Enhance a Basic Messaging Implementation

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe different capabilities that can supercharge your Messaging channels.
• Explain which capabilities are available for which channels.

Messaging Capabilities

Grab your rappel ropes. Let’s descend from the third level of our pyramid back down to the second level to explore the advanced capabilities that can super-charge your messaging experience. These messaging capabilities can be enabled on each individual messaging channel that you create. 

Create Messaging Components

Reusable, interactive components help your agents gather and share information in messaging sessions. Users with the right permission can create a library of enhanced links, questions with options, time selectors, and more so agents can quickly insert them into messaging sessions with customers. These user-friendly components, which are created in Setup, enhance your messaging by:

• Creating a consistent experience for your customers.
• Using modern, eye-catching formats that your customers are familiar with.
• Speeding up information gathering for agents.

Here are the components you can use to enhance your messaging. 

 Messaging components are available only in enhanced messaging channels and Messaging for In-App and Web.

Capitalize on AI with Bots

Einstein Bots are like the busy worker bees in your hive (the Service Console) that can help do all the heavy lifting for your queen (support agent). Salesforce’s bots, whether through text or talk, can connect with a customer to answer routine questions, leaving agents more time to help customers with more complex issues.

These busy bots offer you and your agents a number of advantages.

• Resolve support cases fast.
• Reduce chat duration by helping customers self-direct immediately; and resolve common issues without waiting to “get in the queue.”
• Save your agents time (and your company money).
• Understand human language–and respond intelligently–through Natural Language Processing (NLP) training.

Bots certainly aren’t required, and it's important to remember that they can’t replace a good old-fashioned human. But they can complement the support experience, handling common inquiries to free up time for agents to focus on more complex cases.

Creating and managing your own AI can sound daunting at first, especially if you’re all on your own. All it takes to get started is some solid planning. You can start by exploring the features of bots and aligning them with your customers’ and support agents’ needs. Then you can build your bots incrementally. Start with menu-based bots and bot templates for common use cases before gradually adding more advanced features, like NLP elements. Our best advice is to start small and create a plan for maintaining and growing your bots that’s realistic for your organization. 

Route Customer Messages with Omni-Channel 

Have you ever been stuck at a busy four-way intersection wondering who’s next in line? Or at other times breezed through with the help of a traffic guard directing people through the intersection? Those static stop signs get your customers to the right lane, but the traffic guard finds the most optimal route for everyone. That’s the difference between the two routing options provided by Omni-Channel.

Omni-Channel routes customer service requests sent over Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, or Messaging for In-App and Web to a queue, bot, or qualified support agent. These routes can be customized for each channel you're using to contact customers. There are two types of routing you can use.

Queue-Based Routing

Queue-based routing is ideal for simple routing scenarios when you want your customers to be sent to the lane defined in your Omni-Channel routing configuration. You can create queues and configure routing during your channel setup. 

Omni-Channel Flows

A flow is a preconfigured route that dynamically guides customers to the right agent, queue, or bot. You can build a flow in Flow Builder, and then assign it to one or more messaging channels.

Track Messaging with Custom Reports

All of these advanced messaging capabilities are great, but what about tracking messaging history? Salesforce sweats the small stuff so you don’t have to. Messaging user records get created to track each customer that contacts you in a particular channel. You can create custom reports on messaging users, messaging sessions, and other objects to help track Messaging activity. 

With a suite of capabilities that includes customizable components, Einstein Bots, Omni-Flow routing, and reports, you can enhance your messaging strategy to better serve your customers.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Interactive Messaging Components
  
• Salesforce Help: Einstein Bots
• Salesforce Help: Set Up Routing for Messaging Channels
• Salesforce Help: Report on Messaging Activity