Zendesk messaging is a quick and easy way to create customized, automated conversational experiences, delivered to your customers through the Web and mobile SDKs.
This article includes the following topics:
For more information on configuring and using Zendesk messaging, see the following related articles:
What is Zendesk messaging?
Zendesk messaging allows you to deliver rich, modern, and automated conversational experiences on your websites and mobile apps. When you enable messaging, it impacts how your account administrators, agents, and customers interact.
- Administrators use the Flow Builder to create automated, interactive conversations with customers. These conversations can include greetings, specific article suggestions, information-gathering fields and questions, and more.
- Agents can respond to their customers at any time and continue where they left off in a previous interaction. Conversation history in the Agent Workspace provides agents with additional context required to respond to customers.
- Customers have a the opportunity to self-solve their support issues with targeted article suggestions through the web and mobile SDKs, before connecting with an agent. Conversation history helps them refer to earlier support requests easily.
Requirements, recommendations, and limitations
If your account meets the requirements for enabling Zendesk messaging, you'll see an in-product message on your account's Channels page in the Admin Center.
To enable messaging, you must have an account with:
- Zendesk Suite OR Support + Chat with the Agent Workspace enabled. See Enabling and disabling the Zendesk Agent Workspace for instructions on enabling the workspace.
Before enabling messaging, we recommend you have an account with:
- An active, public help center, with at least 10 articles that cover commonly-asked questions, to take full advantage of Answer Bot capabilities.
Note: A public help center is required if you plan to use Answer Bot capabilities that refer to your help center content, such as article suggestion. If you do not want to use that Answer Bot functionality, you can have a restricted help center, or no help center.
- 1,300 online chat/messaging agents actively serving conversations.
- 4,000 concurrent conversations/with 200,000 total conversations per day.
- 500 configured integrations (web/mobile/social).
The following functionality limitations apply to Zendesk messaging:
- No support for the Data Center Location add-on: Data residency for non-US and EU customers will be available in the future.
- Live Chat limitations: Because Agent Workspace must be enabled to use Zendesk messaging, there are a few changes to Chat functionality to be aware of. See Chat limitations and How Zendesk messaging impacts Chat settings for more information.
- No user authentication: It is not currently possible for a business to verify the identity of a user. We expect to remove this limitation, and provide user authentication capabilities in Q2, 2021.
- Limited conversation history (iOS and Android mobile platforms):The conversation history is limited to the last 100 messages. We expect to remove this limitation, and provide complete conversation history capabilities in Q2, 2021.
- Limited UI customization (iOS and Android mobile platforms): It is possible to modify a small set of SDK UI colors in the Admin Center. There are currently no customization options beyond this. We will be adding additional customization capabilities in the future.
- Conversation observers (iOS and Android mobile platforms): It is not possible to retrieve data on certain aspects of the conversation, such as:
- The number of unread messages
- The availability of agents
- The end user’s position in the queue to speak to an agent.
14 Comments
Hi,

I'm trying the messaging and I've a question. When I send an article, the follow up questions are all in English, but all my customers speak brazilian Portuguese. I didn't find the place do configure it on the builder flow .
Is it possible during beta test?
Thanks
example:
Hi Anderson2, in the current beta it's limited to English only currently because of these hard-coded English flows. We'll support further languages shortly. Sorry if you missed this, we noted it in the requirements / eligibility article: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057096813#topic_dk3_rnc_gnb
I'm needing assistance with the "transfer" option in the flow builder. I have it set to ask the end-user to fill out a few fields before transferring to an agent, but the fields do not populate once the "talk to an agent" is selected. All that happens is the message stating "Let's collect some details before proceeding" populates and then just "..." - no fields pop up. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Zendesk Community,
Thanks in advance!
I'd like to ask you a question regarding the new function.
How could I set up these channels? Because I can't find where to configure.
Hey Yu-Cheng,
If you have the social messaging add-on, you can use these instructions for setting up LINE or WeChat: Setting up your LINE or WeChat channel (Social Messaging add-on)
If you don't have the add-on but are interested in finding out more, let me know and I can get you in touch with your account manager.
Cheers!
Hi, is this only available for public helpcenters? Or also for redtricted helpcenters?
What reporting metrics are available in Explore? Is there a way to see how many people go through the flow?
Hi Thomas D'Hoe, your Help Center needs to be public to use Messaging.
Hi 421710464994, Here's where you can find messaging reports in the Support Dashboard:
Chat reporting
If you're on the Enterprise Suite plan with Explore Enterprise, you'll also have access to live data widgets that include messaging: Live data widgets for Explore dashboards
Hi is this possible to enable for a trial account please? I have a Suite trial with a public help centre and agent workspace enabled but I don't see any options to access or configure messenger.
Hi Daniel Merriott,
You should be able to enable messaging on a Suite trial account. If you haven't already, please try disabling & enabling Agent Workspace to see if that helps (that's worked for others). If not, please let me know and I'll create a ticket so we can investigate your subdomain.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Hi Miranda Burford. That has indeed helped - thanks very much!
My instance does not have an attach file button at Zendesk Messaging Widget. How could I get that button?
Hi Kamolchanok Jittrepit,
Unfortunately, we don't support the ability for end users to upload files/attachments as yet. It's on our roadmap for future consideration and will likely be released sometime around the middle of the year.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
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