In our first post Relate event, the Community team hosted a deep dive into what’s new with Zendesk Messaging. We sat down with Paul Lalonde and members of the Messaging team, where they highlighted recent product updates such as improved bot building and updates to the mobile app UI and shared a deep understanding of what Messaging has to offer. The team also hosted live Q&A addressing questions submitted by attendees on various areas of the Messaging product!
Video Recording
Questions from the Q&A
Q: What is the difference between Chat & Messaging?
A: Messaging comes with built-in automation that allows you to add a bot to your conversations. The bot can deliver instant answers 24/7 to customers, intelligently escalate to agents when needed, and streamline agent triaging. Customers can get quick answers to common questions right away without having to talk to an agent, wait on hold on the phone, wait for a reply via email, etc. This helps improve CSAT, decrease agent handling time, and decrease first resolution time.
Documentation: Messaging vs. live chat: Which is right for you?
Q: Can external bots integrate into messaging without smooch?
A: Sunshine Conversations (Smooch) license is needed today to integrate an external bot to messaging. Check out our bot marketplace for "low code" bot options that are already integrated into messaging and Agent Workspace.
Documentation: Integrations Directory
Q: How can we facilitate data collection and routing for social media channels with Messaging?
A: We just launched Flow Builder for social messaging channels. Now customers can deploy their bot on channels like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. The bot will collect data in the richest possible format (it might be conversationally instead of through an actual form). Data collected, including custom fields, can be used for creating business rules and routing.
Documentation: Using Flow Builder to create a social messaging bot
Q: How do you autoroute to people in Messaging within a specific group?
A: For Chat transfers to work properly, make sure the Chat departments in your account are mapped to Support groups. Remember that a pre-requisite for using messaging is to first enable agent workspace. So if you haven't done that, you need to do that first. Tip: you can use the Agent Workspace migration wizard to automatically do the mapping when you first enable the agent workspace. We'll put some links in the chat for how to do all this. Also, make sure any Chat department that needs to send or receive chat transfers is enabled on the Chat dashboard. You can enable Chat departments before or after migration.
Documentation: Getting started for administrators in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
Q: We want to understand how the transition would be for our team in moving from Zendesk Chat to Zendesk Messaging.
A: There's changes to the agent experience and the customer experience. We recommend you check out our resources and training on the subject.
Documentation: Messaging vs. live chat: Which is right for you?
Q: How can Messaging help to increase our productivity?
A: The main benefit of messaging over any other channel, such as live chat, is the ability to add automation 24/7 with your own bot. We recently surveyed thousands of Zendesk customers using messaging and found that about a third reported a reduction in AHT as well as a 32.7% improvement in agent productivity.
Documentation: Messaging vs. live chat: Which is right for you?
Q: For support teams that do not have a need to offer social media or chat apps as a support channel, what benefits does Messagin offer?
A: Messaging comes with built-in automation that allows you to add a bot to your conversations. The bot can deliver instant answers 24/7 to customers, intelligently escalate to agents when needed, and streamline agent triaging. Customers can get quick answers to common questions right away without having to talk to an agent, wait on hold on the phone, wait for a reply via email, etc. All of this helps to improve CSAT, decrease agent handling time, and decrease first resolution time.
Documentation: Photobucket delivers 24/7 member support with Messaging
Q: Can you share infomration about Messaging Integrations with Slack & Microsoft Team?
A: This is more of an internal helpdesk use case.The slack integration will Give your employees the freedom to engage with their internal help desk teams via Slack. This will raise a request within Agent Workspace that can easily be resolved by a team member.Currently have a Slack EAP. There was also a question about teams...no updates there yet.
Documentation: Messaging vs. live chat: Which is right for you?
Q: How would you convert a ticket that originated via email, web or voicemail to text in Messaging?
A: Unless you have oauth, you can only transfer from messaging to another channel, such as email or social channels, not the other way around.
Documentation: Linking social channels to a Web Widget
Q: How can I understand staffing needs based on existing volume trends with Messaging?
A: Each organization has its own set of support requirements and will consequently have different staffing needs. The list below includes issues you might consider when determining the number of agents required for messaging support.
The list below includes issues you might consider when determining the number of agents required for messaging support.
Number of visitors: How many visitors (to your website or help center, for example) do you expect during the period that agents are available?
Agent availability period: How many hours in the day will agents be available to serve messaging requests?
Average conversation duration: How long do you expect agents to spend on a single conversation (in mins)?
Concurrent conversations: How many conversations will an agent serve simultaneously?
Documentation: Planning agent staffing for messaging
Q: Can you add multiple schedules to flow builder?
A: You can use the business hours condition to configure the bot to respond differently based on your business availability.
Documentation: Understanding bot flow step types
Q: How to best assign re-opened messaging tickets to an online agent and answer bot flow suggestions?
