As customer preferences have shifted, especially given the new digital-first world we live in, messaging has quickly emerged as the people’s choice for their go-to communication channel. 64% of consumers have tried a new way to get in touch with customer service in 2020, with messaging and bots leading the way (Source: Zendesk Benchmark 2021). Customers prefer messaging because it’s convenient, it’s fast and it’s personalized.
Given the rise and popularity of messaging, today we’re extremely pleased and excited to introduce Zendesk messaging. It delivers rich conversational experiences for businesses that are connected across web, mobile or social apps. It’s easy to automate right out of the box, and can be completely customized with our open and flexible platform.
Messaging provides customers with the unique flexibility to pop in and out of the conversation at their leisure, while giving CX teams the tools to automate answers to get back to customers faster (using Answer Bot with Flow Builder), and easily manage all conversations from a unified workspace.
- Make it easy for your customers
- Set your team up for success
- Work the way that works best for you
- Ready to get started?
Make it easy for your customers
Introducing new messaging SDKs for Web, Android and iOS, and enhanced Answer Bot capabilities to help provide support wherever your customers are.
Rich, interactive conversations
Built on top of Sunshine Conversations, our new Web, Android and iOS SDKs feature a rich, interactive messaging experience for your customers to engage with, including activity indicators, quick replies, data capture via form fields, links, images, carousels & more.
A modern look and feel, customizable to fit your brand
Our new messaging SDKs have been completely redesigned with a more modern, playful look & feel. As an admin, you can easily configure your SDKs via Admin Center, and tailor the logo, colours, text & labels to seamlessly integrate them with your existing brand. All without altering any existing integration code.
Ongoing conversations with full conversation history
Zendesk messaging lets you stay engaged anywhere and have ongoing conversations with your customers so they never have to repeat themselves.
Conversational shortcuts with Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Messaging also features a more powerful and configurable Answer Bot, backed by enhanced AI and Flow Builder. So when customers type in a question, Answer Bot can identify the intent and take conversational shortcuts, jumping straight to the relevant part of a flow or to an agent transfer. And if a flow doesn’t exist to address a question, Answer Bot automatically tries to find relevant articles to recommend.
Set your team up for success
Zendesk messaging increases your team's productivity and efficiency with a unified agent workspace that comes right out of the box and gives agents the context they need to respond to customers across any channel.
We built messaging into Agent Workspace so your agents a more personal, efficient and conversational customer experience without having to context switch.
We built messaging into Agent Workspace so your agents can provide support across multiple channels, all through one, unified workspace. Messaging enables agents to offer a more modern, efficient and conversational customer experience without having to context switch.
Keep the conversation going
With messaging, agents never lose the conversation history, and can continue where they left off, be it web, mobile app, or social. By having the context of previous conversations, agents can provide a more conversational, convenient, and contextual experience to your customers. Agents can also switch to another channel like email, phone and internal notes seamlessly, without leaving the conversation and serve the customers wherever they are.
Give your agents the right context
Empower your agents with the right context they need to resolve customer issues efficiently. Messaging brings all the interactions and customer data collected by Answer Bot right into Agent Workspace so your agents can quickly jump into solving the problem. Agents can also keep track of ongoing conversations easily with activity indicators such as sent, delivered, seen, and typing.
Manage your team’s workload efficiently
Increase your team’s efficiency by routing messaging conversations to the right agent based on a combination of flexible business rules and information collected by Answer Bot before escalating to an agent. Stay on top of ongoing conversations through notifications list for new responses. Use Shortcuts and Macros to delight your customers with fast and personalized responses.
Make more informed workforce management decisions and monitor agent performance on messaging channels quickly by filtering reports for each messaging channel within Zendesk Explore.
Work the way that works best for you
Zendesk messaging offers faster & more personalized interactions with Answer Bot’s newest tool Flow Builder, a click-to-configure tool that allows admins to build engaging conversational experiences for Zendesk messaging without writing a single line of code.
This powerful tool helps businesses provide 24/7 support for customers with built-in automation for faster service as your business scales and rich content for more interactive conversations.
Guide your customers through the conversation
Use Flow Builder to cover your most common support scenarios and get end users the answers they need faster. Quick reply options help preempt incoming questions and keep the conversation flowing.
Provide instant answers 24/7
Let Answer Bot be your first line of defence and offer answers instantly, 24/7. Answer simple questions directly in conversation (like your business hours or quick troubleshooting topics), and handle more complex requests by linking to your Help Center articles.
