The continuous conversations feature allows you to automatically send an email notification to customers who abandon a conversation conducted through a Web Widget, encouraging them to re-engage with your agents through their preferred channel.
This article includes the following topics:
About continuous conversations
The continuous conversations feature allows both end users and agents to leave (but not end) a messaging conversation at any time and pick it up where they left off, without the end user losing track of the conversation.
End users may choose to leave a conversation when the expected wait time is high, when your business is offline or there is a long queue, for example.
With continuous conversations activated, an email is sent to the end user informing them when an agent has left them a message in the conversation (seeThe end user experience).
To use continuous conversations, youmust有一个账户
- Zendesk Suite OR Support + Chat (Team plan or higher).
- Messaging activated
- Agent Workspace activated. SeeActivating and deactivating the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
- At least one agent with Chat access. SeeAbout Staff roles in Zendesk Admin Center.
- Has set up a support email address
The end user experience
With continuous conversations activated, an end user who leaves an ongoing conversation from a website receives an email when an agent responds, allowing them to easily find and continue the conversation when they're ready. The end user can continue the conversation by responding to the email, or return to the website.
下面的例子描述了默认的经验when you activate continuous conversations. Here, an end user starts a conversation with a company that is currently offline. If the end user has provided an email, they will receive an acknowledgement informing them that email will be sent when the agent responds. If the end user has not previously provided email, they will be prompted to provide email. Note that end user email addresses cannot contain accented characters.
Later, an agent responds to the original conversation request. If the message from the agent remains unread for 10 minutes, an email is sent to the end user with the unread agent’s response.
The end user can choose to continue the conversation by responding to the email, or return to the website to do so.
The agent experience
For agents, the entire conversation takes place in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Continuing with the example above, when an agent returns to work, they are notified that a conversation is waiting for them in their queue, and they can respond to the conversation as usual.
If the agent leaves a message for the end user in the conversation, and the message remains unread by the end user, an email is automatically triggered. When the end user responds, their response is included in the conversation, indicating whether it was sent via email or messaging:
Working with other triggers
If you are using theout-of-office messagetrigger, you may want to deactivate it when using continuous conversations, to prevent sending duplicate messages to the end user.
Activating continuous conversations
You can activate continuous conversations on the Admin Center's tickets settings page.
To activate continuous conversations
- InAdmin Center, click
Objects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectTickets > Settings. - Under the Settings tab, selectSwitch messaging conversations through email.
This creates the following active trigger, which you can find on the Messaging triggers admin page:
Deactivating continuous conversations
If you choose to stop using continuous conversations, you’ll need to deactivate both the tickets setting and the trigger created when you activated the feature.
To deactivate continuous conversations
- InAdmin Center, clickObjects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectTickets > Settings.
- 在Settings选项卡下,deselectSwitch messaging conversations through email, then clickSave tabat the bottom of the page.
- InAdmin Center, clickObjects and rulesin the sidebar, then selectBusiness rules > Messaging triggersand open the triggerRequest email for continuous conversation.Note:In some Zendesk accounts, this trigger is located in the Chat dashboard. Go toChat > Settings > Triggers.
- DeselectActivate this trigger, then clickSave.
56 Comments
This feature is already deployed and you must meet therequirementsto enable continuous conversation via email. Regarding your other question, once you enable Messaging, Chat in the web widget will be disabled. You can also allow your customers to link their ongoing conversations to your supported messaging channel like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. See this article for reference:Linking social channels to a Web Widget
Hello,
I'm hoping this is the right place to ask this. My client is a lawyer and wants her ticket flow to basically works like this: chat bot collects info > creates email notifying my client of the chat along with the info collected (name, email, legal issue) > she then can respond via email directly back to the person who started the chat to their email (not within the live chat). This is because she and her team rarely have time to hop into a live chat but still see a chat option as a superior way to get people's information vs. a contact form.
As I understand continuous conversation, this should be possible.
But right now, someone starts a chat with the bot, my client receives an email notification of the chat but there's no collected information within the email and no way to respond to the person who initiated the chat without going into Zendesk.
Camden Wiest, maybe this could help you:https://docs.smooch.io/guide/business-systems/#email. I guess that with Zendesk Sunshine Conversation, you could make an integration between your channels (like chat) and this Business System: #Email and respond them by email with all collected information.
There's no way to do that with Continuous Conversation.
Julio Cesarso the only solution is a $495/mo add-on? Bummer. Any other ideas that might sort of work in that manner?
Yep, I guess so :(
I don't have any other idea that could match this.
Hi Camden,
Your client would need to login to Zendesk to respond to the customer. The customer's data would be populated in the ticket. They can choose to continue the conversation over messaging or email , depending on the end-user's convenience.
The "request email for continuous conversation" action works. However, it is sent in ENGLISH to a French workflow (in Messaging, on Facebook Messenger for instance), how can we force French for our French brand?
Is the "We're offline..." message supposed to display to the chatter as soon as they request to speak with an agent? I can't seem to figure out how to get that messaging from popping up to the chatter when we are Online and within our hours of operation. This is what it looks like from the customer's perspective.
