Explore Enhanced Messaging
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- List some key differences between standard and enhanced channels.
- Describe the benefits of upgrading to Enhanced Messaging for your support team and customers.
- Explain why the upgrade timeline is important, and plan accordingly.
Welcome to Enhanced Messaging
Customers today expect seamless, efficient communication from businesses. If you use standard messaging channels to help your customers, you might have heard of Enhanced Messaging, the new, powerful replacement for standard messaging that’s built on the unified conversation platform. And Enhanced Messaging is here to stay; all standard channels must be upgraded to enhanced channels by these dates.
-
WhatsApp: Upgrade by July 30, 2025.
-
Facebook Messenger: Upgrade by February 14, 2026.
-
SMS: Upgrade by February 14, 2026.
After these dates, standard channels of that type might stop working, which impacts your ability to efficiently help your customers.
To provide top-notch customer service and give your service reps the right tools for the job, it’s crucial to upgrade your standard WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and SMS channels to enhanced channels. Let’s dive into the core differences that make Enhanced Messaging a game-changer for your support team and customers.
Differences for Service Reps
When you upgrade to enhanced channels, service reps get a richer, more streamlined experience within the Service Console. If you’re a service rep, here’s how you benefit from an upgrade.
Sending Messages
- Gather and share info faster with messaging components. These are structured, interactive content available in a variety of formats, such as questions with options. Your admin builds a library of messaging components ahead of time, and you select and send them to customers.
- Send and receive audio messages. Click the microphone icon next to the message field to record, play back, send, or rerecord a message up to 1-minute long.
- Send longer messages, larger files, and more file types. Supported file types and limits vary by channel type.
- Quickly access common actions in the Enhanced Conversation component. This component includes buttons to send quick text, messaging components, files, emoji, and more.
Managing Work
- Start a messaging session with an opted-in customer from any page in Salesforce using the Send Message global action. This action replaces the Start Conversation quick action that’s used in standard channels. Some channels have limits on when you can use the Send Message action or what kind of messages you can send.
- Transfer messaging sessions or mark them inactive. If you can’t help a customer but know your colleagues can, transfer the customer to another rep, queue, or routing flow. Or if the customer goes quiet, mark the session as inactive so you can move on to the next customer.
- Help customers from your mobile device with Omni Mobile in the Salesforce mobile app.
- Use the Agent Inbox and the Omni-Channel sidebar to track your assigned work and jump between conversations.
Working as a Team
- Raise a flag to request help and exchange whispered messages with your supervisor during an active session. Customers can’t see these messages, but they’re included in the session transcript.
Differences for Supervisors and Admins
Enhanced channels give supervisors more options for tracking and reporting on messaging activity. If you’re a supervisor or admin, here’s how you benefit from an upgrade.
Improving Service
- To deliver next-level service, route messaging sessions in your channel to an AI agent or enhanced bot. AI agents can carry on realistic conversations with customers, complete approved actions in Salesforce, and escalate to human service reps.
- Require explicit or double opt-in messaging consent from customers in specific channels so you can follow local compliance regulations and honor your customers’ messaging preferences.
- Design more advanced routing flows. Enhanced messaging sessions include additional statuses such as Inactive, Consent, and Error that you can reference in your routing logic and custom reports.
Increasing Efficiency
- Enjoy the advantages of a shared platform. The enhanced conversation platform houses all enhanced messaging channels, Enhanced Chat, and Service Cloud Voice. When Salesforce introduces a new feature, it’s often available in all channels on the platform, giving reps a consistent experience across channels and reducing setup for admins.
- Create reusable content to standardize service. Build out a library of messaging components and Einstein recommended replies for reps to send.
- Set up flows that send customers notification messages at particular times, such as when an order ships. Customize the message content by creating notification messaging components, and then send them using the Send Conversation Messages flow action. This method is a more customizable alternative to the message templates used in standard channels.
Monitoring Your Team
- Monitor agents from the AI Agents tab in Omni Supervisor.
- Customize the tabs and tab layout in Omni Supervisor, and monitor messaging activity from the Omni Supervisor Wallboard.
- Manage workload by status by using status-based capacity in your enhanced channels. Standard channels only support tab-based capacity.
- Set up conversation intelligence rules that alert you if a certain keyword is used in a messaging session, like “broken” or “supervisor”.
Differences for Customers
Let’s not forget the central piece of the puzzle: your customers!
Here are some ways customers benefit when you upgrade to enhanced channels.
-
Interactive content: With clickable messaging components, customers get the interactive, visually rich experience that they expect from most modern communication channels.
-
Personalized service from Agentforce: When you add an AI agent to your enhanced channel, customers can get their problem solved with minimal wait time.
-
More file options: Depending on the channel, customers can send and receive more types of files than they can in standard channels, including audio messages.
Upgrade from Standard Messaging
If you have multiple standard messaging channels, you’re probably wondering how to time their upgrade. Your Salesforce org can contain both standard and enhanced channels, so you get to decide when to upgrade each channel. For example, you might want to take a phased approach and tackle one channel type (such as WhatsApp) at a time.
Happily, upgrading to Enhanced Messaging isn’t just about meeting a deadline. It’s about giving your customers quick, modernized service and opening up a larger customer support toolbox for your service reps and supervisors. Now let’s learn how to ace your upgrade to avoid any service disruptions.