Allowing customers to continue their conversation over email


The continuous conversations feature allows you to automatically send an
email notification to customers who abandon a conversation conducted through
a messaging Web Widget, encouraging them to re-engage with your agents through
their preferred channel.



What's my plan?






All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus







Verified AI summary ◀▼


The continuous conversations feature lets you keep customer interactions
going by sending an email when they leave a messaging conversation. Customers
can resume the conversation via email or the website. Activate this feature
to
enhance user experience, especially during high wait times or offline
hours.




The continuous conversations feature allows you to automatically send
an email notification to
customers who abandon a conversation conducted through a messaging Web
Widget,
encouraging them to re-engage with your agents through their preferred
channel.

This article includes the following topics:



About continuous conversations


Activating continuous conversations


Deactivating continuous conversations





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 (see
The end user experience).
The continuous
conversation email template is localized and translated based on
the user's profile
language in Support. See
How does Zendesk set a language for a user in
Support?


To use continuous conversations, your account must meet the following
requirements:



Zendesk Suite OR Support + Chat (Team plan or higher).

Agent Workspace activated. See
Activating and deactivating the Zendesk
Agent Workspace.


At least one agent with Chat access. See
About Staff roles in Zendesk Admin
Center.


A
support email address.




Consider the following when activating and using continuous conversations:




The continuous conversations feature is only available when
using messaging
through a Web Widget, and is not available on mobile devices.


Continuous conversation emails are based on your
email notification template,
and
can't be edited by the agent conducting the conversation.


Email notifications are sent when a conversation is
deemed inactive
with unread
messages from the agent, even if the associated ticket's
status is Solved.
However, they will not be sent if the associated ticket's
status is
Closed.





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 they can return to
the website
conversation.


The example below describes the default experience 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 an email, they will
be prompted to
provide one. End user email addresses cannot contain accented
characters.





Note: The "We're offline" message
from the AI agent is fixed and cannot be
customized.


Later, an agent responds to the original conversation request.
If the message from the agent
remains unread until the
conversation is considered inactive,
an email is sent to the end user with the unread agent’s response.





The email includes the number of unread agent messages, a snippet
of the
conversation, and instructions for continuing the conversation.


The end user can choose to continue the conversation by responding
to the email, or return to the
website to do so.

Note: The example above uses
the default
Support account email notification
format. If you are using a customized email template, the
continuous
conversations email sent to end users may look different.





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 the
out-of-office message
trigger, 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 Ticket Settings
page in Admin Center.


To activate continuous conversations




In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.


Click Continuous conversations
to expand it.


Under the Settings tab, select
Switch messaging conversations to email.




This activates continuous conversations and creates an
active, editable
trigger,
Request email for continuous conversations,
that sends a
request for the end user's email address after the conversation
is idle
for 5 seconds. You can find the trigger on the
Messaging triggers
page.

Note: If you do not
want to send an email request to end
users – for example, if you are already collecting
their email
address at the beginning of the conversation – you
can deactivate
this trigger, or update the trigger's actions.











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




In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.


Click Continuous conversations
to expand it.


Deselect
Switch messaging conversations to email,
then click Save at the bottom
of
the page.


In
Admin Center
, click
Objects and rules
in the sidebar, then
select
Business rules > Messaging triggers
and open the trigger
Request email for continuous conversation.


Deselect
Activate this trigger, then
click
Save.






//
const ai_summary_style = document.createElement('style');
ai_summary_style.innerHTML = `#styled-article-body{padding:0 0 0}#article-body #docs-ai-summary{background-color:#f3f3f3;border:1px solid #d3d3d3;padding:10px 10px 6px;margin-bottom:16px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle{font-size:.9em;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:4px;cursor:pointer;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #up-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px;display:none}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-toggle #down-triangle{margin-left:auto;padding-right:10px}#article-body #docs-ai-summary #docs-ai-summary-content{font-size:.9em;padding-left:25px;padding-right:25px;margin-bottom:12px}`;
document.head.appendChild(ai_summary_style);

const toggleAISummary = () => {
const summary = document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-content");
const upTriangle = document.getElementById("up-triangle");
const downTriangle = document.getElementById("down-triangle");
if (summary.style.display === "none") {
summary.style.display = "block";
upTriangle.style.display = "none";
downTriangle.style.display = "inline";
} else {
summary.style.display = "none";
upTriangle.style.display = "inline";
downTriangle.style.display = "none";
}
};

document.getElementById("docs-ai-summary-toggle").addEventListener("click", toggleAISummary);
//
