Conversations
- Jonathan Tew
- Perry Tew
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
Click on the high level menu options shown below to launch conversations.
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
Settings are broken down into four areas. Click on the links below to learn more about each of these areas.
Webchat
The webchat screen contains three different groupings:
My Conversations - Active conversations customers are having with you
Active - Active conversations customers are having with other agents
Available - customers that are waiting in the queue for an agent to talk with them
The top right 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 joins 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 of the screen is the active conversation where you carry on the conversation. The right 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 big 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
Active conversations will also display in the Archives section after two minutes of inactivity or after marked complete. A conversation will remain open even though it is visible and searchable in the archives. Conversations are only closed when both the customer and agent leave the chat. This will make the conversation searchable. This means archives may contain both active and inactive conversations. 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) Conversations are free during the beta period.
Q) What happens if I have multiple UltraCart accounts linked?
A) The Conversations system operates at the parent account level. It does not matter which account you are logged into when launching Conversations. 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 uses a runtime that only adds ~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.