Use Messaging apps with Customer Service Management
Messaging apps let customers start a conversation with your support team from an app they already use. For example, when you connect a WhatsApp number to a customer experience, messages sent to that number are captured in Customer Service Management as conversations, just like live chat and voice calls.
Before you start
You'll need:
A Premium or Enterprise tenant with Service Collection
A Customer Service Management space, with you as an admin
A customer experience with the chat feature enabled and configured. See Get started with live chat
A connected WhatsApp Business Account with at least one phone number added. See Connect your WhatsApp Business account and add WhatsApp numbers
How WhatsApp messages are routed
WhatsApp uses the same routing as chat. The chat settings in a customer experience determine who answers, so chat must be enabled and configured for that experience before you add a phone number.
If the customer experience routes chat to your AI agent, the AI agent answers WhatsApp messages first and can hand off to a human agent.
If it routes chat to a support team, an available agent in that space picks up the conversation.
Because routing follows your chat configuration, changing the chat settings for a customer experience also changes how its WhatsApp messages are handled. See Set up your chat experience
Note:
WhatsApp messages are exempt from the Customer Access settings in the customer experience.
Incoming messages are processed regardless of the customer’s organization.
Add a WhatsApp number to a customer experience
Go to your customer experience settings.
Select Channels and then Messaging apps.
Select Add WhatsApp number.
Select a verified WhatsApp number, then enter a name for internal reference.
Select Save.
You can link multiple WhatsApp numbers to a single customer experience, but each WhatsApp number can be linked to only one customer experience at a time.
What a WhatsApp conversation looks like
When a customer messages your WhatsApp number, your support team sees the conversation in the same place where they handle their other chats and can see that it came from WhatsApp. The support team member replies in the same way, ends the conversation when it is finished, and transitions the work item as usual.
For how your support team works through conversations, see Manage live conversations with customers.
Troubleshoot phone number setup
If no WhatsApp number is available to select, add more WhatsApp phone numbers in the Atlassian Administration. See Connect your WhatsApp Business account and add WhatsApp numbers.
If no agents are available, the customer sees your fallback message straight away. If agents are available but no one accepts within 20 minutes, the conversation ends, and the customer sees your fallback message. To set that fallback message, see Set up your chat experience.
What's next
Tell your customers which number to message, and add it wherever you publish your contact options.
Brief your support team on how to manage conversations before customers start messaging. See Manage live conversations with customers.
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