A busy inbox can tell you that a customer has sent a message. It does not always tell the team who owns the next step, whether the problem is still open, or how long it took to resolve.
Case Assignment connects the conversation with a clear piece of work. A customer chat can become a Case, the Case can be assigned to the right agent, and the team can follow it from the first message to resolution without losing the original conversation.
From customer chat to a trackable Case
The conversation remains the place where the team reads and replies to the customer. The linked Case adds the operational layer: an owner, a status, a ticket number, a timeline, and the information needed to follow the work through to completion.
This separation keeps the workflow practical:
- The customer conversation stays intact across connected channels.
- The team can create a Case only when a conversation needs structured follow-up.
- The current owner is clear in both the inbox and the Case.
- Open Cases can move through Open, In progress, Waiting for customer, and Blocked before they are closed.
- Closing a Case preserves its history for later review.
For linked work, reassigning ownership moves the chat and its open Cases together. This prevents a conversation from pointing to one agent while the active Case points to someone else. Closed Cases keep their historical ownership, so later reassignment does not rewrite past performance.
Choose the level of automation that fits your team
Case Assignment does not force every business into the same process. You can start manually, automate Case creation, and enable automatic assignment when the team is ready.
| Mode | What happens | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | An agent or supervisor creates a Case from a conversation when structured follow-up is needed. Assignment is handled manually. | Smaller teams, lower message volume, or businesses that want to decide case by case. |
| Auto-create | An incoming customer message creates a Case automatically, but the chat can remain unassigned. | Teams that want every new customer request captured without automatically distributing ownership. |
| Auto-create + Auto-assign | The incoming message creates a Case and the system routes the chat and open Case to an eligible available member of the selected team. | Support teams that need consistent intake and faster ownership during staffed hours. |
Automatic assignment is intentionally available only when automatic Case creation is enabled. A manually created Case stays a deliberate action and does not unexpectedly trigger routing.
How automatic assignment chooses an agent
An owner or admin selects the routing team and chooses which members belong to it. Agents then control whether they are Available for new cases.
When a new automatically created Case needs an owner, routing considers team members who:
- have an Agent or Assigned Agent role;
- belong to the selected routing team;
- have explicitly marked themselves Available; and
- are currently active in KaoJai.
The system distributes new work fairly by preferring the eligible agent who has waited longest since their last automatic assignment. If nobody qualifies, the Case remains unassigned for an owner or admin to review. Existing work is not moved merely because an agent pauses or goes offline.
Keep each role focused
Case Assignment supports different working styles without giving every user the same level of control.
| Role | What they can work with | Assignment control |
|---|---|---|
| Agent | All tenant Cases and conversations available to the support team | Cannot change ownership |
| Assigned Agent | Their assigned chats, open Cases, and relevant closed-Case history | Cannot change ownership |
| Owner / Admin | All Cases and conversations | Can assign, unassign, and reassign |
This gives managers the visibility needed to balance work while keeping day-to-day agents focused on the conversations they own.
Find the work that needs attention
Inbox filters help agents move from a shared queue to an actionable personal view:
- My Cases shows chats assigned to the current agent, including assigned conversations that do not yet have a Case.
- My turn narrows that view to owned conversations that currently need a human reply.
- Unread and channel filters remain available for other ways of scanning the inbox.
Permissions still apply underneath every filter. Clearing a filter changes the view; it never expands what a restricted user is allowed to access.
Track performance with the Case history
Assignment is useful only if the team can learn from the work afterward. The Agent Performance view turns Case and response history into operational context.
Teams can review:
- active agents, active Cases, and unassigned active Cases;
- median and P90 first-human-response time;
- median and P90 first-bot-response time;
- response performance against configured targets and SLAs;
- active handling time and elapsed resolution time;
- human-response coverage and the number of available samples; and
- closed and active Case totals by agent.
The report can be filtered by date range, team, agent, and channel. Assignment changes remain part of the history, while response authorship stays connected to the person who actually sent the message. The result is useful operational context—not a simplistic quality score.
A practical rollout for a support team
You do not need to automate everything on day one.
- Enable Case management and start with Manual creation.
- Agree on the Case statuses your team will use and when a Case is considered complete.
- Create a routing team and confirm its members.
- Switch to Auto-create when every incoming request should become trackable work.
- Enable Auto-assign after agents understand the Available, Paused, and Offline states.
- Review the unassigned queue and performance report regularly, then adjust staffing or routing membership when needed.
This progression keeps the process understandable. Automation takes over repeatable intake and distribution, while people retain control over exceptions, reassignment, and customer care.
FAQ: Case Assignment
Does every chat need to become a Case?
No. In Manual mode, the team creates a Case only when a conversation needs structured follow-up. In Auto-create mode, incoming customer messages create Cases automatically for teams that want every request captured.
Can automatic assignment work without automatic Case creation?
No. In the current workflow, automatic assignment is enabled only with Auto-create. Manually created Cases stay manual so the system does not route work unexpectedly.
What happens when no agent is available?
The Case remains unassigned. The customer message is still retained, and an owner or admin can assign it manually. Availability affects new automatic routing; it does not remove ownership from existing work.
Make ownership visible from the first message
Case Assignment gives support teams a clear path from conversation to resolution: capture the work, choose the right amount of automation, make ownership visible, and measure what happens afterward.
With KaoJai.ai, the inbox remains the place where customer communication happens, while Cases give the team the structure needed to follow through—simple, reliable, and understood.