This article will guide you to have a clear overview of how to manage customer service features, including your agents, in order to achieve high customer satisfaction rates.

Benefits of Customer Service Team Management

Roles and Permissions

Besides owner, there are two roles that can access the chat feature:

1. Main Administrator
2. Customer Service (CS) Agent

The owner account and main administrator have full access and permissions, including the permissions of a CS Agent. CS Agents have access to chat with customers, edit some personal settings and view some shop settings. The specific permissions are as follows:

Roles configuration

If you are the owner, you can add, edit, delete, and deactivate customer service agent roles through My Account > User Management on TikTok Shop Seller Center.

Adding Roles

Click [Add User] in the top right corner to add an agent. Select the role, email and default language.
After entering the information, click "Submit".The pending sub-accounts will appear under the [invited user] list. After the activation is confirmed, the account will appear under the [added user] list.

Deleting Roles

In the User list, click the delete icon in the "Action" column for a user to delete the user. Once deleted, the user can no longer use the account or password to log in to the TikTok Shop Seller Center.

Editing Roles

In the User list, click the edit icon in the "Action" column to edit the user.

You can edit the role, can't edit the email.

Deactivating & Activating Roles

In the User list, click the deactivate icon in the "Action" column for a user to deactivate the user. Once deactivated, the user doesn't have permissions to the chat tool.
You may activate the user again later as needed.

Agent Settings

Set up how the chats are assigned to agents and who can see all the chats in your shop.
Go to Customer Message - Settings - Agents settings

Chat Assignment

Assign the new chats by customers by 2 types of assignment:

• Assign new chats to agents with lowest workloads: This setting will prioritize agents with the lowest workloads. An agents workload is calculated by dividing the number of active sessions by their total sessions & capacity
• Assign equally: chat will be distributed equally based on an agents capacity

Chat Access Management

Access will determine which roles you can see and are able to transfer all the chats in your shop, including the chats assigned to other agents.
To transfer a chat assigned to others, find the chat in the "All open" view, then click "Transfer chats". You can assign selected chat or all current chats to the assigned agents. Type your agent name or choose based on the available name.
For all current chat selections, if there are more than 100 chats, only the latest 100 chats will be transferred.
Once the chat has been transferred, you will see this pop up below. Click "Transfer to me" or "Transfer to others" to re-assign the chat.

Translation Settings

This setting will provide real-time translation for both incoming customer messages and outgoing responses.
Select “Auto-detect” to let the system automatically identify preferred languages, or choose “Custom” to manually select them.
You can also manage translation settings for all chats in "chat settings" or for individual chats from the "more actions" menu.

Team Management

Store managers can manage and set the accounts of customer service agents in the team management module.

Access

Buyer Message - Setting - Team managementPermission: Only shop managers have permission to this page, that is, main account, administrator and accounts with advanced customer service authority.

View and Modify Agent Information

The customer service agents information that you can modify are:

• Basic Information: Avatar, nickname and email address.
• Roles: Store owner, admin and agents. Agents are granted basic permissions to chats; admins are granted advanced permissions such as team management and shop settings.
• Maximum Capacity: The maximum number of chats an agent can manage at a time. This is set independently per agent per shop.
• Open Chats: The number of open chats for an account.
• Accept Chats: Ability for an account to receive auto-assignment chat.

As an admin, you can adjust:

1. Nickname

Click the edit button next to the nickname, enter a new nickname and click save. Some names may trigger platform review, which will show under review status, and it will not take effect until the review is passed.

2. Maximum Capacity

Click the edit button next to the number, enter a new value and click save. Here you can enter any number between 1-999. You can set it according to the number of agents and chats. Normally, it is recommended not to less than 200, otherwise it may affect the chat assignment.

3. Accept Chats

Click the Accept Chats toggle to adjust the status of the accounts.

• Turning on the switch: Accept auto-assign chats means that the agent will receive chats automatically assigned by the system and chats assigned to the agent manually by other agents.
• Turning off the switch: Do not accept auto-assign chats means that the agent will not receive chats automatically assigned by the system, but other agents can still manually assign a chat to the agent.

Note: All accounts and data shown in the screenshots above are fictional examples for reference only and do not represent promises or predictions of actual outcomes.

FAQ

1. Can store managers deactivate the Customer Service Agent role and re-activate again in the future?

• Yes. Store Owner and Admin can re-activate a customer service agent role later after they deactivate the role.

2. Is there any maximum capacity for agents to receive assigned chats?

• Yes. The system will limit capacity for each agent receiving chats to 999 chats. But TikTok Shop highly suggests sellers to set this limit according to agents' capacity and working hours. Too many assigned chats that one agent could receive will affect their performance, like slower responses and even skipped chats. This will impact the overall response rate and customer satisfaction rate.