Chat and messaging improvements
Pega Customer Service
8.6 brings multiple enhancements to the chat and
messaging capabilities by using the ReactJS component architecture. The new React-based chat
is introduced as Web Messaging in this release. Web Messaging delivers a light configuration
experience while supporting many of Pega Customer Service
application's Legacy Webchat (formerly called Pega Chat) features. Customers on prior
implementations may leverage Legacy Webchat. Digital Messaging (formerly known as Unified
Messaging) is integrated with Pega Customer Service from
this release. The Digital Messaging service enables you to add third-party messaging
connections, such as Apple Business Chat, Facebook, SMS, and WhatsApp, and switch your
conversation from Web Messaging to those connections without losing the interaction during
the live conversation. The chat and messaging capabilities have the following new features and improvements: Chat and messaging capabilities have been refactored in Pega Customer Service
8.6 to use a ReactJS component architecture. This architecture improves performance while
supporting the longer term objectives of adopting the ReactJS architecture for the entire
Pega Customer Service application. For more information, see Chat and messaging.
Pega Customer Service
8.6 now presents the user with two toggle buttons
for public and private conversations on Facebook channel. You can enable these toggle
settings in the Public conversations tab of the Chat and messaging
settings in App Studio. The first toggle button allows
public messages (Facebook public posts) to be captured by Pega (if not enabled, nothing is
done with the public messages). The second toggle button allows CSRs to respond to public
messages. For more information, see Public conversations. Digital Messaging Manager (formerly called Integration Manager) is the interface that
lets you connect to messaging channels from Pega Customer
Service. Previously, Digital Messaging Manager was external to Pega Customer Service. Starting in version 8.6, Digital Messaging Manager can now be integrated
into a self-service application that is built on the top of Pega Customer Service. You can access Digital
Messaging Manager through the Digital Messaging interface that you create either in App
Studio or Dev Studio. Digital Messaging Manager holds many of the configurations for Web Messaging. Digital
Messaging Manager lets you configure the channel switching feature to enable the
settings to switch from Web Messaging to other messaging channels, such as Facebook
Messenger, Apple Business Chat, SMS, and WhatsApp.
Pega Customer Service 8.6 now includes a new, React-based Web Messaging chat widget.
This customer-facing widget has an improved user interface (UI) and provides an enhanced
user experience (UX) and a better performance by offering a wide range of features.
Pega Customer Service
8.6 introduces a new channel switching feature
that allows customers to transfer an interaction from Web messaging to other messaging
channels, such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Apple Business Chat, and SMS. You can add these
channels to your Web Messaging connection in the Conversation transfer
section of the Channel switching tab in the Digital
Messaging Manager. Once you configure these channels, they appear in the Web
Messaging chatbot during the live conversation. The customer can then transfer the
interaction to any of the configured messaging channels. For more information, see Channel switching. Pega Customer Service
8.6 introduces the timeout and close behavior of
interactions by channel, such as Web Messaging, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger,
SMS, and WhatsApp. These settings enable the configuration of inactive CSR and customer
settings, such as the timeout window and the behavior at timeout. These settings also
determine the close behavior in the following situations: These settings include a Legacy Webchat tab that determines the
follow-up behavior of Legacy Webchat. In previous releases, this feature was named
"Follow up messaging." For more information, see Timeout and close behavior. For Digital Messaging interfaces and Legacy Webchat, Pega Customer Service 8.6 provides new enhancements to the chat
transcript and queue transfer notification events between the customer and the CSR or the
bot. Pega Customer Service
8.6 now facilitates customer authentication pre-chat and
mid-conversation. The customers can pass on their private data to Pega Customer Service using the underlying messaging
API in digital messaging interfaces. If the customer's private data matches with the records
in the database, the customer is marked authenticated. Customer authentication is done in the following ways: For more information, see Authentication using Digital Messaging. Pega Customer Service
8.6 introduces the new context option, which
appears on the chat panel header in the Interaction Portal. The context option captures the
customer's metadata and sends that data from Web Messaging as a payload through the
Messaging API. The system collects this context data before the live conversation and
presents it to a customer service representative (CSR) in an overlay as valuable insight.
