Articles in the series
Messaging lets you have rich conversations with your customers that are persistent, with full context and history. When you enable messaging, you can connect it to your website or help center, mobile apps, and third-party channels, making it easy for your customers to self-serve or connect with your agents.
As your support needs grow, you may want to automate some of this communication, such as offering a simple greeting before handing the customer over to an agent, deflecting inquiries using knowledge base articles, or extensive customized conversation flows. Many users find that the right balance for them is somewhere in the middle, between no automation and extensive conversation bot flows.
This article provides an overview of what messaging can do, the channels you can use to deliver messaging to your customers, and guidance on how to get started.
This article includes the following sections:
Understanding messaging
Messaging allows you to support multiple conversational styles, from real-time chat functionality to asynchronous communication with your customers. It's easily scalable and highly customizable.
Messaging provides the following features and benefits:- Multiple channels. You can communicate with users seamlessly across your website, help centers, mobile apps, and social messaging channels. Choose which channels you support so you can connect with and support customers wherever they are.
- Persistent conversations. Agents and end users can interact multiple times over a period of time, across different channels, all within a single conversation. This makes it easier to refer to earlier interactions and avoid asking users to repeat themselves. The increased efficiency benefits agents and end uses alike.
- Ticket creation. Tickets are generated for requests received through messaging channels, enabling agents to follow up on more complex requests through Zendesk Support when needed.
- Integrate with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Agents can use familiar productivity aids within the Agent Workspace to handle messaging conversations, similar to traditional channels such as email. They can respond to customers at any time and continue where they left off, and the conversation history provides agents with additional context when needed without asking the user to repeat themselves.
- Conversational automations and bots. Automations and bots can enhance your customer experience by automating deflection options and triaging support issues before (or instead of) handing the conversation over to live agents. Customers benefit from the opportunity to self-solve their issues.
- Extensive customization options. Admins can quickly set up messaging channels in Admin Center. Then, depending on how much automation they want to implement in their conversational messaging workflow, they can use the bot builder to create interactive conversation bots to greet customers, offer relevant article suggestions, gather information, and more.
Requirements and limitations
Your account must meet the following requirements to be eligible to turn on messaging.
- You must have one of the following plans:
- Any Zendesk Suite plan
or
- Support + Chat subscriptions with a Team plan or above
Note: Some channels require a Zendesk Suite plan.
- Any Zendesk Suite plan
- The Zendesk Agent workspace must be activated.
- You must have at least one team member assigned to a Chat role. See About Staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.
- You must deactivate any social messaging integrations you configured previously. See Social and third-party messaging resources.
Additionally, we recommend you have an account with an active, public-facing help center. Having at least 10 published articles that cover common questions allows you to use bots to recommend relevant articles from your help center.
Next steps
Walk through the Messaging deployment guide. The next article in the series is Designing your conversational messaging workflow, which will help ensure you're making informed decisions, are prepared with the necessary information when configuring your messaging workflows, and have clear next steps along the way.
71 comments
Testing
Hi Paolo. How Can I use the API in the image? In the link posted for you I just saw zE function for messaging
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Tatiana Christensen
With regards to the topics "Persistent conversations" and "Ticket creation" under part 1.
We experience the "Persistent conversation" that even if the ticket is solved and a new conversation is initiated, the new conversation is added to the existing messaging ticket, so ALL correspondence is saved under one ticket. If the messaging ticket is solved, it's reopened, and if it's closed, a follow up ticket is created.
How do we proceed with the "Ticket creation" as described in part 1, so we are not stuck with all inquiry via bot appearing in a single "Messaging ticket"?
1
Destiny
I appreciate you reaching out to us. If I understand correctly, you're looking to have new customer replies start a separate ticket instead of continuing in an ongoing messaging thread, correct?
To accomplish this, one approach involves closing the existing messaging ticket, which then allows a new ticket to be created for subsequent conversations. To streamline this process, you can utilize business rules. We have a specific guide that you can follow to set this up according to your preferences.
Here are some resources to help you with setting up the necessary triggers and automations:
Please ensure you include the condition "Channel is Messaging" when setting up these rules. Let me know if this solution meets your needs.
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Tatiana Christensen
Hi Destiny,
Thanks for the elaborate explanation. While it solves that the bot re-enters the conversation, this still leads to the next "transfer to agent" messaging conversation with the same user to be added to the same messaging ticket (follow-up ticket, if closed), even though it's completely unrelated to the previous inquiry that might og might not be resolved.
Unfortunately, I'm still now sure how to enable "agents to follow up on more complex requests through Zendesk Support when needed." via messaging.
I guess we need to have a messaging ticket per transfer to agent inquiry? Isn't it how the Zendesk support bot works?
I might have found the answer here, with Mick O'Donnell posting that it's on the road map late 2024: possibility to start a new chat conversation in our bot – Zendesk help
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Destiny
I appreciate you detailing your scenario with the new messaging ticket and thread for the bot. I've taken a look at the provided link and can verify that the complete feature you're anticipating is still planned in our product roadmap. The solution I offered earlier is merely an interim measure until the full functionality is developed and rolled out. While I'm unable to give you a precise timeline, please be assured that our product team is well aware of this need. Thank you for your patience and comprehension.
1
Mayra
When a client is talking to us through our platform and then changes the tab (on the web, for example, when they click and go to a different page on our platform as we indicate them to), the messaging automatically inactivates the conversation, and when the client reopens the conversation the bot flow starts over. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?
0
Destiny
Thank you for sharing your case in our community forum. To help pinpoint the reason behind your issue with the Messaging widget, I'd like to delve deeper into what might be happening.
Could it be possible that the end user remained inactive for a duration exceeding 10 minutes, or has an agent assigned to the conversation marked the ticket as Pending or Solved? Such actions typically alter the end user's status to inactive, which, in turn, might lead to the conversation restarting. For insights into chat timeout behaviors, you might find this article helpful: When do chats time out?.
If neither inactivity nor ticket status changes are at play here (i.e., the user not being away for more than 10 minutes), then we may be looking at a more significant issue. Should you wish to explore and resolve this matter over email, I am ready to facilitate that by opening a support ticket on your behalf. Let me know how you wish to proceed. Thanks~!
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Sai Karri
Hi all,
In order to deploy Zendesk native bot, do we need Sunshine conversations platform? The only need I see is For any API calls say to get some user info, or create a ticket via API when chat support is online, etc., but even for those, I see Zendesk Native bots have the capability to list/call/create tickets, users, requests, etc.
0
Hiedi Kysther
Hi Sai Karri
No, you do not need Sunshine Conversation to use Zendesk Conversational Bot (Messaging). As outlined in this article, you only need the following to use Zendesk Messaging:
Any Zendesk Suite plan
or
Support + Chat subscriptions with a Team plan or above
Note: Some channels require a Zendesk Suite plan.
You may need Sunshine Conversation if you are following a more complex workflow that isn't natively available in Messaging.
Hope this helps!
0
Jennifer Rozenberg
Is there a setting that will take the customer back to the beginning of the conversation. A Reset button setting?
Also is there a way in messenger to have an option to go back to the beginning of the conversation in the flow?
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Marge Benedict
Hi,
Messaging is being turned on, apparently, whether we like it or not, on 8/27/24. We currently have a third party app, ada, for our chat bot.
From reading and watching training videos, it seems your messaging performs the same function as ada.
Is messaging ‘required’ to be enabled in order to continue to use ada? If we enable messaging and then turn it off, will our ada implementation still work?
Please let me know.
Thank you!
Marge
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