Can someone explain what it means to "hold" a chat or an email?

As far as our agents know, there isn't an option to "hold" but when I am reviewing the metrics, there is a hold metric, and it effects the handle times... 

Please help. 

Hello Emily,

An agent can handle multiple interactions at once, based on the utilization rules you set in PureCloud. An email is "on hold" if an agent is on a call with another customer, is typing a reply to a different email or is replying to a chat. Same for chat. We only want to count the time the agent is actually spending on the specific email and avoid double-counting the time, so if an agent is actively working on another interaction then the email, chat or call will be on hold.

If you take a look at this article and look at the left hand side, the interaction that has the dark color is the "focus" interaction that they agent is currently working on. All the other interactions are effectively "on hold."

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/interaction-page-navigation/

Let me know if this helps or if you have any other questions.

Thanks,

Lucie

Hi Emily,

I asked around and learned that an email or chat is considered on hold when an agent is dealing with a different interaction, or anytime it's not the primary focused interaction.

Just in case you haven't run across it yet, here's a link to our Metric Definitions article:

https://help.mypurecloud.com/articles/metric-definitions/

Thank you,

Clay