1. Why snooze a conversation?
Even though it is usually more interesting to address and resolve visitors’ questions live, snoozing a conversation for a predefined period of time, or until visitors respond, will offer more flexibility to provide them with an answer.
By shelving idle conversations the agents have more time to engage with other visitors, therefore the agents can also handle more conversations.
A green or red dot, visible on each state box, indicates whether the visitor is still or has left the website
A green dot shows you that your visitor is still browsing your website
A red dot means that your visitor is no longer on your website
Find out more about the dots on video...
2. How to snooze a conversation?
Click on the snooze button located in the top right corner of the conversation panel.
Select the desired duration: 3 hours, 24 hours or custom. The ongoing conversation will disappear from the conversation panel.
To snooze the conversation for a custom duration, choose a date and time and click on the clock button to validate your choice.
Directly access your conversations on snooze on your conversation panel to check their details.
For more information read this article.Use this option for a better follow-up of a conversation. Be alert and don’t tick the box if you won’t be available at the end of the time limit (e.g., vacations).
3. When should you snooze a conversation?
The green and red dots are indicators on when to use the snooze option during a conversation.
Here are some practical cases:
- An agent, working for a webshop, is advising a visitor who is about to buy a refrigerator
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Case N°1: the dot is red and there is no resolution so far
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Case N°1: the dot is red and there is no resolution so far
The visitor asks about the category of the refrigerator without providing further explanation.
The agent provides the visitor with an answer on the energy class as they guess that it could be the visitor’s question. However they are not 100% sure that this was the meaning of the visitor’s question…
At this point, a red dot lets the agent know that the visitor has left the website. The agent envisages that the visitor might return -visitor might just have been away- and that the initial request is not yet completely resolved.
In such a case, the agent will not close the conversation for good.
The agent snoozes the conversation -here for 24 hours- to free up a conversation slot. Before proceeding, the agent will send a canned answer to inform the visitor.
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Case N°2: The dot is green , but the visitor is not responding and there is no resolution yet
As the agent sees a green dot on the statebox, they know that the visitor is still on the website.
The agent asked the visitor if they are looking for a refrigerator combined with a freezer. 2 minutes have passed without any answer from the visitor, despite the fact the agent has been checking in.
Again here, the conversation cannot be seen as resolved and the agent could answer to another visitor in the meantime.
The agent snoozes the conversation after letting the visitor know about it.
Nevertheless, the snooze duration can be shorter than for Case 1 as the visitor might just have been continuing navigating on the website. The agent will set a 15 minute snooze in order to assist another visitor.
After 15 minutes or if the visitor answers before that amount of time, the conversation will go back to an ongoing one.
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Case N°3: The dot is green but the resolution is for later
The visitor is online and chats with the agent. The visitor would like to have an American style fridge in their new apartment but is not sure that it will fit. They forgot to measure the available space and will only go back to the place in 2 days.
In such a case, the visitor can’t make a decision right away.
The agent offers to snooze the conversation and explain to the visitor that they can resume it later by returning to the website on the same browser (or that they’ll receive a notification by email if they have entered their email address + if the asynchronous queues are in use).
Once more, as there is no resolution during the ongoing chat, the agent won’t close the conversation. Conversation is snoozed for 48 hours to grant time for the visitor to come back with more information.
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Case N°2: The dot is green , but the visitor is not responding and there is no resolution yet
4. How to access snoozed conversations as an agent?
The "keep this conversation when the snooze period ends" box must be checked for the conversation and its details to be visible from the snoozed conversations tab.
5. Will the visitor be notified when a new message from an agent has been given?
Yes. There are two possible ways.
First one: the visitor will see the agent's response when they return to the website. A number on the reduced notification icon will give them the amount of new messages sent by the agents.
Second one: the conversation queues should be activated. Only administrators can do so. Conversation queues are also called Asynchronous Conversation (for more information, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager).
The visitor will be asked to fill in their email address in order to be notified when an answer has been provided by an agent.
6. How to monitor the number of snoozed conversations?
The live activity report (or production report) displays how many conversations are currently on snooze. The amount of conversations closed during the day is also displayed on this report.
Click Reporting > Production > Snoozed Conversation.
To read the thread of a snoozed conversation, click on the “Read” button.
7. Auto-close snoozed conversations
When a conversation is snoozed, and the visitor doesn't send a new message before the snooze period ends, the conversation is automatically closed. However, you can uncheck this option if you need to open up a slot during a busy period.
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The checkbox status remains consistent for you and all your future conversations across sessions:
- If you don't change the checkbox status, snoozed conversations will continue to auto-close.
- Once you uncheck the "auto-close" checkbox, it will remain unchecked for all conversations until you manually recheck it.
- If you uncheck and then check the checkbox again, the status will remain checked.
If this is the first time you snooze the conversation with this checkbox, a popup will be displayed to warn you of the closing behavior.
There is a checkbox to enable to don't show this again, this checkbox is checked by default:
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NB: Since the conversation is closed by the system and not by the agent, the closing message is not sent. In this case, it may be useful to warn the visitor (via a pre-recorded phrase, for example) that if no response is received, the conversation will be closed automatically, followed by the CSAT survey.
8. Best practices
- Always go for a live conversation when it’s possible
- Don’t check the “keep this conversation when the snooze period ends" when about to go on vacation
- Check the conversation history when a conversation comes out of a snooze period to prevent from asking the same questions all over again
- Don’t forget to set your status to unavailable before logging out. All your conversations must be snoozed or closed before you log out.