Zendesk Level:  Moderate
Knowledge:  Zendesk Support, Chat, Guide
Time Required:  1-3 Hours

Last year, Zendesk announced the launch of an enhanced Messaging experience for customers.  This powerful upgrade, which comes standard with the Zendesk Suite (but is also available to customers using at least Support + Chat (Team)), allows Zendesk customers to meet their end-users in places where they already are (like WhatsApp).  Intelligently deflected conversations and context shared with Support Agents can shave precious time, energy and effort off of your human-powered support efforts, while the end-user experience is improved dramatically with continuous conversations that don't end when the browser session does.  Ready to get started?  Follow these steps and you'll be managing your messaging in no time!  Note: This feature does require Agent Workspace.

Chat Vs Messaging

The legacy Answer Bot & Chat products were really independent of the Support / Ticketing system.  While Agent Workspace now enables chats to occur within the tickets themselves, Answer Bot is still tucked away in the Guide (Help Center).  Messaging changes all that, giving your agent critical context as to what the end-user was looking for before they asked to "talk to a human."

Enabling Messaging

Once you've enabled Agent Workspace and have at least one Chat-Enabled Agent, you're ready to get started.  Zendesk also recommends that you have an active, public Help Center (Guide) with at least 10 articles that cover commonly-asked questions. (This is required for the self-service / deflection component of Messaging).  It's also recommended that you add the Messaging Widget to your Help Center by toggling the box on the Installation tab of the channel settings.

If you're Zendesk account was created after November 2, 2021, Messaging is enabled by default.  Otherwise, you'll want to navigate over to the Admin Center and go to Messaging and Social > Messaging > Manage Settings > Enable Messaging and Turn on Messaging for Web Widget (Classic), Select your Brand(s) and Save.

Activate Bot-Enabled Messaging

To really harness the power of Messaging, you'll also want to navigate to Bots & Automations > Bots, and Create, Configure & Publish a Bot using Flow Builder (more on this below).  Optionally, you can also create Agent Groups and Triggers for routing and assignment of new inbound messages.

Building A Flow

Once you create and name your bot, as well as choose the brand to associate this bot with, it's time to update the bot's 'voice' and build your first flow by adding configuration steps.  Currently, you can add business hours & messages, present options and articles and offer to transfer to an agent.  All flows must be complete to publish (look for either "Transfer to Agent" or "Was This Helpful?" as a successful end of a branch within your flow).  Once you have successfully published your bot, you can associate it with a channel (like your Widget) by going to Admin Center > Messaging  > Channel > Responses.  Learn more about Flow Building.

Once the conversation is transferred to a live agent, by design closing and reopening a standard browser window will maintain the conversation.  By default, the bot will reengage after 72 hours of idle chat, or after the ticket is moved to a status of Closed.  You can also 'trick' the bot to reengage by using Incognito mode and opening a new browser window.

Best Practices

Now that you've created your first flow, it's time to really think like a customer and look for opportunities to delegate some of your lower-value engagements to the Zendesk Messaging Bot.  Although customers can 'interrupt' the flow at any time by asking their question outright, a little direction can go a long way.  And remember, if the end-user does ultimately choose to speak to an agent, you can pull custom ticket fields into the pre-engagement questions to help minimize the amount of information the Agent needs to collect (be careful not to ask them too many questions, though!).  When in doubt, remember to just go with the flow.  For more information on Zendesk Messaging, visit the Support Center.  Additionally, the Zendesk Messaging team wants your feedback on how they can continue to enhance the Messaging product.  Drop them a note in our Product Feedback section today and let them know what you're most interested in having Messaging do!

Need more help with Messaging and other Zendesk configurations? 729 Solutions can help!