What is a "continued" chat?

When answering chats, you may come across a situation where you receive a "continued" chat.  These begin with a system message such as the one in the screenshot above, beginning with "continued from" and followed by another operator's username.

These are active chats, and you will receive them when a LibraryH3lp safety net kicks in. Safety nets ensure that guests are never left hanging and always connected to an available operator. If you received a "continued" chat, you'll simply send a message to the guest to accept the chat, as you would with other chats.

How do "continued" chats happen?

Continued chats happen when the operator who was chatting with the guest somehow becomes unavailable during the chat. You can think of "continued" chats as an automatic system-generated transfer. Usually these happen in one of three ways:

1. The original operator lost network access or the web browser crashed in the middle of the chat and the operator has not yet reconnected to LibraryH3lp.
2. The original operator accidentally sets their status to "Away (no new chats; end current chats)" instead of "Busy (no new chats; continue current chats)".
3. The original operator logs out without ending/closing/transferring the active chat.

In any of those cases, the original operator is suddenly no longer available to chat with the guest, and if/when the guest sends a new message, LibraryH3lp will redirect that message to all available operators on the guest's queue, offering it as a "continued" chat.

How can I catch up on the prior conversation?

Near the top of the chat window, you can click the History: Today's chats with Guest link. There you can review the conversation history so that you can get to speed and able to assist without needing to as the guest to repeat themselves.

The original operator is back! Can I transfer this chat back to that operator?

Yes!  These chats can be transferred just like any other chat.

Didn't this feature used work a little differently?

Yes. Until January 18, 2023, these continued chats included rollback of the prior conversation directly in the chat window. However, we received persuasive feedback that the rollback was causing a lot of confusion in this context and detracting from the system indication of the continued chat status. We opted to improve usability by removing the message rollback which clarifies the chat's context and provides less clutter as conversation history is always available via the "Today's chats with guest" link.

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