Make the Messaging UI for actions clear or at least have it match the existing design

It's wild that Messaging is touted as an upgrade vs live chat when it still needs to function as a live chat yet,  it misses many live chat key features, one of the most important ones: making it clear what your users are doing.  

Messaging has the same UI as tickets, has statuses like tickets (which can be used during Messaging and when the conversation ends and moves to a new channel), but for some reason, has a completely separate button to complete a message “send” action. 

Visually, distinguishing Messaging from Tickets is difficult already if your users work in both. Sure, there are MANY signs, however, the issue is not the signs but what the signs are trying to make up for: lack of distinction between experiences. Messaging is great for async convos, but there are MANY users who still need live chat functionality and the ability to quickly distinguish where they are in an app and what functionality they have access to is crucial in a support setting. 

Here's the main glaring issue: if I'm in a Messaging convo, actively taking part in it as if it were a live chat (or otherwise), why are the most important actions the smallest? In addition, they don't have any outline, or distinguishing drop shadow, button-like resemblance, etc. UNLESS you hover over them. 

This a recipe for mistakes and can result in severe consequences, e.g. user types up their message > is used to being in tickets > changes  status > hits submit > customer never gets timely reply > SLA broken > etc. etc. 

Yeah, there are ways to mitigate it but, ultimately, it shouldn't ever be on anyone to build precautions and processes around a lacking core functionality that should be clear from release. 

Now as far as HOW this gets implemented I'm unsure. I'd love to re-purpose the area around the “Submit as…” button so that the “end session” and “send” are next to it or around it. Something like this in the bottom right: 
End Session | Update Ticket | Send Message

Whenever the Messaging session ends > use that action to update UI > goes back to normal ticket UI.
Connect the previous “Submit as…” functionality to the “Send Message” OR the “Update Ticket” functionality, e.g. user updates subject or field values or tags or status, clicking “Send Message” locks it in. 

I'm sure there's issues with that idea but the general message is the same: make the UI make sense for the action being taken on it.