We’re on the verge of summer and we’re dropping a new release to brighten things up that little bit faster. This is the most technically complex release to date, so if the new features streamline your workflow make sure to shout out to the Tech Team on Twitter.
This release is all about analytics to crunch the vast amount of data created by respond.io users. We’ve done a major update to our underlying infrastructure, where this change allows for today’s release and future analytics features.
We’ve also had to make one small change to an important platform terminology. We’ve changed Pending & Done to Conversation Open & Conversation Closed. This change was necessary to create a solid foundation for the features we release today.
So without further ado, we introduce you to:
The New Dashboard
For those of you that have been with us for some time, you’ll know the Dashboard has never been updated before - that changes today! We’ve rebuilt the Dashboard from the ground up with five new widgets to help Managers supervise their Agents.
If you have an account, you’ll have access to the New Dashboard today. However, you should tailor the Dashboard for your company by setting up a Time Zone in Settings. This will help you make sense of the data displayed by day.
Now let’s go through the elements of the New Dashboard. The Contacts & Team Members widgets are designed to be used together by a Manager for day to day operations.
The Contacts widget provides visibility into the number of Open Contacts and Contacts that have been open too long. It has a preview of the latest message, the direction of that message & the channel in use.
It enables a Manager to view Contacts that are Open, Assigned or Unassigned while reviewing the Assignee and Open duration. Pressing on the Contact will take you to the Messages module where you can review the full conversation if necessary.
The Team Member widget provides visibility into the workload and work hours for Agents. It shows the number of Contacts assigned to a User and their last Status change (Online/Offline/Busy). It can be filtered by Team or by User Status.
The Conversations widget provides a broader view of workload. Using the Today, Yesterday, Last 14 Days or Last 30 Days Filters and Metric Change Values Managers can determine if the workload is increasing on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.
There are two more widgets to assist Managers. Merge Suggestions enable Managers to keep the Contacts list clean. Here, merging works like in Messages - when two Contacts have a matching Email or Phone Number merging will be suggested.
The Upcoming Broadcasts widget is useful for Organizations that schedule Broadcasts for Marketing or Notification purposes. Since a Broadcast can often result in a torrent of responses, Upcoming Broadcasts helps Managers prepare for a surge in workload.
Keep in mind, since the Dashboard and the underlying infrastructure have been built from scratch you’ll only have data going back to May 9th, 2021. We’re also looking for improvement suggestions, so please add your comments on the feature request!
Reports Version 1
Reporting was the most highly requested feature request ever, so we’ve created a completely new module to satisfy your requirements. We call it - 🥁🥁🥁 - Reports!
It’s all about providing a granular set of data and graphs for long term workforce planning and deep dives into data. As with the New Dashboard, there is no set up required except for selecting a Timezone in Settings.
The Reports module has Filters allowing managers to explore any graph or data set granularly. There is a Date Filter, a Team Filter and a User Filter. Analysis should be conducted by using Filters to create comparisons between date periods, teams & users.
The Conversation and Performance widgets include the number of Opened and Closed Conversation as all as the Average First Response and Average Resolution Times for those Conversations.
They are intended to be used together by managers to understand how Conversation performance is affected as the number of conversations rise or fall. Filtering by Team or User let’s manager know how each party performs under stress.
The Conversations Opened & Closed Heatmaps provide Managers with a way to determine peak hours for Teams or Users in terms of a week. Filtering by Teams or Users allows Managers to determine hourly loads for specific teams.
The Conversations Opened by Contact Type widget allows managers to understand if the source of Conversations is new or if they’re existing Contacts. Once again Managers can filter by Date, Team or User to review this data with higher granularity.
Have you been looking for metrics for each individual User? Welcome to Valhalla. The User Performance table displays the Closed Count, Outgoing Messages, Average First Response Time, Average Resolution Time & Max Resolution Time.
Using the Date Filters provided, Managers can determine if the overall performance of a User or Team is increasing or decreasing over time.
Last but not least, we have the Conversation Logs. If you’re interested in actually improving the quality of the conversations your company has with Contacts, this is where you’ll get started.
The Conversation Log displays a plethora of data related to each individual conversation. You can drill down into the Conversations related to specific Teams or Users by using the Filters. And this is just the beginning...
As you may have noticed this is Reports Version 1. In the very next release, we’ll be adding individual Reports pages for Users, Contact, Messages & Logs.
If you’ve got feedback on what you want to see next or what we should improve, please don’t hesitate to comment on the Reports Feature Request.
Data Export
We've been able to export a limited set of data from the platform before but this is our first foray into a comprehensive Data Export feature. It’s designed for companies that need to back up their data for legal reasons or export to perform extensive analysis.
Today we are introducing Data Export for both Conversations and Contacts. Messages export is not far behind. It's coming in the next release.
To export a set of data you'll need to go to Settings > Data Export > Select Data Type & Date Range. An email will be sent to you once the data is ready to download.
For now, we are only allowing one export to be requested at a time to help manage the load on our servers. Although we have released this feature for everyone, it will only be available in higher-tier plans in the future.
Bits & Bobs
This wouldn’t be a respond.io release without Bits & Bobs. This month we’ve got Sending Voice Messages, Dialogflow Location Passing & Dialogflow Language Passing.
Sending Voice Notes
For companies that prefer to communicate with customers via Voice Messages, we have implemented the sending of Voice Notes from the Messages module. Now you can respond with a Voice Note when a Contacts sends you one!
Location Passing to Dialogflow
Previously we’ve updated the platform to show locations shared by Contacts in the Messages module. Now we’re passing these locations to Dialogflow too! The data will be passed to Dialogflow along with the event LOCATION.
In Dialogflow you’ll be able to see longitude, latitude and the location that is resolved by Google Maps API. You’ll also be able to pass this data to Dialogflow Fulfilment.
Dialogflow Language Passing
We will also be passing the value in the Language Contact Field to Dialogflow. This is the first step to allowing fully-featured multi-language Dialogflow Agents. More updates relevant to this use case are coming in the future.