Using this feature the CSR can deduce the customer's intent on approaching the contact
center, even before interacting. You can easily configure the context data feature in Digital Messaging Manager through
the Digital Messaging interface in App Studio. Pega
Customer Service
8.6 provides two types of context data
points: For more information, see Context data for Web Messaging. Earlier Knowledge articles and Page push features were available only for Legacy
Webchat. Starting in version 8.6, Pega Customer Service supports Knowledge articles and the Page push feature on all Digital
Messaging interfaces. The functionality of these features for a Digital Messaging interface works similar to
that of Legacy Webchat. A CSR interacting with the customer on a Digital Messaging
interface can push pages and knowledge articles to customers to better support them.
Customers conversing with CSRs or chatbot through Web Messaging or private channels can
open knowledge articles or click the page push links sent to them just as they did with
Legacy Webchat. The Augmented agent, which includes Suggested replies and the CSR assistant, was
previously only available for Legacy Webchat. Pega Customer Service 8.6 adds the Augmented agent features to the Digital
Messaging interfaces. The Augmented agent for Digital Messaging works the same way as it did
for Legacy Webchat, with only a subtle difference in the CSR assistant. The CSR assistant
for Legacy Webchat sends out a form for customers to fill in; however, Digital Messaging's
CSR assistant follows the question and answer pattern. The answers from the customers are
automatically updated in the fields of the requested case. For more information, see Using CSR assistant . Previously, the post-chat survey feature was available only for Legacy Webchat, but
Pega Customer Service 8.6 now supports post-chat survey on Web Messaging
and all private messaging channels, such as Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, SMS,
and WhatsApp. The post-chat survey feature provides a choice of three common customer satisfaction
survey questions, based on Net Promotor Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT),
and Customer Effort Score (CES) for Web Messaging and all private messaging channels. Pega Customer Service
8.6 now provides an option to render carousel
messages for Web Messaging, Facebook, and Apple Business Chat interactions, by using a
Messaging API. The carousel messages enable scrolling back and forth between images. The
customer selects an image, and then the system displays this selection on the widget as the
customer's choice to be passed to the bot for processing. For more information on configuring carousel messages, see Carousel messages. Pega Customer Service 8.6 allows configuring the security settings for the
Web Messaging bot, such as allowed domains, allowed cookies, and JSON Web Token (JWT) in
Digital Messaging Manager. Configure the following security settings for a Web Messaging bot: For more information, see the "Configuring security settings" section in Setting up Web Messaging. Customers can now accept a co-browsing session through the new React-based Web
Messaging chat widget during a live chat interaction with a CSR. This enables the CSR to
assist the customers with their request by using the built-in features of the Co-Browse
product such as viewing the customer's browser window to point them to relevant information,
writing annotations on the webpage, and taking direct control of the customer's webpage to
assist with an action. Pega Co-Browse is available to the CSR for all supported channels when the feature is
enabled in the App Studio. For more information about enabling Co-Browse, see Configuring Co-Browse settings in the
"Configuration application settings" section in the Pega Customer Service
Implementation Guide. The Web Messaging service runs through the messaging API infrastructure that powers all
the other digital messaging channels. For more information about starting a co-browse session for Web Messaging in the
Interaction portal, see Chat panel in the CSR Portal. Pega Customer Service
8.6 introduces typing indicators in the
customer-facing Web Messaging chatbot interface, and in the chat panel in the Interaction
Portal. The typing indicators let the customer or customer service representative (CSR) know
that the other party is typing a message. If the CSR is typing in the Pega Customer Service application, and if the desktop
platform and the destination channel both support typing indicators, then the messaging API
passes the information to the destination channel. The messaging API supports bi-directional typing indicators, that is, an indicator on the
customer's interface when the CSR is typing (an outgoing indicator), and an indicator on
the CSRs interface when the customer is typing (an incoming indicator). Not all Digital Messaging channels support typing indicators. The Digital Messaging
channels have the following support for typing indicators: In previous releases, it was possible to configure common phrases only in the
Interaction Portal. All the common phrases configured in the Interaction Portal are now
migrated to App Studio in this release. You can now configure any new common phrases in App
Studio so that the CSR can use those phrases in the live chat. You can also export or import
the common phrases to or from App Studio. After adding a new common phrase and configuring
those common phrases with new customer utterances, build the model to train those common
phrases with customer utterances for providing suggested replies in the live
chat. For more information, see Configuring common phrases for Augmented
agent. Pega Customer Service
8.6 provides two new reports for measuring the
impact of suggested replies. You can add these reports to the Dashboard in the Interaction
portal. The two new reports are: For more information, see Measuring suggested replies impact using
reports. Pega Customer Service
8.6 introduces a live agent preview console
called the Suggested reply simulator that is available on the
Augmented agent settings tab in App
Studio. The Suggested reply simulator replicates a live message exchange
between a customer and a CSR, where the CSR uses suggested replies to respond to the
customer. A Launch-Test-Train pattern is used to train suggested responses for seeded
customer utterances using this preview
console.? For more information, see Using suggested reply simulator in the
Pega Customer Service Implementation Guide. Starting in 8.6, Pega Customer Service has made
Customer Decision Hub optional for the Augmented agent suggested replies
feature. If you already have the Customer Decision Hub license, you can enable
the CDH feature, and then Suggested replies will be
dependent on CDH adaptive models as was the case in earlier releases. However, if you don't
have a CDH license, the Pega Customer Service application's suggested replies feature can use topic
models, instead of CDH adaptive models, and would still work as intended. Pega Customer Service now supports
enabling different file attachments, such as images, videos, audio, documents, and other
file types (for example, .exe and .zip), to be sent and received through messaging channels.
