.
2. In the navigation menu, click Contact Center Management then Queues.
3. Click the display name of the email queue you want to edit.
4. In the Inbound Settings section, change these settings:

Engagement distribution

Configure how incoming emails are distributed to agents:

Longest idle: Routes engagements to the member who has been in the Ready status for the longest time.

• If the member that has been idle the longest does not answer, the system will rotate to the next member that has been idle for the longest time.
• Notify duration for each queue user: Select the amount of time the queue will ring each member. Make sure to take note of the Max Wait Duration setting when selecting the notify duration.

Longest Idle while Ready: Routes engagements to the member who has been in the Ready status for the longest time since their status changed from Not Ready.

• If the member that has been idle the longest does not answer, the system will rotate to the next member that has been idle for the longest time.

Sequential: Rings available members one at a time.

• After selecting this option, specify the ring duration for each member until the Max Wait Duration setting is reached.
• Click Specify Order to rearrange the order by clicking and dragging each row or clicking the arrow icons.
• Notify duration for each queue user: Select the amount of time the queue will ring each member. Make sure to take note of the Max Wait Duration setting when selecting the notify duration.

Rotating: Rings available members in a regularly changing order so that engagements are distributed evenly.

• Specify the ring duration for each member until the Max Wait Duration setting is reached.
• Notify duration for each queue user: Select the amount of time the queue will ring each member. Make sure to take note of the Max Wait Duration setting when selecting the notify duration.

Simultaneous: Notifies all available queue users at the same time. This setting:

• Cannot be used with Auto enabled for Engagement Acceptance.
• Incompatible with Release inactive emails to queue.
• Ensures quick agent response by allowing anyone available to pick up the email.

Do Not Distribute: Enables agents to manually select emails from the queue.

• Useful when agents are permitted to access Open engagements.
• Agents can assign engagements to themselves; supervisors can assign to any user in the queue.
• Incompatible with Release inactive emails to queue.
• Enables cherry-picking workflows when desired.

Most Available: Automatically routes the engagement to the user with the lowest current load.

• Supports Auto for Engagement Acceptance.
• Compatible with advanced settings like Last Engaged Agent First.
• Promotes balanced workload across agents.

Release inactive emails to queue based on agent status

• If a customer replies to an open email engagement assigned to an agent:
  • The engagement can be automatically released back to the queue if the agent is:
    • In Not Ready status
    • Offline

Last Engaged Agent First (Sticky agent logic)

• Works only with auto-distribution types such as Most Available.
• You can configure a look-back period between 1 minute and 72 hours.
• If a matching agent is found who previously engaged with the customer within the look-back period, the engagement will be routed to that agent if they are:
  • Available
  • Not at max load

Example

You can choose to use all queue data or restrict the matching logic to specific queues for determining the last engaged agent.

Email Signature

Admins can configure email signatures for your agents at queue level and at account level (in Preferences). This configuration can be locked or unlocked at account level.

Service Levels

Service Levels can be configured for the email channel at account level and queue level. Learn more about the Service Level metric.

How to connect an email account

To establish email channels:

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin or another role with the privilege to edit account settings.
2. In the navigation menu, click Contact Center Management then Preferences.
3. In the Email Engagements section, click Connect New Email and select either Sign in with Google or Sign in with Microsoft.
4. Sign in with your Google or Microsoft account and follow the on-screen instructions to connect to your Google or Microsoft account.
5. (Optional) Click the ellipses icon , then click Rename to change the Sender Name for the connected email account. The Sender Name is the display name shown to consumers that receive the email.

How to add the connected email account as an entry point

Once the email account is successfully connected, you will see the email address with a Connected status. The connected email account will be available as an entry point for email flows. Follow the instructions to add an entry point to an email flow.

How to change account-level email engagement settings

After setting up an email queue, flow, and connected accounts, change email engagement settings like handling rules and email signature.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an admin or another role with the privilege to edit account settings.
2. In the navigation menu, click Contact Center Management then Preferences.
3. In the Email Engagements section, change these settings:
   • Outbound Email: Click the toggle to enable agents and supervisors to send outbound email messages to consumers. Assign a default email account to send all outbound email messages for email queues with outbound enabled.
   • Inactive Engagements
     • An active engagement is one in which the end-user is currently actively participating in the conversation, which usually is highly asynchronous in an email engagement. So the engagements assigned to an agent and awaiting an agent response can be considered active because the expectation is that the agent will need to spend time reading and responding to the user’s last message
     • An inactive engagement means the consumer is not participating in an email engagement after a period of time (time threshold can be different based on channel type). An email engagement becomes inactive once an agent clicks Mark Awaiting Reply after sending a response to the end-consumer. Inactive engagements are less weighted than active engagements. They take less capacity of the agent so that they can be focused on other active engagements
     • Change these settings to determine how inactive engagements are handled:
       • Weight of inactive engagements: Active and inactive engagements can be assigned different engagement weights to optimize agent efficiency. Specify a “weight” that adjusts an inactive engagement’s proportion of the agent’s allowed maximum concurrency. The range is 0.01 to 1.
         • Example:
           • Maximum concurrent email engagement = 15
           • Active engagement weight = 1
           • Inactive engagement weight = 0.5
         • So for example - The agent currently has 15 engagements assigned out of which 13 are active and 2 are inactive.
         • Actual concurrent email engagement = (13 * 1) + (2 * 0.5) = 14
         • In this case, the agent can receive one more email engagement.
       • Auto-close inactive engagements if the consumer doesn't reply after: Set the number of hours that an engagement needs to be inactive for it to be auto closed.
   • File Sharing: Click the toggle to enable or disable agents’ ability to send files in email engagements.
     • Restrictions: If file sharing is enabled, set file type and size restrictions.
       Note: For security reasons, certain file types such as .sh, .exe, .bat, .js, .msi, .asp, .cmd, .com, .scr, .cpl, .msc, .ps1, .vbs, .wsf, .pif, .reg, .sct, .msh, .msh1, .msh2, .mshxml, .msh1xml, .wsh, .app, .command, .csh, .bash, .pl, .py, .rb, .osx, .scpt, .applescript, .php, .bin, .jar, .jsp, .vb, .zsh, .tcsh, .apk, .dll, .terminal, .cgi and .run are blocked.
   • Authorized Email Recipients List: Manage the list of email addresses and domains for forwarding, CC, or BCC actions by agents, ensuring secure and compliant communication.
   • Email signature: Auto-populate a unified email signature for users when they compose an email (signatures don’t sync with your email provider).
     Note: You can also change this setting at the queue level. To prevent users from changing this setting at the queue level, click the lock icon , and then click Lock to confirm the setting.