Allowing customers to continue their conversation over email

Tip: Messaging trigger access for Zendesk accounts is being moved from the Chat Dashboard to Admin Center in phases. If your messaging triggers do not appear in Admin Center as described in this article, see Chat triggers in Zendesk messaging. For more information on the move, see this announcement.

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
• Activating continuous conversations
• Deactivating continuous conversations

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).

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

Note: The continuous conversations feature is only available when using messaging through a Web Widget, and is not available on mobile devices.

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 email, they will be prompted to provide email. 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 for 10 minutes, 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 Admin Center's tickets settings page.

To activate continuous conversations

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
2. Under the Settings tab, select Switch messaging conversations through 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

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
2. Under the Settings tab, deselect Switch messaging conversations through email, then click Save tab at the bottom of the page.
3. 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.
4. Deselect Activate this trigger, then click Save.