How to read the Inbound Chat Report

The Inbound Chat Report does for live chat what the email and call reports do for their channels. It covers a date period for one or more chat groups, which route incoming chats the way an inbound Ingroup routes calls. If you select more than one group, a multi-group breakdown grid sits at the top so you can compare each one's load and speed.

The totals section

The headline numbers live in the totals section, and there are three of them: the total number of chats handled, the average handle time, and the average time chats spent in the queue. Together they tell you the volume, the effort per chat, and how long customers waited before an Agent picked them up.

• Total chats handled: the count of conversations your groups worked over the date range.
• Average handle time: how long an agent spent on a typical chat from open to close, including any Wrap-up after the customer leaves.
• Average queue time: how long a chat waited before an agent took it.

It mirrors the email and inbound views

If you already know the email and call reports, the chat report holds no surprises. It is built to be very similar to both, so the same totals-then-breakdown layout applies. The chat group plays the same role the email group does on the email side, and the same date-period selection drives what falls inside the report.

flowchart TD
  A[Customer starts chat] --> B[Routed to chat group]
  B --> C[Chat waits in queue]
  C --> D[Queue time accrues]
  D --> E[Agent accepts chat]
  E --> F[Handle time accrues]
  F --> G[Chat closed and counted]
  G --> H[Totals section updates]

Reading it day to day

Watch average queue time first. If it climbs while handle time stays flat, you do not have a slow team, you have too few agents on the chat group for the volume coming in. If handle time climbs instead, the conversations themselves are getting harder, which usually points at training or a knowledge gap rather than staffing. Splitting the two keeps you from solving the wrong problem.

The multi-group breakdown grid earns its place once you run more than one chat group. It puts each group's handled count, average handle time, and queue time on a single line, so a sales chat that is drowning while a support chat sits quiet jumps out immediately. That is your cue to move agents between groups for the rest of the shift rather than waiting for a daily roll-up to tell you after the fact. Because the report covers a fixed date period, you can also compare the same window across days to see whether a spike was a one-off or a pattern you need to staff around permanently.

Read chat next to your other channels rather than in isolation. The reports overview lists every report you have, and the inbound report gives you the matching call-side view so you can balance staffing across both.

A blended floor handling chat, email, and calls is a lot easier on a box you did not have to build by hand. If you want managed hosting that is provisioned in under 40 seconds, see our pricing.