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 social channels, making it easy for your customers to self- serve or connect with your agents.
In this article, we’ll provide 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:
What is messaging?
Messaging is, at its core, a conversational platform, much like Zendesk’s legacy live chat. However, it upgrades live chat functionality in a number of ways, including:
- Persistent conversations, so both agents and customers can view past interactions for greater insight into their ongoing support relationships.
- Multiple channel availability, you can include it wherever your customers want to engage with your support services.
- Ticket creation, which lets agents follow up on more complex support requests through Zendesk Support.
- Automated, customized conversation flows, created with Flow Builder, our drag-and-drop designer, can include article suggestions and customized conversational text.
- Integration in the Agent Workspace, so your agents can manage support requests coming in from all of those channels from a single, unified interface.
You can deploy messaging across three channel groups -- website, mobile apps, and social channels -- each with multiple delivery channels and configuration options. Pick and choose any combination of channels to best reach your customers:
- Website channels (Web Widget) can embed messaging in your own website or Zendesk Guide help center.
- Mobile apps (iOS, Android, and Unity SDKs) deliver messaging capabilities via your customers’ mobile devices.
- Social channels (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, LINE, and more) lets you connect with and support customers wherever they are.
Messaging impacts everyone who works on (or with) your Zendesk:
- Admins can quickly set up messaging in the Admin Center, and can use 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 the opportunity to self-solve their support issues with targeted article suggestions before connecting with an agent. Conversation history helps them refer to earlier support requests, and give feedback to agents with customer satisfaction surveys.
Requirements, recommendations, and limitations
To enable messaging, you must have an account with:
- Zendesk Suite OR Support + Chat (Team plan or higher)
- Agent Workspace enabled. See Enabling and disabling the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- At least one Chat-enabled agent. See About Staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.
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.
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.
Messaging is a constantly-growing feature, and there are some limitations to the currently-available functionality. See Limitations in messaging functionality for more information.
Get started with messaging
When you’re ready, use the following articles to learn more about messaging and how to get it up and running on your account.
- Welcome to messaging
- Getting started with messaging for web and mobile
- Getting started with social messaging
If you have been using live chat and want to transition to messaging, start with Resources for migrating from live chat to messaging .
42 Comments
Hi @...,
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.
@... @... Thanks for your answers. As for now, Messaging doesn't support even languages that legacy Zendesk products support. Our clients are chatting with us mostly in Ukrainian, Russian and English. The Ukrainian language is supported by Zendesk Chat, Zendesk Guide and Agent Workspace. But still no support in Messaging. It would be great to use Messaging as a product, of course with limitations for such languages (I mean hard-coded flows including CSAT collection).
Hi @... & @...,
You've both asked the same question here about intelligently pre-filling customer data within messaging. Messaging doesn't support authentication as yet but we have plans to do so later this year. This will include an API that you can use to identify users and pre-fill customer data.
Hope this helps!
- Miranda.
Hi @...,
You can find the messaging Web SDK APIs here, https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/zendesk-sdks/sdks/web/sdk_api_reference/. Open & Close may work for your use case today. We are planning to introduce a way to hide the messaging launcher later in the year (via a new Admin setting) so you should be able to use that in conjunction with the open & close APIs to meet your needs then.
- Miranda.
We are currently integrating Zendesk Messaging into our app, how I add show/hide/activate methods in the web widget in my current page. is there any option for hiding the messaging launcher?
Hi @...,
Thanks for your question! Authentication is a top priority for us within messaging but unfortunately, it's been pushed out until later this year (within Q4). Stay tuned!
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Hi Slava Skorbezh,
As Giuseppe mentioned, this isn't possible today but it is something that is being considered for the product roadmap within 2022.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
@... Is it possible to make Answer Bot unactive if user's language is not supported? I mean not to ask customer "please try to rephrase"?
Hi @...,
Thank you for alerting us to this! Authentication is now planned to be delivered by the end of Q3 2021. We'll make sure this article gets updated.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Hi,
Can you update the roadmap of this article?
We really want to use this feature, but Q2 is over now.
My instance does not have an attach file button at Zendesk Messaging Widget. How could I get that button?
Hi @...,
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.
Good day,
Is there anyway for us to control how many customers can message us through the widget at one time? We don't want customers to have a long queue wait and would rather redirect them to fill out a form if our agents are all occupied with a longer wait. Also, is there no way to include other custom fields besides Email and Name when requesting customer info through Messaging form?
Hi Blake E.,
Nice to hear from you.
Unfortunately, we've had some delays and Authentication for messaging has now been moved to Q4. This is still a priority for us and we are hoping to have it released as quickly as possible. Stay tuned.
- Miranda.
Hi Miranda,
3 months ago you wrote about authentication being delivered by end of Q3. Hoping you have good news on the status of this feature. Thank you!
Hi Akhila,
It will be possible to use custom launchers with the new Messaging Web Widget but it will be a slightly different implementation to the classic Web Widget and is not live in production yet. As mentioned by my colleague, the messaging launcher will be implemented later in the year.
I hope this helps!
--
Shayne
Hi @...
It is possible to set user email to the messenger email input box via API or cookie?
https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/zendesk-sdks/sdks/web/sdk_api_reference/
Our system has user email, and we want to avoid this user process, system set it automatically.
Hi CJ Johnson,
Yes they do!
Hi, CJ Johnson. You can find the information about the agent UI for messaging in Agent Workspace for Zendesk messaging.
Hi our company is using zendesk api. Is it possible to clear chat history manually? We need to show clean empty screen whenever different user logs into the app. Currently, past conversation remains regardless of different users logging in and logging out.
Hi @.... That has indeed helped - thanks very much!
What reporting metrics are available in Explore? Is there a way to see how many people go through the flow?
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 Bruno Cabral,
Authentication within messaging is yet to be completed. We are currently working on it and expect it to be released to customers early 2022. Apologies for the misunderstanding. What's new showed a sneak peak of what's to come!
I agree that our documentation isn't as clear as it could be. I'll chat to the team and see if we can publish a useful guide of what to expect for Authentication within messaging. Thanks for your feedback!
- Miranda.
Thanks for the suggestion, Daniël Nieuwendijk. It's currently possible for end users to use the system keyboard shortcuts and enter emojis into the conversation but agree that an emoji selector would make this more seamless. We'll log this feedback for future consideration.
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Rich is good, but how about fun? Can you add buttons for customers to add emojis and gifs to the conversation? Really, emoji is such a standard tool for conveying meaning and intention, that I think it really needs to be supported better.
Hi 강동영,
Unfortunately, we don't currently have an API available to do this within messaging but we do have a 'Forget History' setting available within your Web Widget Admin settings. Screenshot below. This will remove the conversation history and start fresh every time.
I will log your API feature request for future consideration. Hope this helps!
- Miranda.
Hi Xin,
That's correct. Authentication isn't currently supported within messaging but you can read more about our upcoming plans here, https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412967699098.
Hope this helps!
- Miranda.
Hi, when will the authentication be ready for Messenger? It was promised to be delivered in Q2 (by implementation team). Now its already Q4. Any update?
Hi Miranda,
Thank you very much!. show and hide options are work. is possible to send the customer details dynamically to a ticket in Zendesk messaging like automatically filled the user email /phone in the web page.
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