A: We are working on a better solution for this which will be released soon. For now, Unassigned messaging tickets can be displayed in a view set up for messaging. Agents will need to triage the view for handling. Prior to this, the brand should set up an autoresponder and set response time context for the end user.
Messaging settings allow preconfigured text to communicate business hours in the window header via auto response.
Chat Trigger conditions can be leveraged within the messaging channel to evaluate Account and Department availability and adjust user context accordingly.
e.g., “We are online now and will message back you in 10 minutes”
e.g., “We are offline now and will reply during normal business hours”
Documentation: Routing messaging tickets and notifications
Q: Can we utilize messaging/bots without using chat?
A: You can use "basic" messaging without flow builder. For this to work you need a Help Ccenter that Answer Bot can poll from. You don't technically need a Help Center to use "basic" messaging. You only need a public Help Center if you want to use the Article Recommendations feature.
Documentation: Routing messaging tickets and notifications
Q: What new messaging channels do you see emerging over the next year?
A: We'll be bringing GBM and ABC to the Suite shortly!
Documentation: New and upcoming Flow Builder features
Q: How can you proactively manage customer expectations of when live messaging is available and when it's not?
A: You can set a schedule in Support and use the Add a business hours condition to split your flow into Open and Closed branches. Closed branch can let customers know that agents aren't available, and give them the opportunity to request contact. You can also create an out of office message for when no agents are online.
Documentation:
Set a schedule in Support
Add a business hours condition
Create an ooo response for messaging
Q: How do you add an external source and query that source via the bot?
A: This was just released yesterday! There's a new step type, "Make an API call." It does have some limitations but is functional for many use cases, and throughout the course of this year we'll be releasing more functionality to allow for more flexible bot integrations. Links in documentation column.
We just announced this feature but it's still a couple weeks (tops!) from being released. Once it's released we will add details on how to use this new steps in our Help Center.
Documentation:
Bot step types: Make an API call
Q: How can you customize ticket creations from the Messaging channel, how to pass hidden data (hidden custom fields)?
A: This sounds like it's about the transfer to an agent step in Flow Builder. For adding custom fields to gather information, the same ticket field rules apply as in the rest of your Zendesk instance with a slight limitation. You can only use dropdown and text entry custom fields in a messaging-based webform.
Documentation:
Adding custom fields to your tickets and support request form
Understanding bot flow step types
Q: How do you integrate Instagram Direct messages to reply from Zendesk?
A: You can set up Instagram Direct from the admin center. You can also connect social channels (whatsapp, fb messenger, etc) to your messaging widget so users can start a conversation in the web widget and continue in a social channel.
Documentation:
Enabling and using Instagram Direct
Flow Builder for social channels
Linking social channels to a Web Widget
Q: Why do messages that are transferred to the agents still open after the chat is finished?
A: This is related to the ongoing and persistent nature of messaging, where the conversation is ongoing and doesn't have a finite beginning and end (like with chat). If you're looking to close out your messaging tickets after you consider it "finished" you're best option is to set up a trigger to automatically close your resolved messaging conversations.
Documentation:
Conversation handoff and handback: creating a trigger to close ticket
Section on persistence in chat vs messaging
Q: How do you assign chats to different groups in Messaging based on page URL?
A: This level of conditionality is not currently supported, but it's on the roadmap!
Documentation:
Setting up notification routing
Q: Are there any multilingual customization avalible for answerbot?
A: Multilingual support for answer bot is detailed here. You can enable automatic translation for messaging conversations, but it requires some advance flow planning.
Documentation: Managing languages in a bot
Q: How can I make it mandatory to identify contacts before they arrive for human assistance?
A: You can either set up authentication or add a step in flow builder to collect customers information such as their name and email before handing the conversation over to an agent.
Documentation:
Understanding bot flow step types
Authentication for messagingUnderstanding bot flow step types
Q: How do you integrate messaging with internal APIs?
A: To connect messaging to internal business systems, you would need a sunshine conversations license today. However, the data dip feature we recently announced will help to solve for some of these use cases out-of-the-box instead of requiring a sunshine conversations license to achieve this.
Q: Beautifully simple is internal brand guidelines, should this question really be answered?
A: The products we make and the industry we serve are technical and complex, so it’s essential that our work is simple and clear. This is how we approached messaging to. It's easy to set up and customize right out of the box compared to other solutions in the market. It's a part of the Suite, meaning it plays nicely with other Zendesk products and services. All this is designed in a way to make it easy and intuitive to deliver fast and efficient help to your customers on any channel they prefer.
Q: Do you have any documentation on Chatbot and how Messaging can help?
A: You can find all Flow Builder and bot-related resources for messaging in the messaging section of our help center.
Documentation: Zendesk Messaging
Resources from the event
Presentation Material:
Future Events & Opportunites
Zendesk Relate 2022 on Demand Content
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