Managing Chats in the Grata Console

     
    Once you’ve setup your console the first time, you’ll be ready to receive a chat.
     

    Be ready for incoming chats

    When a new chat is sent to your console, you should:

    • hear an audio notification,
    • see a red counter of waiting customers on the Next Chat button, and
    • if you’re not in the console window, a pop-up browser notification from Chrome.

     
    Click the Next Chat button to claim the next available chat. When you have a user waiting, you’ll see a button beside the Next Chat to view a list of who is waiting. The wait list view provides more context and allows you to select a specific user to claim next. Only one agent can claim a new chat.
     

     
    By default the wait list is sorted in order of who has been waiting the longest. One situation in which you may wish to reverse sorting is, if your organization does not offer 24/7 support, at the start of your organization’s first daily shift. Users who have messaged, for example, overnight and already received an offline greeting letting them know not to expect a quick reply, are not as urgent as users who message during your online hours and receive your online reply letting them know you’ll be right with them. If you have dozens of offline waiting users at the start of the shift, consider reversing the sort order until you’ve caught up with the overnight back log.
     

    Send initial reply

    One of the most crucial service goals is to get a quick first reply to the user. You want your customers to know that you are “on it” and that they can relax and put their phone down. If your organization has setup online/offline auto-replies, your user will have already received a reply to their first message letting them know that agents are online and to expect immediate assistance.
     
    Your next message is meant to let them know a real person is taking care of their concern, and hopefully which specific person. For WeChat, we recommend using personalized or role-based Agent IDs so this is very clear to the user. The combination of immediate online agent auto-reply and your first greeting will look like this to your user:
     
    Initial Response
     

    Get context

    Once you’ve gotten out an initial reply to the user, take a moment to orient yourself with whatever contextual data is available:
     

     
    In particular, take note of:
     

    User’s name

    The active field in blue below is editable. By default it will show your the username from the customer’s channel (in this case, WeChat), unless it has already been edited with the user’s real name. In any case, the channel username is preserved in the channel field (red box) below the user’s email address. Note that WeChat usernames are not unique and can be changed by the user at any time. If you are using multiple WeChat Official Accounts, the name of the Official Account is displayed in parentheses after “WeChat”.
     
    Grata Console Username
     

    Any tags or comments in the user’s profile

    Decide as an organization what kind of tags and comments you want to make for customers that will help you deliver better service. Get in the habit of quickly reviewing these profile details at the start of conversations so you don’t miss any details or make your customer repeat information.
     

    User’s location (if available)

    For WeChat users, a GPS location is only available for Verified Service Accounts that have activated the feature and when users opt-in to share their location. (For help setting up WeChat location sharing, look at the last section of How to Link WeChat to Grata.)
     
    For web chat users, this location is an approximate location based on the user’s IP address, if known. If the user is using a proxy or VPN, this location will be the location of their server, not the user’s actual location, so be careful assuming too much from a web chat user’s location.
     
    You can choose either Google or AutoNavi maps from the menu. Google Maps are in English and Chinese and have global coverage, but are blocked in China. AutoNavi maps are not blocked in China, but only support Chinese language and have limited detail for locations outside of China.
     
    User's Location in Grata
     

    Any relevant conversation history

    All conversation history for the user is preserved in the console. If the user recently chatted with your organization it may be helpful to quickly scroll up and review history so you can deliver more relevant service and customers don’t have to repeat themselves.
     

    Servicing a conversation

    You have a number of different options on how best to reply to a user, and you may use several different mediums in the course of a conversation, depending on the situation.

    Text

    The simplest method to reply is simply to type your response. Hit Enter to send your message or Shift + Enter for a line break.
     

    Quick Replies

    Your organization can prepare and store multilingual text for frequently-asked questions, organized by topics. Hover your mouse over a topic to reveal a list of stored replies. Hover over an individual reply to reveal the full text of the message. Click on a highlighted reply to load the stored text in your text editor. Double-click on the All button to load your organizations default reply. Double-click on any other topic to load the first reply for that subject.
     

     
    A preview of the Quick Reply text will display in the language of your console, but will change to the customer’s language (if the reply is available in that language) when you click on the reply to add it to to the text editor before sending.
     

    Push-to-talk

    As long as you have a working microphone and have enabled the browser permission for audio, you can hold down on the microphone icon to record a message. Move the mouse away from the icon to cancel.
     

     
    If you don’t see the red bar moving up and down with your voice, your microphone may not be working properly. Make sure it is enabled in the browser and then reload your console. You should see this icon:
     
    Browser Microphone Permissions
     

    Images

    WeChat supports JPG and PNG image types up to 1MB. You can add an image to a conversation by clicking the folder icon, selecting a file, and then hitting send:
     

     
    Or simply drag-and-drop an image over the chat window. The drop area is highlighted for you when dragging an image into the console.
     

     
    After adding your image to the console you will see a preview in the chat box. Click send to confirm, or click clear to remove the image.
     

     

    Cards

    Your organization may use cards to share content with your customers. Cards contain a title, image, teaser text, and link to more content. Cards can be multilingual – selected according to the user’s language – and multiple cards can be sent in one message (up to eight cards at one time).
     

     
    Simply drag-and-drop one or more cards into the chat box and click send. You can also  click a card once to preview the card text and open the link. Click Add from the preview window to add the card to your chat editor.
     

     
    Cards are managed in the Grata Admin Panel.
     

    Adding another agent to a chat

    You can add another agent to a chat in Grata, meaning more than one agent can be in a chat at the same time. In any active chat, you can hover over an agent’s name and then click on the “+” icon to send them a chat request. You will see a spinner while the transfer request is pending:
     

     
    Click to confirm and then the other agent will see and hear a new chat notification in their browser as well as this pop-up window:
     
    Transfer Request Pop-up
     
    If the other agent accepts you will see a green “OK” message next to the agent’s name. If agent rejects the transfer you will see a red “No”. When more than one agent is in a conversation you will see a banner over the top of the chat like this:
     

     

    Closing a conversation

    When you have finished a chat with a customer and have confirmed that she needs no further assistance, click the “X” at the top right of the chat panel to close the conversation.
     
    If your organization is tracking chat types, you’ll see a pop-up asking you to note the chat type and whether or not to send a customer satisfaction survey. You’ll be required to select a chat type to close the chat, you can decide whether or not to send the survey.
     

     
    We recommend getting in the habit of closing chats after the conversation has come to a natural conclusion. If you leave your workstation without signing-out or closing your computer, that chat session will still be assigned to you, meaning any new messages from the user will only go to you. Your admin can setup your Grata account rules to route back to the customer’s previous agent first. After giving the previous agent a chance to claim the chat again, Grata will then notify other agents.
     

    Opening a past conversation

    If you would like to re-open a chat you had with a previous customer, you can click on their name in the History section of the console side bar. History includes all of your chats for the previous twenty-four hours.
     
    If you need to access an older chat you can click on More Chats to open all previous chats across your entire organization. Currently we only support search by username. There are two search options, one quick search of your organizations last 300 users, and one full database search. For large organizations, the full database search may take some time. Click the name to open the chat session in your console.
     
    Keep in mind when opening previous users that WeChat customer service sessions are only open for forty-eight hours from the time your customer sent you their last message. Your customer will not receive any messages from you if that session has expired and Grata will display in error message in the console.