Conversation Properties : Freshsales

Conversation properties are a valuable way for businesses to track conversation metrics. Businesses can utilise these properties to govern conversation workflows via SLAs, assignment rules, etc. and get data insights for actionable outcomes.

Default conversation properties

Group, Agent, Status, and Priority are default conversation properties available on account creation and are (included as part of the Free Plan).

Group	Groups are a way to organize agents into teams based on skills, locale, etc. This field will list all the groups you have created in Freshchat.
Agents	This field will list all the agents in your Freshchat instance.
Status	This field lists the different conservation statuses that can be associated with a conversation such as: Open, Waiting on customer, Waiting on internal team, Resolved
Priority	This field indicates the priority that can be associated with a conversation. This helps agents prioritize their conversations in the inbox view. These include: Low, Medium, High, Urgent.

Custom conversation properties

In addition to the default properties, businesses can create custom conversation properties. Custom Conversation Properties are available from the Growth plan. The field types that can be defined are shown below:

Custom property type	Example use-cases	Upper Limits
Multiline text	Customer feedback or complaint description Detailed issue explanation Suggestions or comments for improvement	10
Single line text	Customer name Contact email Phone number Order	50
Dropdown	Reason for contacting customer service (product issue, order status, general inquiry) Product category (clothing, electronics, home goods) Support channel (phone, email, chat)	50
Multiselect dropdown	Multiple product items affected by an issue Multiple order numbers related to a single customer inquiry Multiple support agents involved in resolving a customer issue	10
Decimal	Product price Shipping cost Discount amount	10
Number	Quantity of products ordered Number of days for delivery Number of attempts to contact the customer	20
Date	Order date Shipment date Delivery date	30
Checkbox	Terms and conditions accepted Opt-in for newsletter or promotional emails Request for callback from customer service	30

You can add a total of 50 conversation properties in your Freshchat.

How do you define conversation properties for your business?

Navigate to Admin Settings > Conversation Properties > and select the type of field you want to add.

Add a label.
- An internal name is automatically generated when labels are added. It can be changed during property creation if necessary. Internal names are used to update conversation properties via widget code or public APIs.
You can mandate your agents to fill up the properties when they resolve a conversation by checking the required when resolving the conversation checkbox. This is useful if businesses are keen on tracking specific conversational metrics for their support operations. The agent cannot resolve these conversations until mandatory properties are filled
The properties can be reordered to ensure they are shown to the agents in the order of their preferences.
Once you're satisfied with your set up, click Save field.

Pre-populating conversation properties

If businesses want to pre-populate conversation properties to ensure the conversations get assigned to the right group and the agent handling the conversation has sufficient context.

This can be done in three ways:

1. Chatbot:

The conversational chatbot can collect details from the end user and update conversation properties. On handover to the agent, the conversation will have all relevant properties updated by the chatbot.

Learn how to set custom properties in bot builder

2. Widget Code:

Businesses can pre-populate the conversation property via the Freshchat widget script. This is useful when the business has this context available on the website and would not need an agent to get this information manually from the customer.

Learn more.

<script src='//fm-staging-us-app-cdnjs.s3.amazonaws.com/crm/900******/4***9.js' chat='true'>
</script>

<script>
    window.fwcrm.on('widget:loaded', function() {
        window.fcWidget.conversation.setConversationProperties({
            cf_sample: "Example",
            cf_multi_choice: ["Choice1", "Choice2 one"],
            cf_multi_line_text: "This is a multiline text",
            cf_number: 33,
            cf_decimal: 3.5,
            cf_date: "2023-03-12",
            cf_checkbox: true,
            cf_drpdn: "one",
            priority: "Low"
        });
    });
</script>

3. Agents:

Once conversation properties are created in the admin settings, these properties will be visible to the agent in the right pane of the inbox. Agents can use the widget to update the conversation property values. If an agent tries to resolve a conversation property marked as mandatory by the admin, a slider will open in the right pane to prompt the agent to populate the mandatory properties to proceed with the resolution of the conversation.

Agents can also update conversation properties via the Freshchat mobile app in three ways:

Agents have the option to edit properties on Chat
The agents will have to fill in mandatory properties set by the admin to resolve the conversation.
The agents will have to fill in mandatory properties set by the admin to append to the ticket.

Admin Workflows where conversation properties can be leveraged

SLAs: assigning SLAs based on conversation type, priority, or any other field. Learn more about SLAs
Assignment rules: Handling conversation routing based on the property values. Learn more about Assignment rules
Advanced Automation: Automating workflows based on conversation property events or updating conversations based on other product events. Learn more about Advanced Automations. Once you define conversation properties, you can use them as part of the advanced automations.
- Trigger: You can set a trigger based on whether a conversation property got updated or not.
- Condition: You can set the condition for the advanced automation based on whether or not is is set/not set/equals/not equals a specific value.
- Action: You can specify the action that needs to be taken, such as setting the conversation property's field to a certain value.

How can I report on conversation properties?

We have curated reports in Freshchat analytics to view conversation property-related metrics. Additionally, admins can use the conversation property in the "filters" and "group by" sections in analytics to derive the right insights.

Permissions to manage conversation properties?

Admins will be able to define which of their agents will get the privilege to manage conversation properties by navigating to Admin settings > Roles

How can conversation properties be updated using bots?

Navigate to Bots > select your bot > Configure > Custom property > New property

A quick guide to setting up custom properties in bots

Here are some use cases for custom properties in bot:

To track the conversation metrics for bot conversations
To provide agents with sufficient information to enable quicker resolutions
Conversation properties can be set in bots by clicking on Actions > Properties > Conversation properties.
- All the conversation properties the admin defines in the settings would be listed here. If the bot admin wants to create a new conversation property, they will be redirected to the conversation properties settings page.
The values set for the conversation property should match those defined in the conversation property settings. Please note that the values are case-sensitive. If an incorrect property value is set, the bot flow will fail, and the conversation will be moved to the agent queue in Freshchat.
Bot Admins can track the reason for bot failure in bot > conversation logs.
Conversation properties can also be used as placeholders in bot flows to communicate relevant conversational details to the end user.