Agent Cool-Down

A difficult conversation deserves a breather before the next one. A cool-down lets a user pause new chat offers for a few minutes without changing their status, within limits each team sets. This guide covers turning it on, taking one, what routing does meanwhile, and what supervisors see.

How It Works

A cool-down is a timed pause on new offers, not a status change. The user stays Available and keeps working on the conversations they already have.
While it runs, routing skips the user for every strategy. Any offer already on their screen is declined automatically and goes to someone else.
When it ends — on time or early — queued work is offered to the user straight away.
Each team sets how many cool-downs a member may take per shift and how long each may last. A shift is the calendar day in the team’s schedule time zone (UTC if the team has no schedule): signing out and in again does not reset the count; local midnight does.

Step 1: Allow Cool-Downs on a Team

Cool-downs are off for every team until an admin turns them on.

Open Admin > People & Teams > Teams and click Edit Team on the team.
On the Routing tab, find the Cool-down section and turn on Allow cool-downs.
Set Cool-downs per shift (1 to 20, default 3).
Set Longest cool-down (minutes) (1 to 60, default 10).
Click Save Changes.

The setting applies in every assignment mode.

Step 2: Take a Cool-Down (Users)

Click your avatar in the top bar. When at least one of your teams allows cool-downs, the menu shows Take a cool-down with how many you have left this shift.
In the Take a cool-down dialog, pick the Team whose allowance to use (only asked if more than one of your teams allows it).
Enter the Minutes, up to your team’s limit. The dialog shows, for example, “2 of 3 cool-downs left this shift”.
Click Start cool-down.

A Cool-down chip with a countdown appears in the top bar: “You are in a cool-down. No new chats are offered until it ends.” Click End cool-down on it to come back early.

When a cool-down is refused

Message	Meaning
Your team does not allow cool-downs.	An admin has not turned on Allow cool-downs for that team.
That is longer than your team allows.	Choose fewer minutes than Longest cool-down.
You have used all your cool-downs for this shift.	The per-shift allowance is spent; it resets at local midnight. Start cool-down is disabled.
A cool-down is already running.	End the current one first.

What Happens to Conversations Meanwhile

Take a team of two, Ana and Ben, each allowed one conversation at a time:

Ana starts a 5-minute cool-down. The next new chat goes to Ben.
Ben is now at his limit, so the chat after that waits in the queue — it is not offered to Ana while she cools down.
Ana clicks End cool-down. The waiting chat is offered to her within moments.

Step 3: Watch and End Cool-Downs (Supervisors)

Open Workspace > Supervisor and the Users tab.
The Cool-down column shows the time each user has left, for example “4 min left”.
To end one, click End cool-down and confirm “End name’s cool-down?”. New chats are offered to them again right away. The action is recorded in the audit log under your name.

Cool-downs taken, and the time spent in them, appear per user in the productivity report.

Routing Strategies & Queues — who is eligible for offers.
Agent Productivity Reporting — cool-down counts and time per user.
Supervisor Dashboard — the live Users grid.