Release 2.3.0 - Chat Functionality
Distinguishing between a chat and a call
The app now correctly handles incoming chat contact. (In previous versions, it displayed an error notification to the agent).
It will also distinguish between chat and voice conversations. Eg. ticket subject will say “Incoming chat from …” instead of incoming call.
Other behaviour aspects should be same as with calls. If a customer is recognised it will pop and depending on the ticket assignment mode a new ticket will be auto-created or the UI to create/attach will be displayed to the agent.
Customer Identification
Recognising a customer is a separate concern - it involves using a Lex bot to extract identifying details from the customer and then calling the Zendesk search API (available as an existing add-on). In the end, the resulting customer ID should be placed in the zendesk_user custom attribute which is then used in the app to uniquely identify the customer.
Alternatively, if the Zendesk search API is not used and your LEX bot just retrieves the customer’s name, this can be used to search for customers as well - see related section below.
If a customer cannot be identified the app will change ticket assignment from auto to agent and the create/attach UI will be presented to the agent so that they can search for the customer and/or ticket.
Single concurrent chat
In this version the app only supports a single chat at the time. Routing profiles in the related Connect instance should be configured accordingly.
If they’re not and a second chat comes in, the app will display an error message to the agent and will not create a ticket (or offer the agent ticket assignment mode UI).
Search by customer name
The app now supports search by customer name (passed in custom attribute customer_name). If a single customer match is found that customer will pop, as if it was found by a phone number or zendesk_user custom attribute. If there are multiple matches with the same name a notification message will pop, suggesting to the agent to do a Zendesk search with the customer name. Accordingly, app will flip to the agent mode if it was previously in auto mode.
Creating chat tickets
Zendesk tickets will be created in the same fashion as with calls. When a ticket is created it will contain standard ticket information except for the call recording and other voice related items such as Agent Extension. Note that if Contact Lens add-on is installed and enabled it will not be used with chat conversations.
CCP behaviour (not hiding)
With call conversations CCP is automatically hidden when the agent accepts the call, as to reveal the Zendesk UI underneath. With chats it has to remain open though, to enable the agent to chat to the customer, since the conversation takes place within the CCP UI.
Attaching chat transcript
When either party ends the conversation an additional private comment is added to the ticket containing the chat transcript. The chat transcript contains messaging between the agent and the customer but also status messaging, such as when either party joins or leaves the conversation and chat messages from the chat bot (Connect system messages).
A new custom attribute chat_transcript controls whether the transcript gets attached to the ticket or not (default is true). This way the app user can choose to not include it by setting the attribute in the contact flow to false.
Attaching chat continuation to the relevant ticket.
Amazon Connect chat has ability to continue a previous chat conversation if one is ended by an agent but the customer wants it to continue and sends another message (within a certain time frame).
This is reflected in the app behaviour in two ways: firstly, the continued chat is automatically attached to the ticket that contained the original conversation and secondly, the attached transcript always contains the whole conversation.
Transferring chats
Chats can be transferred in the same way as calls, except that the process is asynchronous. When a chat is successfully transferred to an agent or a queue (note that the agent doesn’t need to be available) the behaviour is similar as in the above section - it will be attached to the same ticket and the transcript will contain the whole conversation.
Similarly to calls, in a rare occasion that the first ticket will not yet be available via Zendesk search, due to a delay in Zendesk background indexing, the ticket assignment mode will change from auto to agent so that the transferred-to agent can search for the customer and/or ticket. As good practice it is recommended to have the first agent mention the ticket number in the chat, before transferring.
Region validation
A new installation parameter has been introduced with this version - AWS region (eg. us-east-1). This needs to be specified and be valid for chats to work normally.
For existing clients upgrading from a previous version a validation process is built in, which will error and prevent further operations of the app should the region not be configured. A popup notification will display to the agent alerting to the fact.