Handing conversations to Zendesk Chat by switching widgets

This client integration allows your Certainly chatbot to hand over a live conversation to Zendesk by switching between the two widgets. The article below covers the following:

• Introduction to the solution
• Configuring the widget switch to Zendesk

Introduction to the solution

Once the conversation is handed over to Zendesk Chat, it is labeled with the tags "chat_with_certainly" and "handed_over_by_certainly".  Your agents can pick up the conversation from the Zendesk Workspace and help visitors solve the claim. As soon as the chat on Zendesk has ended, Certainly will take over the conversation and present the starting module of your chatbot.

You can check out a video of the solution below:

Configuring the widget switch to Zendesk

1. On Zendesk, you must enable the Agent Workspace. Learn how to do this in Zendesk's documentation. 
   
   
2. Inside your Certainly chatbot, you need to configure a Module chain that will trigger the handover. We recommend that you handle it in the following way:
   
   2A. (Optional) You can force a specific department by setting variable zendesk_department to the department name you want to pass the conversation to. 
   
   2B. Collect the visitor's name and save it as variable visitor_name. For example:
   
   
   2C. Collect the visitor's email, and save it as variable visitor_email. For example:
   
   
   2D. Fire a Webhook to retrieve the conversation history, as demonstrated by the Certainly Get Conversation History Webhook here:
   
   
   2E. Set variable zendesk with value "start_chat":
   
   
   
   2F. Then you move the conversation to a silent Module. The handover will not be triggered unless you land on this Module. In the end, your handover flow should look similar to this:
   
   
   
3. Lastly, you need to deploy both Zendesk Chat and the Certainly Widget on your website. To do so, embed the following snippet into your website. Make sure you replace the Zendesk Chat script with your own snippet from Zendesk, and the Certainly id with your own bot deployment id:
4. You also need to turn on "Send Custom Variables with Bot Messages" in the Certainly Widget channel, so the Customer Variables are sent to the browser.
   
   
   

That's it! Your Certainly chatbot is now ready to hand visitors over to Zendesk agents. If you encounter problems in the configuration, please reach out to our Customer Success team.