Introduction
The UltraCart Conversations engine is a unified webchat and SMS conversation system. It brings together an integrated experience for webchat and SMS replies (for StoreFront Communications marketing and UC Package Tracking) in one place.
Required Permissions
In order for an UltraCart user to access Conversations they must have the Conversations → Manage SMS/Web Chat permission.
Launching Conversations
To Launch Conversations click on the high level menu options shown below.
Understanding the Navigation
When you first click on Conversations it will launch a new tab like the one shown below. The icons on the left hand side are:
Webchat
SMS
Archives
Settings
Settings
The settings area is broken down into four areas. Click on the links below to learn more about each of these configuration areas.
Webchat
The webchat interface is broken down into three different groupings:
My Conversations - customers you are actively talking to
Active - customers that other agents are actively talking to
Available - customers that are waiting in the queue for an agent to talk with them
In the upper right hand corner of the webchat interface is your status. This will default to whatever you have configured on your My Profile, but can be changed by you at any time. The options are Available, Busy or Unavailable. Chat will only appear on the StoreFront if there is at least one agent that is not Unavailable.
When a customer join’s the webchat queue they will appear in the Available section as shown below.
Clicking on the entry will open a prompt to confirm that you want to start chatting with the customer.
Once the conversation is started the entry will appear in the My Conversations area. The middle section of the user interface is the active conversation where you carry on the conversation. The right handle pane provides session context. The context will update as the user browses the site or changes their cart contents.
At the bottom of the middle pane is where you can type a message to the customer, attach multimedia, send a coupon, add item(s) to their cart, or use emojis.
SMS
The SMS section of Conversations is very similar to webchat. The one main difference is that there is no session context right hand pane. Joining or leaving an SMS conversation is strictly done to keep track of which UltraCart user is currently interacting with the SMS customer.
Archives
Conversations automatically update in the archive two minutes after their last activity. When you click on the Archives tab it will show you an infinite scroll list of the conversations.
You can adjust the search results to sort either newest first or oldest first. Enter text to search through any of the conversation messages or use the filters to find conversations by more specific criteria.
FAQ
Q) What is the pricing for Conversations?
A) Right now it is free during the beta period. Once it has been thoroughly tested, the pricing for Conversations should be substantially less than comparable external chat applications when a certain number of free agents included at various UltraCart service plans.
Q) What happens if I have multiple UltraCart accounts linked?
A) The Conversations system actually operates at the parent account level. It does not matter which account you are logged into when launching Conversations as you will have a unified experience across all the accounts that are linked.
Q) What differentiates Conversations from other external webchat products?
A) Conversations has the ability to leverage the StoreFront Visual Builder runtime and the fact that UltraCart is rendering the StoreFront page to make webchat available when appropriate without requiring additional HTTP calls and using a runtime that only adds about 10KB of compressed content. Other populate chat programs make up to 10 additional HTTP calls on every page load and require JS runtimes in the 300-750KB payload range.
Q) Why did UltraCart build Conversations?
A) In order to have SMS marketing in Communications and UC Package Tracking, merchants must have the ability to interact with customers when they reply. The Conversations system was architected from the ground up in a fashion that made adding webchat as well feasible.
Q) Are the Conversations available in BigQuery?
A) Yes, Conversations archive automatically to BigQuery where you can do further analysis.
Q) What if the customer is on our website in a different language?
A) Since StoreFronts supports automatic translation to other languages, it was important for Conversations to also support automatic translation. If the customer is speaking a different language than your default language then Conversations will automatically translate the conversation back and forth.