This feature also provides the ability to set maximum file sizes for inbound and outbound
files, configurable at the channel-level. Configuration sets in AppStudio enable or disable the features of the chat and
messaging react components. Pega Customer Service provides six default configuration
settings that can be toggled on or off.React-based chat and messaging
Public and private conversations behavior
Digital Messaging Manager
New Web Messaging chat widget
Options in the customer-facing Web Messaging chat widget
Option Description Client logo Digital Messaging Manager provides an option to upload the logo and
an option to toggle the logo on and off. The maximum size of the image
is 500 KB. The system supports the following image types: jpg, jpeg, and
png. Display message When the customer clicks the Web Messaging icon on the web page for
the first time to initiate a conversation with the bot or the CSR, the
system displays a welcome message. You can configure any customized
welcome message in the Digital Messaging Manager. Download transcript The customer can download the transcript of the conversation with the
bot and the CSR. When the customer clicks the
Menu option and then clicks
Download transcript, the system displays a
message User has requested a copy of the chat
transcript, and the chat transcript file gets
downloaded. The Download transcript option
appears in the menu only after the customer initiates the conversation
by sending the first message. Continue in another app This option opens the channel switching menu from where the customer
can switch the conversation to the following digital channels: Facebook
Messenger, SMS, Whatsapp, and Apple Business Chat (ABC). Emoji picker The customer can pick and send the emojis available in the
list. Send attachments The customer can send and receive attachments such as images, videos,
audio files, documents, and other files (.exe and .zip). The CSR admin
can configure the attachment types that the customer can send/receive in
App Studio. Channel switching
Timeout and close behavior settings by channel
Improved chat transcripts and queue transfer notifications
Chat transcript and transfer notification events
Event Description Transcript download for Digital Messaging connections The customer and the agent can download the conversation's transcript
across all digital messaging connections, such as Web Messaging,
Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, and SMS. Provision of transcript in escalation notification The customer is informed that the transcript of the conversation with
the bot is provided to the agent using the following message:
You are number <NN> in the queue, and a transcript
of this conversation will be provided to the agent. Your expected
wait time is <time>. This message will be added to
the chat transcript. Knowledge articles viewed If the customer opens a knowledge article, then the CSR handling the
escalated chat interaction from that customer can see the following
message in the transcript: "Customer viewed." The entry in the
transcript for the customer viewing an article has a timestamp detailing
when the customer opened it and the title of the article. Timestamp for customer-bot conversations The transcript displays the timestamps of messages and responses
between the customer and the chatbot. Failed transfer notification with timestamps Suppose a CSR attempts to transfer an interaction to a different
agent or queue, and the transfer fails. In that case, the notification
sent to the customer and CSR is displayed in the chat transcript with a
timestamp. Customer authentication on Digital Messaging interfaces
Context data
Knowledge articles and page push for Digital Messaging interfaces
Augmented agent for Digital Messaging
Post-chat survey for Digital Messaging
Carousel messages
Security settings for Web Messaging bot
Co-Browse for Web Messaging
Typing indicators
Common phrases migration to App Studio
New suggested replies reports
Live agent preview console
Optional CDH dependence for Augmented agent
Messaging attachments
Configuration sets
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