Messenger Incoming Accounts

List View

Displays the Messenger inbox accounts defined in the system with their current status. Requests coming into the system via messenger inbox accounts are delivered to agents in the form of chats.

Above the list there are buttons to create new messenger inbox accounts, delete or enable/disable them.

General Tab

Basic information about the messenger input account.

  • ID: assigned by the system
  • Name: Freely assignable
  • Protocol: The protocol to be used for the inbox account. The protocols displayed here come from the installed novomind messaging apps. These can be WhatsApp, Facebook or Google’s Business Messages, among others.
  • Channel: The channel under which incoming chats are managed in novomind iAGENT. This is determined by the selected protocol.
  • Tenant: The tenant to whom this incoming account belongs.
  • Category: Category to which all incoming messages via this Messenger inbox account are assigned.
  • Reuse category of previous chat:If activated, the previous chat category from a dialogue will be reused if available. You can optionally set a time span in minutes. Categories will only be reused if the previous chat is closed within the configured time span. If no time span is configured, categories will always be reused from previous chats in the same dialogue.
  • Laguage: Default language to be assigned to incoming chats. Available are the same languages as for the language skills in the Users settings.

Automatic Responses Tab

Automatic reply to the last customer message after elapsed time.

Here automatic messages can be sent to customers whose incoming messages have not been answered by an agent after a certain time.

This is practical, for example, if messengers have a time-limited response (Facebook/WhatsApp messages must be answered within 24h) – here, an automatic message can be sent to the customer shortly before the time limit expires, in which they are asked to confirm briefly with “Yes” that their request is still current. This way the 24h limit starts from the beginning and the entire history so far is presented to the agent when processing the last message.

  • Send automatic reply: Activates the automatic reply
  • Auto reply: The text that will be sent with the auto reply.
  • Send auto reply after: Time after message receipt after which the automatic reply will be sent.
  • Close chat: Should the chat be closed after the automatic reply and thus no more distribution attempts to agents take place?

Automatic response to the last customer message in case it was sent out of business hours

Automatic messages can be sent to customers automatically if they write outside business hours. Then the customer knows right away that they do not have to expect an immediate reply.

  • Send automatic reply: Activates the automatic reply
  • Automatic reply: The text that will be sent with the automatic reply.
  • Close chat afterwards: Should the chat be closed after the automatic reply and thus no more distribution attempts to agents take place?

Integration of a novomind iAGENT Help chatbot

For Messenger, it is possible to integrate an iAGENT Help Chatbot as the first response instance or subsequent after a chat with an agent. If a customer writes to this Messenger account, the request is first forwarded to the chatbot via iAGENT and its response is sent back to the customer. The ongoing chatbot dialogue with the customer can be viewed in the chat backlog. There, a supervisor also has the right and the option to take over a chatbot chat directly into the queue, which means that the chatbot no longer responds but the chat is forwarded directly to the distribution to agents. If the chatbot gets stuck, it is able to transfer the chat, including the dialogue conducted so far, to an agent or queue the chat for distribution.

At this point, you can set which chatbot should respond (from version 12.19 onwards). The chatbots themselves are configured under Administration –> Chat –> Chatbots.

  • Chatbot:
    • Deactivated
    • In this case, no chatbot is integrated.
    • Chatbot of the category
    • In this case, it depends on the category of the incoming chat. The chatbot selected for the corresponding category in the category settings (Routing tab) responds. If no chatbot is selected there, no chatbot is integrated.
    • Selected chatbot
    • Here, a specific chatbot can be selected from a drop-down menu to be integrated for this Messenger inbox account.
    • This chatbot is then used either as the initial or subsequent chatbot, or for both. The configuration is described below.
  • Chatbot interaction for incoming chats
    If this checkbox is selected, a new incoming Messenger chat will initially be answered by the chatbot configured above. This chatbot can hand over to a human agent at any time.
  • Start bot chat after ending an agent chat
    This checkbox controls whether another chatbot should be started after the chat has ended. This is useful for customer satisfaction surveys (NPS), for example. Such a downstream chatbot chat with the customer is only started if the chat is actually ended by an agent. If the chat remains with the chatbot without handover, no downstream chat is started – in this case, the initial chatbot must start the survey directly.
    The subsequent chat is a separate chat in the system that is logically linked to the original chat. This allows the initial and subsequent chats to be assigned to each other for reporting purposes.
    If a subsequent chat is started, an event named ‘SUBSEQUENTCHAT’ is started in the chatbot knowledge base. This is able to receive certain parameters via action code. Details of the previous chat are transferred, such as the chat ID, the category of the previous chat, the completion code and the agent who completed the chat. Instructions on how to define and configure such a subsequent chatbot can be found in the ‘Instructions’ section.
  • Category for subsequent bot chat
    Defines the category that the subsequent chat (if activated) should be assigned to.