Support your agents by collecting important data upfront
We know that not all issues can be solved by a bot alone. Some require assistance from a human. Help your agents by configuring your bot to collect information upfront, giving them the context they need to jump straight into problem-solving.
Give your bot a personality
Take full control over how Answer Bot greets and interacts with end-users. Say “Hello” using your brand’s personality by writing out your own greeting message and choosing your own logo.
Ready to get started?
Zendesk messaging for web & mobile is available as opt-in on all Suite offers and Support + Chat customers who are using Agent Workspace. Admins can enable messaging by going to Admin Center > Channels.
To get started, you can read the getting started guide or learn more about messaging in our documentation.
37 Comments
I had a couple of questions so I went to the 'Get Help' button next to the article. Presumably, I was using ZenDesk Messaging. Unfortunately, I was chatting with a bot, not a real human. And unfortunately, the answers that it gave had nothing to do with my questions. So yeah, it pretty much failed the 30-second test with this user.
Questions:
Hi Michael, the "get help" option on the page actually uses the previous Answer Bot Widget implementation - this is slightly different to messaging and Answer Bot Flow Builder. To answer your questions:
1. Messaging is the next evolution of Chat, which offers persistent, portable conversations. Messaging is not synchronous, you can come back later and pick up exactly where you were, unlike chat. You can read more about what messaging is in this article, as well as this one: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057096813-About-Zendesk-messaging-beta-#topic_idc_qnc_gnb
2. Our native iOS and Android SDKs are coming soon! Stay tuned.
3. Our help center uses a different authentication to your account, they are not shared by design - you're essentially signing in as an end user to Zendesk's instance. Not signing in as an admin/agent on your instance which is a separate authentication
Where can I report on the success of messaging and flow builder? Is there reporting available to show how many interactions were deflected using flow builder?
Hi Jordan, thanks for reaching out. Reporting specific to Answer Bot and Flow Builder isn't available at this stage, however we are planning to add it in 2021. We are actively collating feedback on reporting needs, so I welcome you and anyone else that is interested to elaborate further on the kind of metrics and insights that you're looking for via our feedback portal.
Looking forward to having the flow builder that would work non-English languages.
UPD - Now it's supported
Wanted to comment on this with some questions and things I noticed with rolling this out.
1) If you solve the ticket and the customer chats again after that solve ( say the customer wasn't done chatting but the agent thought they were) there will be no notification unless you refresh the browser
2) If you do not set up triggers correctly to route it to the right group based on the Brand of the chat, the notification will go to any agent that has access to messaging. If an agent outside of that Brand tries to grab the chat it will give an error that " The ticket you are trying to open is not visible to agents in your group(s)" and then the chat/message itself just disappears. It won't show up in notifications for anyone after that and it won't be shown as in queue in conversations. I literally don't know where it goes and even if the person who started the chat types responses, it doesn't show up anywhere.
3) I want to be able to set this up where based off the brand only certain agents get the notifications. Can that be done?
Hi Megan,
Thank you for reaching out.
The agents will get notifications in the notification list when their assigned messaging conversation receives a new reply from the end-user.
Agents need to have Chat enabled to respond to Messaging tickets. We should also setup a rule in Support Triggers to assign group based on channel and other information provided by the end-user.
The agents get this error because they have permission only to access tickets in their group. This permission can be managed from Settings > People > Roles.
Yes, this can be done by setting up a rule in Support Trigger to assign group based on channel and other information provided by the end-user.
Hi there,
Is there the option to route the bot to a contact number like what we currently have in the web widget option where it's a hyperlink? Or will Messaging purely be routed to a "chat" agent?
Ideally, we'd like to give the customer options if possible.
Thanks,
Prakruti Hindia
" The agents will get notifications in the notification list when their assigned messaging conversation receives a new reply from the end-user. " - What if the agent isn't online, or is on vacation, or called out sick for the day? The agent wouldn't be able to respond, the customer would be in limbo, and furthermore I haven't seen this functionality work like that in my testing.
"Agents need to have Chat enabled to respond to Messaging tickets. We should also setup a rule in Support Triggers to assign group based on channel and other information provided by the end-user.
The agents get this error because they have permission only to access tickets in their group. This permission can be managed from Settings > People > Roles. " - I did set up a rule to assign to group based on the where the message/ chat was started however even members outside of that group are still getting notifications for chats that they shouldn't see. Here is the trigger that I have but it seems like the gap here is creating a trigger based on what SITE the widget is on.
