Webchat
Textline has a hybrid webchat solution. What is a hybrid webchat? Well, it is a webchat that you can add to your website so that desktop users may communicate with your Textline department and, when appropriate, convert the conversation to continue over text messages. Once set up, a button will float on the bottom right corner of your website where contacts can click, enter their name, phone number, and initial message, and then proceed to chat with your agent via the web or SMS.
A hybrid webchat is an ideal solution to solve the problem of chat abandonment. The #1 issue agents and contacts face is that a chat may not occur when it is most ideal for them. A contact may initiate a webchat from their computer, but will eventually need to leave or may have it buried amongst their application windows or browser tabs. With Textline Webchat, a user can decide to be proactive and switch their chat to continue over SMS so that they may be able to continue it and get the resolution they were looking for. On the Textline side, an agent may push chats to occur over text messages if it feels as if a contact is not responding to the conversation, has abandoned it, or if they feel like the chat will need to continue for an extended period. Allowing chats to start via the web and continue over SMS ensures that all parties will be able to send the messages they want and finish the conversation.
Our hybrid webchat functionality is added to existing text message departments within Textline, which means that you can take advantage of any configurations you may have already created for your Textline team and your team will feel right at home with the same Textline experience they have come to love.
Setup
To add webchat to one of your Textline text message departments, head to your department list, find your department, and select it to see department info. At the bottom of the info is the option to enable Webchat for that department. You will need to enable webchat for each department separately. Make sure to check the box and click save.
Once enabled, there will be a few configuration options (more on that below) but the first thing you will need to do after enabling webchat is add the webchat code to your website. At the bottom of the page will be the code snippet for you to copy and add to the appropriate location on your website.
You will usually want to add this code in the <head> of your site. You will find the most functionality by allowing the code to be active on all of the pages of your site as the chat will move with the contact as they navigate your site, but you can restrict it if needed or desired.
We recommend having your website admin add the code for you, but below are a few guides for adding custom code to common business website hosts if you do not have one. If you do not see your hosting listed or are using something custom, please reach out to your site's administrator for more help. Textline's support team will only be able to help once the code has been added to your page.
Once added to your website, you will see the Textline logo hovering in the bottom right corner of your website. Clicking this button will launch the webchat experience for your contacts.
Usage
To start a webchat, contacts will be asked for:
Full name
Phone number
SMS opt-in
Message
Contacts will not be able to initiate a chat without consenting to future SMS messages due to the webchat’s hybrid nature.
Once a chat has been initiated, contacts and your agents will be able to fluidly exchange messages, including emojis and attachments.
On the agent side, their experience will largely be the same, with one big caveat: we add information to the message bubble to let them know whether the message came in or was sent out via webchat or SMS.
Sync and verify
When exchanging messages with a contact, you and the contact will only be able to see the messages that have been exchanged since the start of the webchat. As the agent, you will see the contact name with a prefix of Maybe: . This is to prevent impersonation and protect conversation history. If you or the contact wants to see past messages, either party can choose to Sync the conversation.
Syncing involves sending a code to the phone number the contact entered on the first page and the contact then enters the code in the chat window.
Once a contact syncs, they will be able to see any past history (if there is some). The conversation you see will merge with past, verified conversations and the contact’s name will drop the Maybe: prefix.
If a contact never Syncs the chat, their contact name will forever be prepended with Maybe: in the conversation window. You can also see all unverified contacts in the Address Book by looking for contacts with the status unverified.
Switch to SMS
A big advantage of the Textline webchat is the ability to Switch to SMS. This is an action that the contact or the agent can take to have the conversation continue over SMS.
When a contact pushes the Switch to SMS button, they will get a message on their phone letting them know that the conversation has been switched to SMS and they can send a message or wait for the agent to send them the next message. If an agent switches the conversation to SMS the alert message is NOT sent to the contact.
Whether the contact or the Textline agent switches to SMS, this does not close the webchat. As long as the chat is open on the contact’s end, they can continue to send and receive messages there, but the Textline agent’s messages will send via chat AND SMS. This helps in case either party prematurely switches the conversation to SMS, but the contact will not see any messages they will have sent via chat in their SMS history.
Switching to SMS when not synced (unverified)
One big difference to the above workflow is when a conversation is switched to SMS but the contact was not synced. This means that their phone number was never verified, so while we move the conversation to SMS, we do NOT merge the webchat conversation with any existing SMS conversations. We also do NOT send the alert message (as stated above) so as not to spam the phone number if, indeed, the webchat contact is impersonating the contact with the phone number. Textline alerts agents when this is happening with a series of whispers in the conversation so that they may proceed with caution.
Unsynced Webchat - Switched to SMS
Contact Conversation - Existing conversation with unsynced webchat announced
Configuration
Once webchat has been enabled and set up, there are a few configuration options that a user may want to edit.
Session Length
For Textline Webchat, you can choose how long you want a contact’s Sync to last. Once a contact has been Sync’ed, session length will determine how long until a contact will need to Sync again. The default setting is 30 days. Setting a length of 0 will force a contact to reinitiate a chat anytime they close the widget or refresh the page.
Dead Air
This is a feature that will help Textline agents stay in touch with their contacts. When turned on, Textline will automatically switch chats to SMS if it determines that the contact has not responded to a conversation in a set period of time. As noted in the Switch to SMS session, if a conversation is switched to SMS via the Dead Air setting perhaps prematurely, messages sent by the agent will still go to the chat session, but they will also be sent via SMS.
Automation
When a department has webchat enabled, Textline will add a few automation options to go along.
Automation Type
With webchat, we have a new automation type: Webchat conversation abandoned. This automation type will trigger when Textline detects that the contact is no longer in the webchat. This can happen if they close the tab they were on, close the browser completely, or simply navigate away from the site where the chat was occurring. Using this automation type will allow you to take action with contacts whom you may need to follow up with externally. This type may conflict with the Dead Air feature if you have both set up.
Condition
To help users differentiate between webchat and SMS messages, there is a condition to detect whether the conversation that triggers the automation is via webchat or SMS. If a webchat has been switched to SMS, but the contact sends in a message via webchat, the condition will see it as SMS since the conversation had been switched to SMS.
Action
The automation action to send a message will work whether it’s a webchat or SMS conversation, but when a department has webchat enabled, there will also be an action to convert a conversation to SMS.