About conversational support with messaging

Support with

Live chat and messaging Team, Professional, or Enterprise









Messaging deployment guide:
Introduction
Part 1: About conversational support with messaging
Part 2: Designing your conversational
messaging workflow
Part 3: Planning your staffing and
operational requirements for messaging
Part 4: Rolling out conversational messaging
support

Articles in the series



Messaging lets you have rich conversations with your customers that are
persistent, with full context and history. When you enable messaging, you can connect it
to your website or help center, mobile apps, and third-party channels, making it easy
for your customers to self-serve or connect with your agents.
As your support needs grow, you may want to automate some or all of this communication with
options such as offering a simple messaging response before handing the customer over to an
agent, deflecting inquiries using knowledge base articles, or more comprehensive
automations such as an AI agents.
This article provides an overview of what messaging can do, the channels you can use to
deliver messaging to your customers, and guidance on how to get started.
This article includes the following sections:


Understanding
messaging
Requirements and
limitations
Next steps




Understanding messaging



Messaging allows you to support multiple conversational styles, from real-time
chat functionality to asynchronous communication with your customers. It's
easily scalable and highly customizable.
Messaging provides the following
features and benefits:

Multiple channels. You can communicate with users seamlessly across
your website, help centers, mobile apps, and social messaging channels. Choose which channels
you support so you can connect with and support customers wherever they
are.

Persistent conversations. Agents and end users can interact multiple
times over a period of time, across different channels, all within a single
conversation. This makes it easier to refer to earlier interactions and
avoid asking users to repeat themselves. The increased efficiency benefits
agents and end uses alike.

Ticket creation. Tickets are generated for requests received through
messaging channels, enabling agents to follow up on more complex requests
through Zendesk Support when needed.

Integrate with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Agents can use familiar
productivity aids within the Agent Workspace to handle messaging
conversations, similar to traditional channels such as email. They can
respond to customers at any time and continue where they left off, and the
conversation history provides agents with additional context when needed
without asking the user to repeat themselves.

Conversational automations and AI agents. Automations and AI agents can enhance your
customer experience by automating deflection options and triaging support
issues before (or instead of) handing the conversation over to live agents.
Customers benefit from the opportunity to self-solve their issues.

Extensive customization options. Admins can quickly set up messaging channels
in Admin Center. Then they can create an automated AI agent to greet customers, offer
relevant article suggestions, gather information, and more.





Requirements and limitations

Messaging is the default experience for customers on Zendesk Suite plans.
If you're not a Suite customer, you must meet the following requirements:
Any Zendesk Support plan or

Support standalone + Chat subscription (Team plan or above)
Note: Some
channels require a Zendesk Suite plan.




The Zendesk Agent workspace must be
activated.
You must have at least one team member assigned to a Chat role. See Giving agents access to
messaging.
You must deactivate any social messaging integrations you configured previously.
See
Social and third-party messaging
resources.

Additionally, we recommend you have an account with an active help center. Having at least 10
published articles that cover common questions allows you to use AI agents to recommend relevant articles from your help center.



Next steps

Walk through the
Messaging deployment guide. The next article in the
series is
Designing your conversational messaging
workflow,
which will help ensure you're making informed decisions, are
prepared with the necessary information when configuring your messaging workflows,
and have clear next steps along the way.

Note:
If you've been using live chat and want to transition to messaging, start with
Resources for migrating from live chat to
messaging
instead.





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