"Yes, this can be done by setting up a rule in Support Trigger to assign group based on channel and other information provided by the end-user." - If we have 3 different brands using the chat / messaging functionality and none of them are cross functional for each brand, I don't see how I can set up a trigger to identify what group it should go to as each Brand will have their own sales / Cs/ tech support queues. Any ideas?
Hi Ann,
Are you referring to request for callback option on the web widget? Currently, it is not supported in new Messaging experience.
Cheers,
Prakruti
Hi Megan,
- Prakruti
Hello Prakruti Hindia
In practice, the problem arises for a different reason — when the agent has completed all tickets and went home. And then, before a ticket is closed, a client is chatting again. Zendesk does not offer any tools to route tickets based on the agent's status in the system. This is not normal
Hi Prakruti Hindia
I will add from myself.
1. You suggest that the administrator manually reassign reopened tickets to the group. It is not comfortable. We have 50 agents and about 200 open tickets during peak hours. The administrator cannot keep track of all the tickets and which of the agents is currently working.
2. Problem with chat routing. If a client has been in the queue for more than 10 minutes, then the ticket becomes inactive. Because of this, chat routing does not occur. The big problem is that the ticket is not marked in any way and such tickets cannot be taken out in a separate view. As, for example, was with the Zendesk Chat product, where missed chats were marked with a tag and the name of the ticket was changed to "Missed chat"
You have to do something about it. As it stands, working with routing and reopened tickets is awful.
The solution with reopened tickets is easy to see. If it is possible to add the condition "Agent status in chat" to triggers.
If the agent is online, the reopened ticket is returned to him.
If the agent is not online, the reopened ticket is assigned to the group.
Proactive greetings were a great feature of the chat platform. Will this be added to messaging?
Prakruti Hindia
My biggest gripe with Zendesk at times is that while Zendesk supports multiple brands, They don't support businesses that don't have cross brand reps and they don't support the individuality of different Brands either. In the classic chat function, even with multi-brand you still only had one option for designing your chat and it would look the same for every brand. It appears in messaging the new headache is notifications and routing.
Hi Megan, Vyacheslav, Artur,
Thank you for the feedback.
I understand that intent is to get a quick response back to the customer. If the agent is not online and their ticket re-opened, we want to assign the ticket to another online agent. We will consider this feedback as we plan further improvements to Messaging.
Once the condition with Comment text is removed, your trigger setup will ensure that only Stage 3 Customer Service group is notified. Brand3 needs to be assigned to the Messaging widget. (Setup information can be found here). I can create a ticket to troubleshoot if all your agents continue to get notified.
These tickets can tracked in a View created with Channel is Messaging and Status is New.
We, recently, rolled out support for multi-brand. A different widget can be created and associated to a brand. Each widget look and feel can be customised. (Link).
Thank you again for writing in. Please feel free to post your comments or reach out via support@zendesk.com for help.
- Prakruti
These tickets can tracked in a View created with Channel is Messaging and Status is New.
You misunderstood the problem.
If the end user writes to the chat and is in the queue for more than 10 minutes, then such a ticket becomes inactive. Hence, no such tickets are routed. An inactive ticket is not marked in any way in order to make it a separate view, for example, as it was with Zendesk chat (Missed chat). Although logically, I would like to see routing, including inactive chats, since the chat is without a session.
The screenshot clearly shows that the agent is accepting a chat that has been in the queue for 6 minutes. And chats that have been in the queue for more than 10 minutes remain untouched.
I'm sure it shouldn't be that way. I'm waiting for corrections.
Read more about the issue in this ticket 5924514
Hi Artur Tsudik,
Thank you for the clarification.
Currently, messaging conversations are removed from the queue after 10 mins. Typically, we have seen that customers do not wait more than 5 mins to receive a response. The thought process was to give preference to customers who are recent and are still waiting on the website to receive a response. I would like to get your thoughts on it.
Fair point. We are looking into improving the routing capabilities for messaging and this is valuable feedback.
- Prakruti
Hi Jordan,
Thank you for writing in. Proactive messaging is on the roadmap.
Hi, I was trying out the new messaging and noticed customers can be routed to an agent even when no agent is online. The request will just be added to the request queue, but when I don't have agents online, I rather not want customers to be able to be connected to agents.
Surely it's not best practice to have customers wait 5 or more minutes without updates? Why is online/offline no longer an option?
Is there an option to work with an offline form like in the "old" chat?
Anton Verhelst I have only seen that option be available IF you are not using the new WEB SDK widget and you have turned off the answer bots. ( Which, I truly don't really want to use ever but haven't seen how this is possible at this moment with messaging.)
