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Configuring Zendesk Conversation Bot as a Virtual Assistant - No Agent Transfer Required

  • June 4, 2024
  • 2 replies
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M

I am currently working on setting up the Zendesk conversation bot to function effectively as a standalone virtual assistant. 

 

Our goal is to eliminate customer interaction via live chats entirely and have the bot handle all initial queries. Here’s the desired behavior we aim to achieve:

  1. The bot introduces itself to the customer.
  2. The customer provides their query or prompt.
  3. The bot recommends an answer, either based on custom predefined answers or by suggesting relevant Help Centre articles.
  4. If the customer requires further assistance, they are prompted to leave a message.
  5. The chat session then terminates.
  6. The customer is prompted to leave a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) rating.

 

Issues/Limitations:

We have encountered some limitations with the core functionality of the Zendesk conversation bot in achieving this setup. Specifically, for analytics and reporting purposes, it would be ideal for a support ticket to be created when a customer leaves a message. However, it appears that a support ticket is only generated when the customer is transferred to a live agent, which we are trying to avoid.

 

We identified a workaround where the customer is directed to a separate form on the Zendesk Help Centre. However, this solution is not ideal for a few reasons:

  • The chat window remains active even after directing the customer to the form.
  • Customers are unable to leave a CSAT rating through this process.

 

Has anyone had experience with a similar setup or found a fix/workaround for this issue using only the native conversation bot functionality within Zendesk? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

    2 replies

    Brandon12
    • Brandon12
    • June 6, 2024

    Hey Maxwell,


    Thanks for sharing your use case!  

    > If the customer requires further assistance, they are prompted to leave a message.

    This can be achieved through the transfer to Agent step, which creates the ticket.  You can then set the expectation in the bot messaging that the request will eb replied to within X hours/days.

    > The chat session then terminates.  The customer is prompted to leave a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) rating. 
    Once a conversation is transferred, the chat will persist until the issue is resolved, so the c-sat would need to be delayed until the agent responds (at the moment of transfer, the answer to the question of "Are you satisfied with the response?" is still unknown as an official response has not been generated yet.

     

    > The chat window remains active even after directing the customer to the form. Customers are unable to leave a CSAT rating through this process.
    You've found an effective workaround, but rather than c-sat here, I would recommend considering the “Did this solve your problem?” step.  I will caution you, however, that since they are being transferred to an agent, they are most likely not going to consider the matter resolved (or satisfactory) at that point.
     

    Hope this helps!

     

    Brandon

    Felipe26
    • Felipe26
    • June 7, 2024

    Hi Maxwell,

     

    To add to what Brandon pointed out, I'd also mention that prompting the customer for a CSAT review may not be the ideal flow in terms of customer experience. This is because they're only being “triaged” (or rather, the bot had to escalate the inquiry) by the bot at that point and an agent will need to get back to them (the inquiry was not resolved yet). Therefore, prompting for CSAT doesn't make sense (and your bot CSAT may be negatively impacted).

    For data purposes, if you want to evaluate the bot's efficiency with that scenario, I would look at the bot's handoff rates at that particular point of the conversation flow, and try to find any patterns that can point to a possible improvement (avoiding future handoffs in that particular step). You may also find that this was a one-off case, and there's nothing wrong with the response provided by the bot.

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