The continuous conversations feature allows you to automatically send an email notification to customers who abandon a conversation conducted through a Web Widget, encouraging them to re-engage with your agents through their preferred channel.
This article includes the following topics:
About continuous conversations
The continuous conversations feature allows both end users and agents to leave (but not end) a messaging conversation at any time and pick it up where they left off, without the end user losing track of the conversation.
End users may choose to leave a conversation when the expected wait time is high, when your business is offline or there is a long queue, for example.
With continuous conversations activated, an email is sent to the end user informing them when an agent has left them a message in the conversation (see The end user experience). The continuous conversation email template is localized and translated based on the user's profile language in Support. See How does Zendesk set a language for a user in Support?
To use continuous conversations, you must have an account with
- Zendesk Suite OR Support + Chat (Team plan or higher).
- Messaging activated
- Agent Workspace activated. See Activating and deactivating the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- At least one agent with Chat access. See About Staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.
- Has set up a support email address
The end user experience
With continuous conversations activated, an end user who leaves an ongoing conversation from a website receives an email when an agent responds, allowing them to easily find and continue the conversation when they're ready. The end user can continue the conversation by responding to the email, or return to the website.
The example below describes the default experience when you activate continuous conversations. Here, an end user starts a conversation with a company that is currently offline. If the end user has provided an email, they will receive an acknowledgement informing them that email will be sent when the agent responds. If the end user has not previously provided an email, they will be prompted to provide one. Note that end user email addresses cannot contain accented characters.
Later, an agent responds to the original conversation request. If the message from the agent remains unread until the conversation is considered inactive, an email is sent to the end user with the unread agent’s response.
The end user can choose to continue the conversation by responding to the email, or return to the website to do so.
The agent experience
For agents, the entire conversation takes place in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Continuing with the example above, when an agent returns to work, they are notified that a conversation is waiting for them in their queue, and they can respond to the conversation as usual.
If the agent leaves a message for the end user in the conversation, and the message remains unread by the end user, an email is automatically triggered. When the end user responds, their response is included in the conversation, indicating whether it was sent via email or messaging:
Working with other triggers
If you are using the out-of-office message trigger, you may want to deactivate it when using continuous conversations to prevent sending duplicate messages to the end user.
Activating continuous conversations
You can activate continuous conversations on the Ticket Settings page in Admin Center.
To activate continuous conversations
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
- Under the Settings tab, select Switch messaging conversations to email.
This creates the following active trigger, which you can find on the Messaging triggers admin page:
Deactivating continuous conversations
If you choose to stop using continuous conversations, you’ll need to deactivate both the tickets setting and the trigger created when you activated the feature.
To deactivate continuous conversations
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
- Under the Settings tab, deselect Switch messaging conversations through email, then click Save tab at the bottom of the page.
- In Admin Center , click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Messaging triggers and open the trigger Request email for continuous conversation.
Note: In some Zendesk accounts, this trigger is located in the Chat dashboard. Go to Chat > Settings > Triggers. - Deselect Activate this trigger, then click Save.
64 comments
Francis Morissette
I'm not able to enable it, it doesn't show.
-2
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Francis,
Great to hear that you wanted to test out this capability. This feature is being rolled out in a phased manner. It will be available to all accounts over the next three weeks.
0
Francis Morissette
Hi, maybe a note in the future would be great!
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Julio Cesar
I'd like to know when it'll become available too
1
Francis Morissette
I've now been able to add the "request email" action in the chat trigger, however the option is still missing for continuous conversations in Admin>Tickets.
Also need to mention that the message requesting the email is always in English, even if my brand A is in French (fr-ca). Very disappointing.
-1
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Francis,
The message is localized ie translated based on your customer's browser language. If you still see the message in English, we will create a ticket and look into it.
Definitely! Feedback noted.
Thanks,
Prakruti
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Francis Morissette
My laptop is in French. I've tried it with both brands (one is French and the other one is English)
0
Jessica Fong
Hi team, I still cannot find the "Continue conversations through email" option under setting, may I know if it has go live or not? Looking forward to it! Thanks.