Prakruti Hindia When you tell me to update the condition of my trigger and only Stage 3 is notified, my follow up question to that is then if a customer only wants to speak to Customer Service, and I don't want the sales group for stage 3 to answer that chat, how can I make that work?
Also, I am seeing where you have to create hybrid triggers in chat and then in messaging for different purposes BUT any trigger you make for chat, that doesn't actually show up on a messaging ticket in the events. How will we know what chat triggers affected that ticket?
Maybe we add a prompt in the Flow Builder agent transfer to understand the customer's intention. This would mean creating a custom ticket field - Nature of Issue with possible values - sales, customer service etc. We used that ticket field as a condition in Support Triggers.
Chat Triggers should be used for setting up auto-responders. For instance, setting expectations when the agents are offline (more information here) or acknowledge end-user response.
Can you tell me more about the use-case for Chat Triggers ?
- Prakruti
Prakruti Hindia
What would be ideal, is to make the ability to create triggers that associate with people's groups for messaging. Meaning like how I set my trigger up originally that doesn't work. If the customer picks "Customer Service" then it's routed to the "Customer Service" group based on the string used in messaging. That's just one way, or you could even make specific "groups" to handle messaging if you do like a messaging dashboard like how you have chat.
In regards to the chat triggers for auto-responders, this wasn't working from what I tested with messaging. If it was after hours, the message would just sit there and would only send the " Auto Response" after I accepted the message in the queue. If it sat there, the auto responder would not work. Furthermore, the auto responder trigger doesn't show on the ticket that was created for that chat which I think could lead to some issues down the road.
Is the assumption correct that Chat will basically go away and the new "chat" will be messaging?
Hi Anton,
Re: offline behavior. Messaging, as a channel, is always available to the customers. It is important to set expectations and collect enough information for the agents to resolve the issue.
For this, we can build out a flow in Flow Builder to collect more information from the end-user such as name, email or nature of the issue. (More information here)
In order to set expectations, we should setup auto-responders. (More information here).
You can create a view for your agents to pick up Messaging tickets created when the agents were offline with this condition - Channel is Messaging and Status is New.
- Prakruti
Hi Megan,
We do not support group assignment based on free text entered by the end-user. If we can create a flow in Flow Builder prompting for nature of issue, then Support Triggers can be used to assign groups.
Triggers would look like -
If Ticket is Created and Channel is Messaging and Nature of Issue is Customer Service
Then Group is Customer Service.
If Ticket is Created and Channel is Messaging and Nature of Issue is Sales
Then Group is Sales.
Re: Auto-responders using Chat Triggers. Can you drop a ticket to support@zendesk.com with screenshot of your Chat Triggers setup? We can help troubleshoot.
- Prakruti
UPDATED
Hi All,
Grew a few too many grey hairs trying to work this one out (routing specifically to a group and not to all available chat agent).
I created a support trigger that uses the specific ticket field we created to obtain certain info for our Sales team from our customer. This is how I defined which group should be presented with this chat.
Looks something like this...
Ensuring that the specific ticket field is present - you can leverage off this to then set actions accordingly. As shown below I've ensured that when this particular ticket field is present in a Messaging conversation, that the ticket will be presented specifically to our Products group (Sales).
Now I would consider using the Out of Office app available in ZD Support to ensure any returning customers on these tickets, are presented to the next available (Sales) agent when the initial agent is on leave/RDO/out of office.
I hope this helps anyone - Because I feel like I've read every bloody article and tested every other method and had to work this out on my own. Very few resources on creating these support triggers. Very very limited resources.
Clik Rogan this is great, thanks so much for sharing it! I'm sure it will help others! We'd love it if you could paste your solution into a new tip in our community so that others can more easily find it.
We are also working on more documentation for routing and we'd love to point to your tip as an example.
Thanks!
Jennifer Rowe Thank you! I have made the post here and have pointed out what our goal, issue and solution was =]
Would love to know when any more documentation comes out in regards to Messaging. I think the product is great and is the future of live chat x AI!
Thanks again,
Clik Rogan this is interesting !
The expected result of this trigger is that the designated group receives and serves the respective chat (messaging group routing) ?
Hi Clik,
Thank you for posting your configuration. Minor suggestion on the setup is to remove the Action to Set Channel -> Chat.
These tickets should continue to have Channel - 'Messaging'. Parts of the product experiences may break if we change the ticket channel.
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