With proactive messaging, you can deliver targeted messages to your customers through your Web Widget or mobile SDK channel without waiting for them to start the conversation.
This article includes the following topics:
See Creating proactive messages for the Web Widgetand Creating proactive messages for mobile SDK channelsfor more information.
Overview of proactive messaging
With proactive messaging, you can automatically initiate conversations with customers based on specified conditions that you define. Your customers can then choose whether or not to respond.
This can be useful in a number of ways, including:
- Providing proactive support, such as offering automated self-service based on user behavior and interaction history, as well as show delays on product delivery and scheduled maintenance.
- Driving customer engagement, acquisition and retention with custom greetings, guided onboarding and announcements.
- Increasing sales and conversion rates with targeted messages based on user events and past interactions.
Setting up a proactive message includes the following tasks:
- Adding the proactive message. This creates a framework for the message and adds it to the Proactive messages list.
- Composing the message. Write a message for your customers using text and emojis, capture customer data if needed, select a messaging channel, and choose whether the conversation will be managed by your conversation bot or simply pass responding customers to a live agent. See Agent vs. bot responsesfor more information.
- Setting the rules. This is where you define the conditions a customer must meet to receive the message, and optionally create tags to add to any tickets generated from the conversation.
- Choosing when to send the message. Here, you’ll indicate when a proactive message can be sent: During or outside business hours, or any time of the day. You’ll also select how often a message can be sent to a customer: One time only, once per customer visit, or every time the customer meets the defined conditions for receiving the message.
- Publishing the message. This simple click of a button makes the message live, meaning any customers who meet the message’s conditions will immediately begin receiving those messages.
For more information, see the following articles:
The Proactive messages admin page
The Proactive messages page in Admin Center is your starting point for the tasks described above, as well as a list of existing messages. You can click the message to view its configuration page.
The list of existing messages includes columns displaying the following information:
- Name: A short, descriptive name for the message.
-
Status: The current state of the message. You can sort the list by
this column.
- Live: The proactive message has been published and the message is being sent to customers who meet the conditions.
- Draft: Message creation is in progress, and the message has not been previously published.
- Paused: Admin has manually paused a previously-live proactive message.
- Contains errors: Previously-published message is no longer active due to errors. Most often this status appears when the connected messaging channel is deleted or altered in a way that makes it incompatible with the proactive message, such as deleting the connected bot. You can view the message for information on missing or inadequate information.
- Channel: The channel on which you want to run your proactive message.
- Sent: The number of customers who have been sent the proactive message. You can sort the list by this column.
- Opened: The number of customers who have viewed the proactive message and clicked on the message. You can sort the list by this column.
- Replied to: The number of customers who have interacted with the proactive message, which means engaged with the bot or shared details when agent response type was configured. You can sort the list by this column.
- Updated: The date of the most recent update to the proactive message. You can sort the list by this column.
Each message in the list has an Options menu (
), visible when you hover over the message. The
following options may be available from this menu, depending on the message’s
current status:
- Edit: Opens the message’s configuration page. Option appears on all messages regardless of status.
- Clone: Creates a copy of the message and adds a draft of it to the message list. Option appears when message status is Live, Draft, or Paused.
- Publish: Activates the proactive message. Option appears when message status is Draft.
- Pause: Temporarily stops a published proactive message. Option appears when message status is Live.
- Resume: Restarts a proactive message. Option appears when message status is Paused.
- Delete: Permanently deletes the message. Option appears on all messages regardless of status.
When you first visit the Proactive messages admin page, there are three partially-configured messages in draft form. Each one is configured to address a common use case for proactive messages. You can use these messages as a starting point for creating your own messages by cloning or editing them.
Agent vs. bot responses
There are two response types you can choose to use in your proactive messages:
- Agent: This is the simpler response type, which requires you to compose a short text-only message for the customer (no emojis) and optionally request the customer’s name and/or email address before handing off the conversation to a live agent.
- Bot: Bot responses allow you to create your message by referring to an answer in an active, published bot within the same brand. After the initial message appears, the connected bot manages the conversation.
See The customer experiencefor more information and examples of these message response types.
Requirements and limitations
Consider the following requirements and limitations before getting started with proactive messaging.
Requirements
Your account must meet the following requirements to use proactive messaging:
- Agent Workspace must be activated.
- Messaging must be activated.
- At least one messaging Web Widget OR one mobile SDK channel must exist to publish a proactive message.
- To use a bot response, the connected channel must use the bot builder and have one active, successfully published bot.
- When using a bot response, you can only choose from successfully published answers in the connected bot as your follow-up message.
Limitations
The following limitations apply to the current version of proactive messaging:
- You can create up to 140 proactive messages.
- Proactive messages are only available for the Web Widget and Mobile SDK messaging channels.
- Proactive messages are not supported for third-party bots and social messaging channels.
- Proactive messages can only be used on one channel at a time. Channels, however, can have multiple proactive messages running simultaneously.
- Proactive conditions with two conditions or less cannot use nested conditions.
The customer experience
The customer experience with proactive messages varies – not only with your specific settings and messages, but depending on whether you’re using an Agent or Bot response.
Customer experience: Agent response
When the customer meets the defined criteria for activating a proactive message using the Agent reply type:
- A message appears above the messaging launcher button, displaying the
text defined in the message configuration.
This message is sent from the default sender defined in the channel settings, and overrides previously-configured launcher text.
If the customer chooses to click the message text to open the messaging window, any data capture requests are displayed. The customer can then choose to:
- Enter the requested information. The follow-up message is displayed, and the conversation is handed off to a live agent.
- Close the messaging window using the close launcher button. The message disappears. It may appear at another time, depending on the configured frequency settings.
