Sunshine Conversations is a messaging platform by Zendesk, formerly known as Smooch.io. The Zendesk Sunshine Handoff is a Forethought feature that utilizes the Sunshine Conversation integration, which allows end users to hand off and chat with agents without leaving Forethought’s Solve UI. End users have a seamless handoff experience and continue conversations effortlessly in the same widget. This article will guide you through setting up Sunshine Conversation in your Solve product and answer common questions about this feature.
Before setting up Zendesk Sunshine Handoff
- On the right side of your Forethought dashboard, click Solve.
- Select Workflow Builder
- Choose any intent to which you want to add Zendesk Sunshine Handoff
- Click on Create new Forms under Business Logic Components in the right pane of your dashboard
- Drag and drop the Create new Forms component into your workflow
- Write a message that prompts your customer to fill out the form
- Add $First Name and $Email in the Form field as your context variables. You will need these later when customizing your Zendesk Sunshine Handoff
- Click Save
Setup Instructions
1. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to turn on this feature.
2. Set up the connection to Zendesk Chat through our Zendesk Chat integration. For more information, see Zendesk Chat OAuth Process.
3. Integrate Sunshine Conversation with Forethought’s Solve product. For instructions, refer to the Sunshine Conversation integration guide.
Important Note
Connecting the Sunshine Conversation integration will route all Zendesk Messaging traffic through Sunshine Conversations through our widget. If you have Messaging widgets active and are not ready to launch, please delay setting up the integration.
4. In the intent you previously selected, search for the Zendesk Sunshine Handoff action on the right side of your dashboard.
5. Add the Zendesk Sunshine Handoff action by dragging it to your workflow. After adding it, you must fill out the required fields, such as the Placeholder message, Name, and Email. Use the same context variables you put in the form previously for the name and email fields.
6. Specify a chat department for the handoff. You can also add chat tags to categorize and organize your customer communication. Once done, click “Save”.
7. In order for the Zendesk brand to be populated correctly, we need to set up a trigger in Zendesk to assign the brand based on a chat tag that we can add to the handoff.
8. Before you publish your workflow, please make sure that you add a step to handle a case where no agents are available to chat with your end users. You can use different elements in your workflow, such as text, buttons, etc. One commonly used approach is to use a ticket creation action (e.g., Create Zendesk Ticket) to let the end user submit their queries when no agent is available.
After successfully setting up
1. When the end user interacts with the chatbot, the chatbot will ask them to fill out a form with their name and email address.
2. After filling it out, the end user will see the “Waiting for an agent” screen when the Zendesk Sunshine handoff step runs in the widget.
3. When the user is handed off to a live agent, the agent will get a notification and a message along with the Forethought chat transcript of the conversation. The end user's name, email, and chat tags will also be visible to the agent.
4. When the agent replies to the user's message, the user will see that an agent has responded to their chat. They will also see the agent’s name and picture on the chat window.
5. To change their profile name and photo, agents can click on the profile icon at the top right corner and then click on the edit icon on their photo. Then, they can upload a new photo from their device.
6. The end user can click on the attachment icon to upload a file from their device or view a file sent by the agent.
Ending Chat
When Live Agent ends the chat
- When a Live Agent concludes a chat, they have the capability to resolve the conversation and ticket. Unlike users, agents do not have the option to end the chat explicitly. While users cannot view if the agent has resolved the conversation and ticket, agents can still revisit the ticket and see previous conversations.
When the user ends the chat
- If the user decides to end the chat by closing the chat window, a notification will be sent to the agent informing them that the user left the chat. Subsequently, the chat session ends, and any further messages from the user will start a new conversation with a new agent.
Chat Conversation Flow Between Agents and Users
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can you test the Sunshine Conversation live chat?
- If you want to try out Sunshine Conversation live chat, you can use workflow tags to differentiate the flow of conversations. For example, you could apply a ‘Sunshine Conversation’ tag to all the workflows with Sunshine Conversation Handoff actions. Then, you can insert the ‘Sunshine Conversation’ tag into the embed script and see how those workflows work.
Which Helpdesks are compatible with this feature?
- This feature is exclusive to Zendesk, as Sunshine Conversation is a Zendesk product.
Does it work with multilingual?
- Yes, this feature supports multilingual, as it uses our existing framework, which automatically translates all the customizable and static text elements in the handoff action.
How do analytics work?
- When the end user is handed off to the agent, the chatbot will stop the conversation and mark it as not deflected. At this point, the Forethought conversation is finished. If the end user ends the chat, the previous Forethought conversation will be cleared, and they will begin a new Forethought conversation. If they hand off again, a new ticket will be created in the helpdesk.
- If the end user attempts to hand off, but no agent is available, the conversation will still be marked as not deflected. The conversation will continue with the “when chat handoff not successful” flow defined in workflow builder Canvas.