Stay Connected, Stay Flexible: Introducing an enhanced Social Messaging Experience in the Zendesk Agent Workspace

Back in March, we introduced the new Agent Workspace which gives agents the ability to stay connected with customers on their preferred channels, via a unified workspace to help them meet today’s increased customer expectations. At the same time, we also introduced the availability of some of the most popular social messaging apps with Zendesk, out-of-the-box, which are available within the Agent Workspace. 

Today, we're excited to announce a refreshed agent and admin experience for social messaging apps (WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Facebook Messenger and Twitter Direct Message) within the Agent Workspace. These updates provide a modern, conversational UI for social messaging in real-time within Agent Workspace. This ultimately allows agents to have conversational experiences across chat and social messaging channels, and bring in other channels when needed. In addition to providing a conversational, real-time UI for agents, there are many other improvements including routing, notifications, reporting, and shortcuts so agents can seamlessly respond to customers on their preferred channel, reducing response times and offering a more convenient customer experience.

With the use of messaging apps on the rise, especially now more than ever before, we couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this enhanced, conversational experience to help our customers provide the best CX. 

What’s new with social messaging in the Agent Workspace?  

• Roll out social messaging apps faster than ever before: We’ve made it easier than ever before to start using social messaging within the Agent Workspace. Administrators can head straight to the Zendesk Admin Center and add their social messaging app of choice - WhatsApp, LINE, or WeChat. It’s fast and simple!
  
  Please note: WhatsApp activation requires the purchase of a WhatsApp phone number. 

• Real-time, conversational experience for agents: Agents have the ability to now receive and respond to messages coming in from social messaging apps in real-time, reducing response times, and keeping customers happier. In addition, the conversational layout enables agents to message customers in real-time on WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message or LINE, just like they already can with chat today in Agent Workspace. Agents can now send messages to the customers with just an Enter/Return or “Send” key, as well as get visibility into common messaging indicators like “Sent, delivered, Seen”. This empowers them with a more familiar and intuitive workspace for social channels so they can have conversations more efficiently. 

• Shortcuts and notifications empower agents to respond faster and stay on top of all conversations: Shortcuts (yes, the same ones as Zendesk Chat!) can be applied to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message ,WeChat, and LINE as well so agents can respond faster and work more efficiently. New in-product notifications also enable agents to stay on top of all their social conversations by notifying them when there are new incoming customer replies for on-going conversations. 

• Distribute workload and manage social messaging conversations with more routing options: Administrators can now set up routing (assigned and broadcast) to assign real-time, incoming social messaging conversations to their agents when they are online. This eliminates the need for triaging and connects the agents quickly to customers. For example, with the new routing options, messages from Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message ,WeChat, LINE, and WhatsApp will only be routed to agents who are online and are not at capacity. To learn more about how to set up routing, please refer to this article. 

• Reporting: Make more informed workforce management decisions and monitor agent performance on social messaging channels quickly by filtering reports for each social messaging app within Zendesk Explore. 

What’s next?

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be adding additional improvements to continue to empower agents to have an even better experience with social messaging apps from within the Agent Workspace. We’ll be sure to update this announcement post, so stay tuned for more updates! 

 Availability Requirements

• Starting on July 15, 2020, these improvements are available exclusively to Zendesk Support Suite customers
• Accounts must opt into the new Zendesk Agent Workspace and have Zendesk Chat enabled in order to access the new improvements
• This experience is applicable for Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter Direct Message,, LINE, WeChat, and other messaging channels supported by Sunshine Conversations. 
• Any existing Support Suite account that has WhatsApp, LINE or WeChat activated through Support > Channel Integrations will get these improvements on opting into Agent Workspace.  
• Please note: Access to the Social Messaging add-on (WeChat, LINE, WhatsApp, and more) are free to any Support Suite account. However, WhatsApp activation requires the purchase of a WhatsApp phone number. Supporting additional messaging channels such as Apple Business Chat, Telegram, KakaoTalk or Sunshine Conversations SDKs will require Sunshine Conversations license. Reach out to the Sales team here. 

 How to get started

If you have already opted into the Zendesk Agent Workspace, head over to Admin Center > Channels to set up Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter Direct Message, WeChat, or LINE. 

To take advantage of the enhanced social messaging experience within the Agent Workspace, please take a look at our updated documentation: 

• About social messaging channels for the Zendesk Agent Workspace (for administrators)
• Receiving and sending social messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace (for agents)