Triage an Omnichannel Support Inbox
Design a support workspace that merges customer conversations, prioritizes urgent cases, and preserves ownership across channels.
The brief
Understand the problem
Background
Customers contact businesses through email, chat, forms, and social messages. The same issue can arrive through several channels while agents work across different queues and service targets.
User context
Dylan supervises a software support team. A customer has reported a billing lockout by chat and email, and the case is approaching its response deadline.
Product problem
Agents need a unified history and clear ownership without accidentally merging different customers or sending duplicate replies.
Objective
Create the agent workflow for detecting a duplicate conversation, assigning ownership, replying, and resolving the case.
What to design
Define the experience
Required experience
- Prioritized queue with service-level context
- Unified customer conversation and account history
- Duplicate detection and merge review
- Assignment, internal note, and resolution workflow
Screens and states
- Support queue
- Conversation workspace
- Merge review
- Assignment panel
- Resolution summary
Core user flow
Follow the critical path
- 01
Dylan opens a case nearing its response deadline
- 02
He sees a likely duplicate from another channel
- 03
He compares identities and merges the two threads
- 04
He assigns an agent and adds a private escalation note
- 05
The agent replies and records the resolution category
Product rules
Requirements and constraints
Requirements
- Prioritize using urgency and service commitments without hiding queue age
- Separate public replies from internal notes
- Require identity evidence before merging customer records
- Show channel, author, and timestamp for each message
- Prevent simultaneous agents from sending conflicting replies
- Capture resolution outcome without forcing an inaccurate category
Constraints
- The queue may contain thousands of active conversations
- Channel integrations can be delayed
- Agents have different permissions for billing and account data
- A customer may use several email addresses
Reality check
States worth considering
Finish line
What to deliver
- Design five desktop screens for queue triage, safe merging, assignment, and resolution.
Optional direction
Visual resources
Use these as a starting constraint if you want one. They are not part of the required solution.