Most visitors prefer immediate, anonymous interaction and I want messages directed to the related department on initial chat so that it doesn’t notify all agents, only the ones specialized in answering the topic.
I tried the Pre-chat feature and having the customer click the department and write their message but again this is too many steps when a visitor wants an immediate interaction. They open the chat, are then greeted with the “Hi there”/“New Conversation” window, have to click that, fill out the Pre-chat forms (hope they know which department they want) and then finally get to a chat interface.
A much better approach would be to have the “Welcome message” and have the option to link departments to the “Suggested messages” so that the visitor can have an immediate interaction and options to take them to the correct department if they don’t know which department to select.