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Understanding multi-conversations for messaging



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Aimee Spanier

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Jan 08, 2025


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11 comments

We've used this feature in early access and find it useful for brands when customers need to have multiple conversations. For example one chat is on hold, so the problem is still being solved. And a customer has a new question and with the new feature they can now ask it.

However, for companies that want to enable this feature, you need to keep in mind limitations, namely you have no control over the number of chats a customer can create. A small number of customers abuse this feature and can create dozens of chats. The only workaround is to merge chats automatically using a third-party solution or manually by agents (and they will be very unhappy). But this is not visible on the client side, which is hardly a good experience.

We also see that clients often get lost in chats. Although the article states that a customer sees the last message and the agent's name. But all chats end with a customer satisfaction request. And in fact, on the client side, 99% of the time the conversation list will contain a list of chats with the brand name and a “form sent” message. That is, without opening each chat, you won't understand which one you are looking for. At the same time, alternative solutions with multi-conversation feature offer a better experience on the client side. For example, you can see which chat is active and which one is closed. Which one is waiting for a customer response and which one is still being resolved by the brand. You can also choose to display the ticket name rather than the agent's name, which can help customers find the chat they're looking for

 

These are the feature requests we've passed on to Zendesk, but I see that there is no changes in the public release:

  1.  Customization. This is especially relevant when we have a queue and many clients start creating new chats, worsening the situation.  For example, the ability to limit the number of simultaneous chats of the same client in New status. Or using AI to determine if a New chat is related to the same issue and automatically merge them while it is still in the queue before assigning it to an agent.
  2. We would also like to change the behavior of the function in case we merge chats. Now they are not merged on the client side.  
  3. Clients complain that they get lost in the list of chats and can't find the right one. We would like clients to see the status of the chat. Let's say if a chat is in Pending status, then this chat should be highlighted, as it requires the client's attention. Also if the status is On-hold, it would be obvious to the client that it is not closed and we are still working on it. If the status is completed or closed — it's also should be visible.
  4. Closed chats should be moved to the "archive" folder, and for this status "closed" do not give the client the opportunity to send a new message. 
  5. In general we'd like to have settings to determine when customers can send new messages depending on chat status. 
  6. Often clients ask to be able to hide some chats on their side.

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Can end users remove or archive old conversations? Or maybe they're archived automatically?

Can we make it so conversations with “Closed” status cannot be replied to?

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Jihoon Lee (이지훈)

Zendesk Luminary

I am hesitant to implement this update because I feel it will be confusing for end users and agents.

Customers can’t find the right conversation, and neither can agents.

 

For example, in Zendesk support messaging, the title is determined by the first sentence I type in my inquiry, and sometimes Zendesk engineers change it to a more appropriate title.

 

I would like to set the title of the messaging ticket to the first sentence the customer typed when they started chatting, and then when the agent changes the title of the ticket, the title of the conversation would be the same.

Otherwise, both customers and agents would be stuck in a swamp of conversation history.

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Jihoon Lee (이지훈)

Zendesk Luminary

Also, from what I've tested, one conversation doesn't correspond to one ticket.

 

When a customer resumes a conversation on a closed or closed messaging ticket, the customer continues the conversation seamlessly, but another ticket is created.

 

So the customer is referring to one conversation, but the agent has to go back and forth between multiple tickets to see the customer's journey.

 

I think we should force the customer to a new conversation when the conversation ends. So it would be more usable if one conversation corresponds to one ticket.

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Onur Okutan

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi everyone,
Thank you all for your feedback and improvement suggestions on this feature! It’s great to see the engagement from our community, and we really appreciate the time you've taken to share your ideas with us.

We’re taking your suggestions into our backlog to prioritize, and we’re planning to enhance the feature in these directions. While we can’t commit to a specific timeline for improvements at the moment, please know that your feedback is an important part of shaping future updates.

Thanks again for your support and input!
Best,
Onur

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Onur Okutan

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Jakub,

Archiving old conversations and closing them to new messages is not support at the moment, but it is one of the improvements in our backlog.

Thank you for your feedback!

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Ahmed Zaid

Zendesk LuminaryUser Group LeaderCommunity Moderator

Hello team,

Will each automated resolution per conversation be counted individually, even if they are concurrent?

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Onur Okutan

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Ahmed, thank you for reaching out. Yes, automated resolutions will be counted individually in each conversation.

Regards,

Onur

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Hello!

We are testing multi-conversations, and it would be great if updating the title in Zendesk Support on the agent side would automatically update it on the customer side as well (the same approach used with emails). Our customers submit inquiries on various topics, and we’d like agents to be able to personalize conversation titles. Is this feature planned for the near future?

Thanks in advance! 

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Onur Okutan Yaroslav Vasiutin It's great that conversation titles are customizable and our bot can update it in real-time, depending on the intent.  Yet, we have a problem with iOS SDK. Everywhere else, the conversation Title will update in real-time, but in iOS SDK, you have to close the SDK and re-open it again - only then will the title update. Is it a known issue? 

@Yaroslav you can do it with Zendesk Support trigger and API call to SunCo API.

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When you turn on multi-conversations, proactive messages sent to end users create new conversations rather than being appended to an existing conversation.

If a customer has another chat in a status other than closed, will a proactive message be sent in that case?

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