Parature Chat is a wonderful way to give your customer fast, reliable, and cost effective service in real time. Although Parature Chat isn’t as robust as interacting through a service ticket or over email, the increased speed of inquiry handling that Parature Chat offers makes it a great option for communication between you and your customers. Not only that, it provides an easy and informal line of contact that makes for a pleasant user experience.
One caveat to working with Parature chat is its ability to direct customer to the support when having them download a file. In this blog post we will explain a workaround to send a download file that always directs the customer to the support portal.
Sending Links with Parature
Just like a ticket interaction, you are able to use the Fast Forward button when interacting with customers to insert article questions, answers, or a link to a relevant article on the support portal.
We always recommend using hyperlink functionality because it links the customer to the support portal and the Knowledgebase. The idea is to encourage a visit to this portal in the future prior to opening a chat or a ticket with you. Each time a customer visits the portal and solves their own problem, the organization saves time and money and enables the customer to take more agency over their own system.
When the solution you’re aiming to provide is contained within a download folder, the process gets more complex. Though the hyperlink to download content is available from the chat window, the hyperlink will not redirect the customer to the portal or give them a preview of the file.
Adding Downloads to Knowledgebase Articles
The solution is to create knowledgebase article with a link to download, and rather than sending the customer a link to download, send them a link to the knowledgebase article.
NOTE: the Knowledgebase Role must be author or admin in order to complete the process. If users do not have access to the author they will not be able to send download via chat.
In order to accomplish this, follow these steps:
1. Locate a Knowledgebase article related to the download content OR contact a Knowledgebase author and have them create an article to be paired with the download.
2. Navigate to the Knowledgebase module and selects the articles to associate with the download.
3. If an article does not exist, create one. The question should be the issue you’re writing to resolve, and the answer should reference that the solution is attached in a file.
IF the file is attached to an existing article, note that in your communication with the person you’re chatting with on Parature.
4. From the “Edit Article” page select “Attachments.”
5. Select “Attach File.”
6. Use the Fast Forward button to link to the download file.
Conclusion
Now when you send a link to the relevant article and the user will be redirected to the portal, where they’ll see the article and have the option to download the attachment.
Using this workaround, you can send files to your users via chat while also encouraging self-service, because linking them to the articles helps heir awareness of the content available for them via the portal.
It’s important to note that users must have a Knowledgebase role of either Author or Admin to perform the action. If you would like to have only one Knowledgebase author, it’s a good idea to transfer all chats that require image attachment to this person via a special queue. They can create the necessary articles and provide them right away without any messy authentication troubles.
Check out the PowerObjects Blog for more content to help you leverage Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM as well as Parature. Learn about the PowerObjects add-on PowerKB for Parature or about how you can better leverage your EasyAnswer/Ticket Deflection functionality.
PowerObjects helps clients implement a variety of Microsoft Products that tie into Dynamics CRM in addition to Parature. Visit our blog to learn more about CRM solutions for Customer Care or Microsoft Dynamics Marketing in addition to our CRM content.
Happy CRM’ing!