The essential user guide to OmniChat

We live in amazing times. The world is moving at breakneck speed, from super quantum computing to artificial intelligence to self-driving cars. Enterprises across every industry — from traditional banks to pizza delivery — are undergoing massive digital transformation powered by software. At the same time, customers have higher expectations for on-demand services than ever before. When the risk of downtime means billions in lost revenue and customer backlash, the stakes of missing customer expectations for availability and performance are higher than ever. What’s more, the rise of the knowledge worker in enterprises demands instant access to information and ways to be productive.

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Start a conversation

Only end-customer can initiate the conversation via omnichannels. The Jira Service Management
agent can’t start the conversation. When a user starts the conversation, a support request will be
created based on a default project and a default request type. All new requests appear in the Jira
Service Management queue for new tickets with the format “SMS request from 385 **** *****”.

The first (opening) message received from the customer is visible in the description field of the
ticket. Support agents can continue the conversation in the OmniChat section. Only one
omnichannel conversation can be active per customer and all messages sent by the customer will be
added to this request under the OmniChat section.

Due to Atlassian limitations, it is not possible to disable the Comments section in the request navigation for omnichannel requests. Sending a message via Comments won’t work for omnichannel customers. Also, end-customer won’t receive any kind of status notifications when requests change the status.

Auto-reply message

Auto-reply message is set by Jira Service Management administrators and is only used for the first
message in the conversation thread.

Pause a conversation

Only one omnichannel conversation can be active per customer and all messages received from the end-customer are added to the active conversation.

Support agents can pause the conversation and make it inactive. Once the conversation is inactive, every new message will open a new request in the Jira Service Management. To inform the customer about the resolution or status change, support agents can activate the conversation again.

Omnichannel conversation with e-mail
customers

It is also possible to continue a conversation with e-mail customers via Infobip omnichannels. If
support agents already have a phone number or get it during an e-mail conversation, they can
add it to the OmniChat panel.

End a conversation

Once the support agent resolves a request, it is not possible to send or receive any updates for
this request. If the user responds or sends a new message, a Jira Service Management adds a
queue request. Support agents can continue the conversation with the customer by changing
the request status to “IN PROGRESS”.

SMS

With over 5 billion people sending and receiving SMS every day, it is still one of the most
popular communication channels. Make your business more accessible and engage with the
customers on the channels they use. SMS requires signal coverage for messages to be
delivered, however, messages can be stored for up to 48 hours if the user is out of signal range
and will be delivered once the users are within the specified range.

A standard SMS message can hold up to 160 characters, or 70 characters if unicode data coding
is used. When more characters are used, messages are broken into parts and are reassembled
when they reach the mobile phone. Due to its design, SMS cannot handle media file messages
like pictures, videos, or attachments - only text characters can be used.

We strongly recommend using the E.164 number formatting. E.164 numbers are internationally
standardized to a fifteen-digit maximum length.

Phone numbers must start with a country code, following by network code and the subscriber
number. The “+” prefix is not needed. Phone numbers that are not E.164 formatted may work,
depending on the handset or network. For example, a Croatian number should look like
385981234567, while a UK number should look like 447712345678.

Long SMS

All SMS messages are charged per message. Long SMS messages are broken in to several
SMS messages and reassembled when they reach a mobile phone. They are charged based on
the number of parts where each part is one SMS message.

The maximum size of a long message varies between mobile networks. We suggest
constraining to sending no more than 5-7 long SMS parts. Your account manager will provide
more details for a specific network.

Customers

To have an SMS conversation, Jira Service Management customers should have a phone
number connected. A phone number saves in the database automatically if the end-user
initiates the conversation. Support agents can add a phone number for existing e-mail
customers anytime.

Users can request an opt-out anytime. If someone requests the opt-out you should contact
your Jira Service Management administrator to delete it. It is simple to do it from the Customers
page in the app configuration.

WhatsApp Business

There are 2 billion users on WhatsApp, so offering it as a customer service channel is a must
today. Customers will appreciate communication with a business on a familiar platform that is
reliable and secure.

WhatsApp Business

Infobip is an official WhatsApp Business solution provider. To start using the WhatsApp
Business solutions, you must provide all required information to confirm that you will use the
solution in compliance with the WhatsApp technical and product documentation.

To activate WhatsApp as a channel, contact your dedicated Infobip account manager or Infobip
WhatsApp experts.

WhatsApp templates

If you want to use WhatsApp Business API to send useful notifications to your customers, you
must prepare and register your message templates.

If more than 24 hours have passed since your last communication with the customer, you
must use WhatsApp templates to initiate the conversation. Templates must be aligned and
approved with guidelines from the WhatsApp Trust & Safety team.

Exchange files

Speed up a conversation and improve the resolution time with media messages - including images, videos and documents. Both sides can send videos up to 15 MB. Enable customers to share all information required to complete processes instantly over an end-to-end
encrypted platform.

Viber for Business

Each month, hundreds of millions of people connect via Viber messaging, which was one of the reasons why Viber was integrated into OmniChat. Infobip is an official Viber Messaging solution provider. To start using Viber Business Messages, please provide all required information to confirm that you will use the solution in compliance with the Viber technical and product documentation.

To activate Viber as a channel, contact your dedicated Infobip account manager or Infobip Viber expert.

Viber Business Messages offers support for media messages, real-time message receiving, and real-time delivery and seen reports.

OmniChat Split Tickets

As we already clarified, only the end-user can start a conversation. But what if end-user wants to open a new ticket while discussing a different ticket? Every message sent while the current ticket isn’t resolved will appear as a message in the ongoing ticket. So we came up with a solution, the Split ticket feature solves the problem. With Split tickets, the agent can select messages which belong to other conversations and create a new ticket for those messages. Any ticket that was created by the Split feature should be the only active conversation.

OmniChat Merge Tickets