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.
See About messaging for more information.
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.
Learn about adding messaging to a website or help center, or to a mobile app.
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.
Learn about configuring messaging for a Web Widget, or for a mobile SDK.
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.
Learn more about Conversation history and persistence.
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.
Learn about bot-enabled messaging.
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.
Learn about Agent Workspace for messaging.
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.
Learn about continuous conversations.
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.
Learn about customer context in Agent Workspace.
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.
Learn about messaging routing, reporting, and agent staffing.
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.
Learn about Flow Builder.
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.
Learn about bot flow response types.
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.
Learn about agent transfer and other conversation handoff events.
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.
71 Comments
@... Any updates on the metrics/reporting for Zendesk Messaging? Now that we are nearing April 2021, just wondering if there's an ETA on this! Thanks!
@... Yes that's correct ensuring my mistake of channel > is > chat is update to the following "Channel > is > Messaging" =]
@..., how do you route using IVR in messaging?
Hi Allison! Flow builder reporting is currently in progress and is still on our roadmap. I don't have more information than that right now, but it is in progress still and further updates are coming.
Additionally, here is what we do have available for messaging metrics currently.
Messaging reporting in Zendesk Agent Workspace
Matt
I'm trying to add an email address to a profile in a Twitter DM ticket to leverage conversation messaging. When I do that, I get an error that this particular email is already being used by another ticket (which it is. I have a test support/email ticket with that email that previously came in.) What I'm ultimately trying to do is pivot from my Twitter DM to email similarly to what I saw on a video. Likewise, I tried to add a mobile number to pivot between Twitter DM to an SMS. I received a similar error.
Can someone help me understand what I'm doing incorrectly? (This could be very likely a user error.)
Confirming, I'm currently using agent workspace.
(So sorry for the newb question.)
Hi @...,
You can merge user profiles, so that one profile contains all the various contact information for that user: Merging a user's duplicate account. Hope that helps!
Hi there,
How I end a chat as an agent? We recently changed from Chat to Messaging in the new agent workspace and the "End chat" option is no longer where it was.
Hi, Ryan Lainchbury.
Messaging conversations don't "end" in the same way live chats do. They're more persistent, and are tied to tickets more closely, than chats. In a nutshell, to truly end a conversation, you need to close the ticket associated with it, but it is a little more nuanced than that.
There are a few articles that you might find useful:
This looks awesome, but mobile access by agents seems buggy.
for the "Text (optional) Appears next to the launcher" section. After they hit the close button it never comes back. Is there a way to have it come back after a day or so?
Hi @...,
Thanks for your feedback! Right now, when the end user dismisses the launcher text, it's dismissed permanently. Would you expect it to come back for every new browser session?
Thanks,
- Miranda.
Hi Amie,
Hope all is well! We've reached out to our internal team about your questions. See our answers below:
1. It's planned for the end of Q3 2021. You can see it on the Productboard portal.
2. I'm afraid there's no option to include the transcript as this is expected behavior in Zendesk Messaging. We have noted this and we thank you for your feedback.
3. We understand where you are coming from. The current behavior is to default channel selection to Messaging ie Channel from where the ticket was created. We also have noted this feedback and we really appreciate it.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Adrian
There are a couple of issues that really need some love. Otherwise, maybe we need more identification if there is a way around this.
This is pretty big. To date, the only clients who have requested Flowbuilder need multi-brand configurations. This disqualifies Flowbuilder. Even though traditional Chat is also lacking in regards to multi-brand, it can at least be routed depending on the "Department"/Group selected by the customer. Honestly, both need love..
All other Customer-facing UI allows " :: " to folder options. Flowbuilder does not, causing these options to display across multiple lines, increasing frustration and detrimenting overall CX. Requesters will not instantly identify " :: " as a separator. Example in screenshot below
Hi @...,
When can we expect for users to be able to attach images/files in messaging? We did some tests and it currently only allows users to send text (at least in the Android SDK version)
Additionally, wondering if you have any updates as to when we can expect for messaging to identify users the same way that chat does?
Thanks!
Hi Santiago,
This is on the roadmap. And we will be rolling this out soon.
User identification for non-authenticated users works in similar manner for messaging and chat. Are you referring to authentication ? This is on the roadmap as well.
- Prakruti
How can I check if the widget is closed?
Hi Santiago Gandolfo,
Thanks for the question.
I'm assuming you mean via API? We have open/close APIs available here.
Hope this helps!
- Miranda.
Hi Miranda, but is it possible to have something like this?:
zE('messenger:on', 'close', function() {})How can we make sure that in the queue only the tickets are included that are part of the brand of that specific agents. Now its seems that tickets in the queue are assigned to the agent that ticks on the button.
We have triggers to allocate incoming tickets to certain groups.
Not sure where to post feedback on zendesk messaging (vs zopim chat) so ill do it here:
Horribly jumpy, the UI from a customer side kinda stinks. It moves super fast. Has anyone ever wrote into zendesk support using the bot? It flies all over the place.
Hi Santiago Gandolfo,
No, unfortunately not but it's something that we are considering for the future (an open/close listener which allows you to execute code when the end user (or programatically) opens or closes the Web Widget).
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll record it on our side.
- Miranda.
Hi Bram,
If you have an existing Trigger setup for routing, add Brand to the list of conditions. Your trigger setup would look like this -
Conditions :
Actions
Sample trigger setup for routing (does not include brand) can be found here.
- Prakruti
Hi, I have a couple of new questions:
1. Is it possible to have multiple different widgets for one single brand?
2. Is it possible to identify the user without them having to submit their name and email every time they open a new conversation that opens a new ticket?
Thanks!
Hey Santiago,
1. I'm pretty sure it's not possible to have different Messaging widgets per brand - Yet
2. As of today, they've just released End-User Authentication for the messaging widget which would resolve this one for you. You can check it out here:
Announcing End-User Authentication for Messaging
I hope this helps. :)
Best,
Amie
Thank Amie.
Going back to the widget, is there a way to change it's relative/absolute x or y index, in the same way that we are able to change it's z index? Because I'm trying to hide the button when the widget is closed, but I'm being forced to create a background to my site so that I can move the widget behind it, and I would much rather not add this extra component.
Thanks!
While you can't access the x or y axis properties directly via API for the messaging web widget, you should be able to target the element with the relevant data-* attribute and apply any styling you need with a bit of JS. Something like this or similar should get you the results you're after:
I hope this helps! Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Tipene
iH Tipene, thanks for the answer. Is there a way to know when the button is loaded? Because I'm gettin this error if I try to run that code as a script
I could only make it work after adding a timeout or putting it inside a function called by another button.
Is there also a way to know when it gets reloaded? Because if I resize the screen to mobile size, and then go back to the original size, the button gets loaded again
And is there a way you could add an Id to every button son that we don't have to find them by their title or class?
Hi Josh Dronzek,
Thank you for your post.
>>Horribly jumpy, the UI from a customer side kinda stinks. It moves super fast. Has anyone ever >>wrote into zendesk support using the bot? It flies all over the place.
Appreciate the feedback. We are definitely keen to hear about your experiences on messaging so I'll definitely make a note of this on our side for future consideration.
- Miranda.
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