Differences in AI agent functionality on social messaging channels

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This article applies to AI agents - Essential and legacy AI agent functionality.

You can create an AI agent and add it to your messaging channels, including web, mobile, and social channels. However, AI agents on social messaging channels have the following differences in functionality as compared to web and mobile channels:

Greetings. On social channels, the AI agent is not able to send the greeting message to begin a conversation. The user must speak first, and then the AI agent will follow normal behavior when receiving a free-text message and attempt to find a conversational shortcut.

Automatic translations. Social messaging channels do not pass the locale, so automatic translation for AI agent messages, text, links, variables, and so on, is not available for a social messaging AI agent.

Language support. Social messaging AI agents automatically detect a user's language based on the following information provided by the Sunshine Conversations platform (determined in order):

Locale or language information sent by the source channel.

The content of the user’s messages.

The Zendesk account’s locale.
If none of these can be determined, the AI agent sends messages in English.

Quick reply options experience. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) For channels like WeChat, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter), quick reply options aren't supported, and will degrade to a text-based experience to list the options for the user. The AI agent will say “You can say” followed by the options configured in bot builder. The AI agent can't be configured per channel at this stage and will be enabled across all Zendesk integrated social channels, including Sunshine Conversation integrations.
Note: Quick reply options are currently available on WhatsApp using Sunshine Conversations integrations.

Data capture. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) Data capture is not available on social messaging channels. For instance, if an answer includes the Ask for details step requesting information from the customer, the AI agent will skip that answer and move to the next one in the flow.

Intent characters limitation. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) The AI agent intent title and the presented options for social media have to fit the limit of 20 characters.

Authentication and messaging metadata variables. (Applies to legacy AI agent functionality.) Messaging authentication and messaging metadata variables are only available for the Web Widget and mobile SDK channels.

For a summary of all social channel capabilities, see Sunshine Conversations: Channel capabilities.