Francis, the language used for the message depends on the end-user's browser locale. The message is sent only for web and mobile messaging, not for Facebook Messenger.
Sara, the offline message is sent based on the status of your agents. It is sent only when all your agents are offline. You can manage the trigger which send the message from Chat > Settings > Triggers. The name of the trigger - Request email for continuous conversation can be found in this article.
- Prakruti
@Prakruti, please open a ticket then, because I have a screenshot of the message being sent to the Facebook Messenger channel and that is not expected
Prakruti Hindiacan you please open a ticket because the offline messaging is occurring while agents are in an online state and typically seconds before the agent responds. I've double-checked the chat trigger and not sure how else to remedy the issue.
Pakruti, You may want to check the Zendesk schedule associated with the business hours flow that is triggering. It may be associating a different schedule than what you are using for operating hours.
当接触Zendesk第六的支持团队亚博a Messaging, I get an email when an agent responds that simply tells me to return to the widget. I can neither see the agent's message or reply directly to the email. I assume the Zendesk support team doesn't have this feature enabled, which makes me wonder why, since it seems like a huge improvement to the customer experience. Are there downsides we should be consider if we're looking to enable this?
@AMIE Zendesk uses a custom Sunshine integration for the chat widget, I'm not sure this feature is compatible with that, that would explain why
I hope all is well! Zendesk indeed uses Sunshine Integrations and custom development to provide the customer experience for messaging. If you wanna hear more about the solutions provided by acquiring this feature, please reach out to our sales consultants:https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843597850
I hope this helps!
Good day.
Is Zendesk planning to separate message status as a stand alone attribute for messaging? It seems to be more convenient to find a workaround or the best solution by using that kind of attribute rather than using Continuous conversations. For my case Continuous conversations feature disrupts the logic of the bot-flow by interfering into the 'When closed' flows of the bot by suddenly sending a message requesting an email. Moreover this message cannot be amended in any way, which also shrinks the way it can be efectively used.
And for @https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/profiles/1263758747090-Sarathe trigger is supposed to work only when the Department is offline by default. However you might try to amend it in the Chat's 'Trigger' section.
This is definitely a good improvement to have. Would you mind posting your use case to ourFeedback on Messagingtopic? We have atemplateyou can copy and use in your post. This is to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature. Thanks!
Not sure where else to post this but I'm thinking of switching to Messaging and wondering how that works with our Contact Us page. We have the embedded form on a page on our website which submits a new ticket for an end-user (not signed in). Is best practice to remove/hide that form/page so that more traffic can be directed to the widget to enter the flows we have?
Have attached "Contact Us" form on Web Widget Classic from the left side. After updating to messaging this "Contact Us" you will haveMessagingwith a bot (from the right side)
Hope it helps,
HiViktor Osetrov
No, sorry, I'm not referring to the web widget. I'm referring to a web page that has the Contact Us form (create new ticket form) embedded onto it. I'm aware that the widget would default to flows but the page where we have the form to submit a new ticket on it - how is that affected?
Thanks
Fiona
这些是两个独立的实体,他们没有interact with each other in any sort of way, it would depend solely on your workflow and whether you want your end users to create tickets via the form you have implemented, or rather use the Web Widget for Messaging to offer more interactive contact with them.
Based on your needs and goals, you could create different flows to deflect the number of tickets by suggesting articles and offering a more conversational way of contacting your business,hereare the available steps for the Flow Builder that can be used within Messaging widget to build a bot.
Thanks Jakob!
I'd like some clarification around:
"If you are using the out-of-office message trigger, you may want to disable it when using continuous conversations, to prevent sending duplicate messages to the end user."
As far as I can see in this article and the one about the OOO trigger, the customer would see a message in the widget to say the company is offline and then, when a reply is sent by the company, the customer would see the message in the widget (and then 10 mins later get an email if they hadn't seen the widget). Where is the duplicate message coming from? In the screenshot example above, it shows the OOO trigger message (under The End User Experience). Would the two things not work in tandem to cover both the company's availability and the customer's?
The notification is a system rule in place for all messages that were not read in 10 minutes. It's not associated to any triggers.
It can be disabled.
HiDane
In the article, it says that enabling continuous conversations causes a chat trigger to be created.
My question, though, was what is the "duplicate message" that the article refers to?
Is it referring to the offline message shown in the screenshot where the email address is collected, along with the out of office trigger that people may have set up?
I am hoping to switch to messaging tomorrow and I would like the following to happen:
The customer follows an answer bot through the steps I set up, which end in a step where the person is transferred to an agent after collecting their email and other info. I have a business hours condition set up that will show a different message depending on if we're online or not.
scenario 1: we're online and the customer is still online so the reply is sent through the widget
scenario 2: we're online and the customer closes the web page so the reply is sent by email (presumably with a 10 min delay)
scenario 3: we're offline and the customer closes the web page so the reply is sent by email when we're back (the customer knows this already due to the message shown at the business hours step of the answer bot)
how can i make sure this happens without duplicate messaging occurring?
Thanks
The out of office chattriggersthat's mentioned above is the trigger that you will manually create. The only option is to disable such triggers if you have created it.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.