On September 20th, the Zendesk Community hosted our latest PM Roundtable where the product team connected with community members to hear and address feedback on the Messaging experience in Zendesk. After hearing from customers on what changes would best serve them, the product team drafted this response on key points raised during our roundtable. We’ve shared their summary, resources from the event, and a complete event recording of our event.
Response from the Product Team
Dear Zendesk customers,
We want to summarize what we heard from you on what could be improved regarding the Permissions and Audit log at our roundtable session on September 20, 2023. Thanks to everyone who attended and for being open and transparent about what’s working and not for you, your teams, and your business.
Removing/raising the step limit from 2,000
- We noticed the key reasons customers are hitting the step limit is due to the repetitive flows/steps. With reusable answers on the roadmap for Q4, this will help customers with managing duplicated content and therefore reduce the flow sizes.
Closing inputs needs to improve
- We understand the issue that leaving the text composer enabled to free input when a bot is excepting a specific response is causing. This may be a simple improvement that we can make to the End User Experience that would alleviate "bot confusion" in messaging and we've reviewing this with our internal Design team.
On Agent Anxiety
- We hear your feedback that "some customers are hesitant to enable the messaging widget because they feel this creates an expectation of an "always on" human in the loop. Changing the 'Transfer To Agent' step name to 'Create Ticket' might help subside some of that anxiety.". This is a really valid point, and we're working with the Zendesk Bot and Agent experience teams to see if there's a possible improve that we can make to this aspect of the experience.
Counting MAU When a Visitor Opens the Widget
- One point relating to MAU calculations was whether it's possible not to count a Monthly Active User (MAU) when a visitor only opens the widget without any interaction. Zendesk proposed a workaround of using proactive messaging instead of the bot for a greeting to potentially avoid this issue.
Improvements to Messaging and Bot Builder
- Customers have asked for clarity on the planned investment in messaging and bot builder in 2024. Zendesk are happy to confirm that we are investing heavily in Bots and AI today, with even greater investment planned in the future.
Messaging Dashboard Request
- A question was raised about adding a messaging dashboard similar to the former chat desk dashboard to help teams understand agent utilization and customer conversations in real time. Under the the recent launch of a messaging data set in Explore, Zendesk now offer the capability for real-time dashboard viewing and drill-down capabilities. Zendesk have also made a move to acquire TimeShift, which offers additional capabilities around reporting agent utilization that will be incorporated in the future.
Plans for Omnichannel Messaging
- We've been asked about the focus on omnichannel messaging, We very much see omnichannel messaging as the future and are encouraging customers to transition from live chat to messaging. We do acknowledge the challenges faced by customers during this transition and offer to help find solutions to any issues they're facing.
Ability to Manage Flows
- The need for a revision history in managing flows, similar to triggers, to see previous configurations and when changes were made has been raised. Customer have suggested a single-click feature to revert back to a previous version. Zendesk do have an upcoming ability to export and import configurations, which would serve as a workaround for a version-controlled system.