- Ignore the message.
If the customer chooses to click the X to hide the message without opening it:
- The message disappears. It may appear at another time, depending on the configured frequency settings.
Customer experience: Bot response
When the customer meets the defined criteria for activating a proactive message using the Bot reply type:
- A message appears above the messaging launcher button, displaying the
text defined in the message configuration.
This message is sent from the conversation bot.
If the customer chooses to click the message text to open the messaging window, the answer selected in the message configuration appears. The customer can then choose to:
- Interact with the answer.
- Close the messaging window using the close launcher button. The message disappears. It may appear at another time, depending on the configured frequency settings.
- Ignore the message.
If the customer chooses to click the X to hide the message without opening it:
- The message disappears. It may appear at another time, depending on the configured frequency settings.
27 comments
José Arnaudo
Is it possible to give several Answers as Response instead of just one? I think that would be more accurate
2
Gilney Lisboa Jr
We have a Professional subscription, why I can't see the option "Proactive messages" in "Admin center> Channels"?
2
Kai
This is possible by going to Channels > Bots and Automation> Proactive messages.
For more in-depth information you can check this article
Thanks!
0
Kai
As of the moment, No, if you have a custom launcher the widget is "hidden" by default, You would need to create a custom code for it for your proactive message which is currently not supported at this time.
Thank you!
0
Kai
I will open a separate ticket for us to investigate this further.
Thanks!
0
JON RONCAL GOMEZ
Hello!
I need to translate the proactive message depending on the user's language.I tried by using dynamic content but it doesn't work.
What should I do?
Thanks!
0
Gabriela Manarim
Is is possible to use with Sunco?
1
Kai
As of the moment, there is no native way to make proactive messages disappear after a certain period of time.
0
Kai
As of the moment, dynamic content and placeholder are not currently supported.
0
Jon Simone
Can you make proactive messages based on events? Also this appears to require Messaging, is this true?
0
Kai
As of the moment there is no option to create proactive messages based on events, And yes, it requires messaging. More of this is discussed here.
0
Jon Simone
Thanks for your quick response Kai, do you know if there are any plans to make proactive messages based on events? Responding to emails based on events would be awesome.
1
Kai
As of writing, its not yet in the roadmap. I understand that it could be a useful feature. I've marked this conversation as product feedback for review, which means that your input will be aggregated as a part of our Voice of the Customer program that provides customer feedback to our product development teams.
In addition, I encourage you to create a new post in the Support Product Feedback topic (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/topics/200132066) in our community to engage with other users who have similar needs and discuss possible workarounds. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning. Specific examples, details about impact, and how you currently handle things are helpful for our product teams to understand the full scope of the need when working on solutions. You may also want to review the Product feedback guidelines and how to write an effective feedback post (https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115007959427-Read-me-before-posting-How-to-write-an-effective-feedback-post-and-Product-Feedback-Guidelines).
0
Arpan Nagdeve
Hi Gabriela,
Current offering of proactive messages is applicable for widgets that are offered on messaging. If you are using Sunco the out of the box experience will not work.
1
Arpan Nagdeve
Hi Jon Roncal,
For language translation usecase you can use language as a condition and run language specific messages.
1
Kat
When will this be possible with Sunco SDK?
0
Rebeca
When adding bot answers to a proactive message, can I only do it if the answer is live on the bot? We want to set a proactive message on our corporate website and show some options that we don't want on the support site. Is there any way to go about this?
1
Lorenzo
is the (way more) extensive set of conditions of Zopim triggers going to be made available in messaging any time soon?
2
Mike DR
0
Dean
Hello, we've integrated HubSpot into Zendesk via API (Segment OAuth) and would like support with using the fields/properties available via the API to trigger Proactive Messaging bots.
The current list of two trigger options (objects: Visitor or Device) in Zendesk does not assist us with achieving our goals.
0
Nikki Goodson
What am I doing wrong here?
I did get one proactive message set up properly and it's live. But while trying to test another in only our qa environment, I can't get it to trigger. I tried simplifying it, and tried doing some overkill on conditions to make sure there's no question that I've loaded the right page to trigger the message, but still nothing.
Attaching screenshots of:
1. the basics (I tried respond by Bot vs by Agent)
2. when to check / schedule (I tried "anytime conditions are met" vs "only during business hours" - and "when they load the page" vs "after being on page for 5 seconds"
3. examples of different conditions I tried:
- simply the Visitor.Page URL is [the exact URL]
- combo of page title & part of URL
- complicated combo of page title + every part of URL
4. picture of my page title & URL I'm visiting
0
Guido
Hi Nikki Goodson!
I will create a ticket to look into this matter with you.
Thank you!
0
Kris
Hi
Can I use proactive messages to a specific segment? Lets say I have 50 special customers I would like to send a specific message - is that possible?
Thanks
Kris
0
Guido
Hi Kris,
No, proactive messages are not meant to be used this way. They act based on the conditions configured and send a message to users in your website.
What you are looking for sounds more like a proactive ticket campaign, we you can achieve with an app like this - Proactive Tickets App
Thank you!
0
Toshikazu Asaka
Hello Zendesk team,
I would like to share a couple of feedback and request.
1. I would like to request Dynamic content being applicable to Proactive messages. I read in thread above that it is currently not supported as of April 2023. When will it be enabled?
2. When I clone a proactive message, message copy in original one won't be carried over to cloned one. It is automatically reverted to default message copy.
Hope these could be improved in the near future. Thank you.
1
Shawna James
0
Chris Gast
How do I build a report on Sent, Opened, Replied To in Explore? I see the data in the admin panel, but I want to also add it to my CX dashboard.
1