In a messaging conversation, a session is the real-time exchange between the end user and agent. Ending messaging sessions allows agents to manage their workload by concluding sessions that no longer require real-time interaction, freeing up capacity for new requests.
- They have all the information they need from the customer but must perform some wrap-up tasks before closing the ticket. Ending the session prevents the customer from continuing the discussion or bringing up different issues within the same conversation.
- The conversation can be handled better in another channel, such as email or Talk.
When you’re ready, you can turn on the end session feature for your agents.
This article includes the following sections:
About the terminology used in this article
- Conversation: The entire lifecycle of a customer request, beginning when the end user clicks the Web Widget launch button and enters a comment or otherwise initiates communication and ending only when the related ticket is Closed.
- Session: The real-time, live chat-style interaction between an end user and an agent. Agents can end sessions, which prevents the end user from interacting with the agent through any messaging channel. Each messaging conversation has only one session.
- Ticket: Messaging tickets are created when messaging conversations are handed off from a conversation bot and routed to an agent, group, or queue in Support. Each messaging ticket is associated with a messaging session. Tickets include all manual and automatic events applied to the ticket, such as status changes, triggers and other business rules, and both public and internal replies.
Understanding workflow changes when you allow agents to end messaging sessions
When an agent ends a messaging session, the messaging channel is essentially turned off for that customer interaction which affects the following aspects of the conversation lifecycle:
Ticket routing
When an agent ends a messaging session, the associated ticket is treated as an email ticket for agents rather than a messaging ticket.
However, your routing rules for messaging and email won’t be applied to these tickets.
You can create triggers using the Ticket > Messaging session ended reason | Changed to | Ended by agent condition to automatically reassign a ticket, or to update the status of a ticket, after an agent ends a messaging session.
Triggers
Because the messaging channel is unavailable on a ticket with an ended session, messaging triggers can’t run on them. However, support triggers can still act on them, including triggers with the Ticket > Channel | Is | Messaging condition.
When you turn on the end session feature, a new ticket condition category for ticket triggers is added: Ticket > Messaging session ended reason. When used in combination with the Ticket > Channel | Is | Messaging condition, you can build ticket triggers that fire on messaging tickets with ended messaging sessions. These conditions are helpful if you need to replace the bypassed messaging triggers or want to send a CSAT survey when an agent ends a session.
Agent capacity
The agent’s messaging ticket capacity is released after they end a messaging conversation session. The agent’s email ticket capacity is not affected.
Ticket status
A ticket’s status does not automatically change when an agent ends the associated messaging session.
CSAT surveys
Because the messaging channel is turned off when an agent ends a messaging session, the action of solving the ticket doesn’t occur in the messaging channel and, therefore, the conditions in the default messaging CSAT trigger can’t be met.
Using customizable CSAT (available on Suite Growth plans and above), you can create a trigger that automatically sends the survey to end users when an agent ends their messaging session. See Recipe: Sending a CSAT survey when a messaging session ends.
Understanding the agent experience when messaging sessions are ended
When you allow agents to end messaging sessions, they can do so in the composer in Agent Workspace.
When an agent ends a messaging session in a conversation, the related ticket is updated in the Agent Workspace in several ways:
- In the composer, the Messaging channel option is deactivated for that conversation. Agents can contact the customer through other available channels.
- If the end user’s email address is known, the composer defaults to public reply; if no email is provided, the composer defaults to an internal note.
- The end session event is captured and displayed in the ticket event history.
- Agents can continue communicating with one another on the ticket using internal notes.
- The status of the associated ticket isn’t influenced by the messaging session’s state.
Understanding the end-user experience when messaging sessions are ended
After an agent ends a messaging session, the customer can’t reply to the related ticket through that messaging conversation. If a customer enters new replies in the messaging channel after the session is ended, it’s treated as a new conversation bot interaction that initiates a new messaging session and, ultimately, a new ticket.
Customers aren’t automatically notified when an agent ends a messaging session. To prevent customer confusion, you may want to instruct your agents to inform the customer that they're ending the conversation and any new replies will result in a new messaging conversation and ticket. To streamline this communication, admins can create a macro with a standardized statement for them to use.