Is it possible to pass hidden data attributes through to the chat agent? | Community
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Is it possible to pass hidden data attributes through to the chat agent?

  • June 3, 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 0 views
D

We work with companies to properly attribute their generated leads back to the granular marketing sources.   We are working with a company that uses ZenDesk Chat on their marketing website and landing pages.  As a result, an individual can click a paid ad and find themselves on a web page where they can choose to start a live chat via Zen Desk chat.   

At this point in the customer journey we know a lot about the individual as far as where they came from and what marketing source generated that visit because of UTM parameters passed through the URL etc.   For example we may know they are a Lead Channel of Paid Marketing,  Lead Medium of Paid Search, and Lead Source of Google Non-Branded all determine automatically.   These are all values we are able to capture if they choose to use the Web Form instead of the Live Chat.   

However,  when they choose Live Chat and become a lead as a result of that chat, currently all marketing attribution is lost because none of that marketing attribution data is passing through the chat client.    We work with several chat clients and many of them allow you to pass data values through in the embedded javascript snippet that can then be seen/collected on the company/agent side.   Is there anyway to pass through hidden data points to the agent/company that the prospective customer cannot see?

    6 replies

    R
    • Ramin12
    • June 6, 2019

    Hi there Derek,

    Thanks for sharing your use case and question in the community. We have customer today (including ourselves) that do what you are asking for by using visitor tags that are applied via the JS APIs.

    You can learn more about the specific API here:

    If you are using the Web Widget + Integrated Chat Experience

    https://developer.zendesk.com/embeddables/docs/widget/settings#tags

    If you are using the Chat standalone widget

    https://api.zopim.com/files/meshim/widget/controllers/LiveChatAPI-js.html#addTags

    Tags are not visible to the end user and will be visible to the agents while chatting. These tags will get passed to the ticket and allows for future analysis via the UTM values by building reports using the tag values.

    Hope that helps out,
    Ramin

     

    D
    • Derek18
    • Author
    • June 10, 2019

    Ramin,

     

    Would you by chance be able to provide the javascript example for adding a "utm_medium" tag with a value of "PPC" as an example?   It would be great to see it for both the "Web Widget + Integrated Chat Experience" and the "Chat standalone widget".    I see the documentation, but need a little more guidance.   I think if you could show me an example using this use case it would help tremendously.  

     

    -Derek

    R
    • Ramin12
    • June 11, 2019

    Hi Derek,

    We cannot provide code examples but if you look around the internet you can find examples of how to read UTM parameters using JS (https://code.broker/en/tutorials/store-utm-and-other-tracking-links-url-parameters-in-a-cookie/) and then add those values as tags with the APIs mentioned earlier.

    If you are still having trouble getting it to work, please email support@zendesk.com

    -Ramin

     

    D
    • Derek18
    • Author
    • June 11, 2019

    Ramin, we already now how to capture UTM parameters. We already have the values. 8 was specifically talking about Zendesk api for tags. I see the documentation but I am not sure just looking at the below how this allows for a custom tag name with a custom value.

    Do you just have to do this?

    R
    • Ramin12
    • June 12, 2019

    If you are asking generally how to use the API, the code sample in the docs and your example should work. You should ensure you don't send characters that are not supported in tags. The doc below will help you understand what is/isn't allowed.

    https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022366013-Understanding-different-types-of-tags-in-Chat

    Most people will use tags like "medium-mediumname" and avoid using special characters/spaces.

    J
    • Jon63
    • June 30, 2020

    Hi Ramin, 

    This post seems related to a query I have and would appreciate your help please. I'm trying to find a way of obtaining gclid / msclkid parameters from the URLs visitors land on when visiting our site via ad clicks who then interact with us via the Zopim widget.

    From your comments above it looks like the API may be able to add a tag with such a parameter to the chat somehow. Would that tag be visible somewhere once the chat ends, would it get included in the chat transcript that agents can request after a chat, and would such tags be included the chat history details export?

    Thanks

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