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Francis,
Can you create a ticket with us by dropping an email at support@zendesk.com. It would help if you can share a video of this experience. We will take a look. Thanks!
- Prakruti
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Ashley,
Thank you for writing in. This feature is being rolled out in a phased manner. I will drop a note on this thread when the rollout is complete.
- Prakruti
0
Oscar Maynard
Can you explain what you mean by 'not available on mobile' please? e.g. Would this work through web widget when on a mobile device?
0
Meghan
I dont have this feature yet either, but I'll check back in 2 days since it says all by the 20th.
0
Ingrid van Veen - Schokkenbroek
Question on this note: "The continuous conversations feature is only available when using messaging through the web channel, and is not available on mobile devices."
I assume this means I enable messages for web SDK? When I enable this, flowbuilder is set live immediately. Is there another way to enable continious conversation trigger before end-users can see flowbuilder and start using it? Or do we just need to be quick to set this trigger or set it on a quiet moment?
Other questions:
- When will we be able to change the conversation that is now automatically set? Eg 'was this a useful answer' and whatever comes after end-user says 'no'.
1
Prakruti Hindia
Apologies for the delay in rolling out this capability. We will be rolling this out in mid June.
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Oscar,
This will be available on web widget on desktop and mobile. It will not be supported on mobile SDKs. For mobile SDK, we believe that push notifications are a better mechanism to notify your customers when the agents respond.
- Prakruti
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Ingrid,
Yes, that's correct. It did refer to the web SDK. This feature focuses on improving the experience when your customers contact outside of business hours. With this feature, you can set expectations on response time and collect email from the customers. The customers will receive an email notification when the agents respond.
This trigger to set expectations and collect email will fire at the point of handoff to the agent. The order of execution will be Answer Bot followed this trigger.
Answer Bot / Flow Builder is good way to help customers self-serve their questions / issues , when the agents are offline.
0
Francis Morissette
@Prakruti I'd like to be entered in the feature right now. It's unfortunate but we've launched in early March with high expectations for this feature and it keeps being delayed. Please contact me by ticket and have this specifically deployed on my instance. I've already announced the delay for this feature 3 times now to my team, and right now again for today's deployment...
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Francis,
I will reach out to you.
- Prakruti
1
Francis Morissette
@Prakruti Hindia thank you
0
Julio Cesar
I can't find this option either in Settings > Ticket. Please, reach out to me to enable this feature ASAP.
0
Prakruti Hindia
There has been delay in rolling out this capability to all of our customers. Ingrid and Julio, I will create tickets for you and get this enabled for your account.
- Prakruti
1
Julio Cesar
Thank you @... :)
0
Steve Lacoss
Please add me to the list too.
0
David Berumen
-Hi, in the future it will be possible to change this message "Talk to a human"?
- Also sending files like photos, which is crucial for me.
Is there an estimated date for these two points?
0
David Berumen
I can't see the reports of the tickets created in with flow builder
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi David,
Thank you for writing in. Ability to change 'Talk to human' and enable end-users to send attachments is on the roadmap.
You will be seeing some of these capabilities in second half of this year.
Reporting for Messaging can be found in Explore. Learn more.
- Prakruti
0
Ayushi
Hi,
To make this work, does the chat provider have to enable the answer bot?
0
Prakruti Hindia
Hi Ayushi,
You will need to enable Messaging for your account. You do not need to explicitly enable Answer Bot / Flow Builder for this functionality. Once Messaging is enabled, Answer Bot is enabled by default and will be the first responder to new conversations.
- Prakruti
0
Thomas D'Hoe
I like the continuous conversations feature. It should even be better if you could make the company's name clickable with a redirect to the website where the widget lives. 🚀
3
Elyashiv Grosser
Prakruti Hindia
I don't see this feature is online?
In addition, is there a way to enable opening a ticket to support using the bot, but disabling the chat using the widget and enabling only other channels?
1