There are two types of questions in iService: messages and chat requests. Messages (customer email, customer tickets, and agent tickets) are asynchronous, meaning the parts of the conversation can happen at different times and with different people. The conversation is a series of separate back and forth messages.  Messages all have the same status of unassigned, queued, and resolved. When unassigned, they're available for assignment via the get next button at the top of the page.

Messages are fundamentally different than live chat or telephone calls, which are a synchronous form of conversation. Synchronous interactions are queued and handled differently in iService because the request must be assigned quickly and the conversation takes place all at one time. Chat requests have the statuses of chat waiting, chat in progress, and resolved. When chats are in the chat waiting status, they can be assigned by clicking the "Take Chat" button at the top of the page or next to the chat availability button.

Messages are shown in the Manage Messages page, and chats are shown in the Manage Chats page.

Interaction types and statuses for questions

Customer emails - These are incoming emails sent TO one of your company's monitored mailboxes (for example, support@1to1service.com). iService retrieves the incoming email from your monitored mailboxes, and converts it to an interaction in the iService database. You view these emails in the iService web interface rather than an email client.

Customer tickets - Rather than sending email, your customer might submit an iService form with their request. iService forms may be integrated into your website, or accessed directly at a URL you provide your customer. These are converted into interactions that are displayed In a similar format to customer emails.

Agent tickets - These are similar to customer tickets, but are submitted by iService agents. The agent ticket forms are displayed when you view a contact, or an interaction in View Mode.

Chats - chats are considered questions because they are incoming requests for help. iService includes built-in customer chat forms, but your company may create their own customized version.

Question Statuses

Questions (other than chat) have an initial status of Unassigned, and are then Queued for an agent when assigned. When the question is answered with a response or resolved, the status is set to Resolved and it's no longer shown in the work queues. When a QA CSR proposes an answer, the status is changed from Queued to Pending while it waits for a QA Manager to provide approval. When the proposed answer is approved, it is sent to the customer and the question is then set to Resolved.

Chats have a different set of statuses than other questions. When a customer submits a chat request, the chat is set to Chat Waiting status. When assigned to a chat agent, the status is changed to Chat in Progress. When the chat is completed, the status is set to Resolved.

Answers are created by agents, but they aren't always in response to a question. Only agent responses,  secure email, and resolve notes resolve questions. The other answer types can be part of an existing case or created as separate cases for contact. As shown below, some answers send a message to the contact while others do not. The color coding in history is based on whether the answer was sent to the contact or recorded for history only.

The unsent response answer type is only used with work in progress. When you're working on a response to a question, iService doesn't know what type of answer you're going to provide until you're finished. For example, you might click the note button and convert your unsent response into a note. Or, you might click the send button and convert your unsent response into an agent response. For this reason unsent responses only have a single status of unsent.

Find answer articles are also unique. They aren't related to a contact at all; they're used to display information in the knowledge base.

Interaction types and statuses for answers

The Payments interaction is only available for tenants that are using an iService embedded payment configuration. Payments are notes that contain the details associated with a payment transaction (charge, credit, etc.).

Answers that send email

Agent email – sometimes you need to email a customer, but there is either no question needing a response or you don't want to resolve the question. For example, you might need to follow-up on a phone call when there is no related question in iService. Or, you might be responding to an existing question but you don't want to resolve it.

Agent response – when you answer a question using the send button, you're creating an agent response that will be emailed to the contact. Your response will mark the question as resolved, removing it from the message queues.

Secure email - the Agent Email send action includes an option for using the secure message process. When you select that option, the message you type will be saved as a secure email that must be read after logging into a customer portal. iService will send a secure notification template to the contact letting them know how they can read your message.

Secure response – when you use the send secure option to answer a question, you pick a notification template that will be emailed to the contact. The answer that you type will be saved as a secure response that must be read after logging into a customer portal. iService will send a secure notification template to the contact letting them know how they can securely get their answer.

Mass mailing – emails that are sent from a mass mailing or mailing campaign are not associated with a particular agent. This means that responses to mass mailings will be queued for any agent rather than routed back to the agent that sent the mailing. These interactions are composed in the Mass Mailing - Messages page.

Answers that don't send email

Public note – you can add notes to contact history as part of a new case, or as a case of its own. These public notes are viewable by the customer within a customer portal. All agents that have access to the segment can see public notes.

Private note – these are identical to public notes, except they are not shown to the customer in a portal. They are only viewable by agents.

Resolve note – when you use the resolve button to resolve the question, iService saves the contents of your unsent response as a resolve note. The resolve note will mark the question as resolved.

Unsent response – when you assign a question, either through get next or the forward to agent menu, iService presents an interface to the assigned agent for composing an answer. That interface is called the Action Mode and shows details about the question as well as an editor for composing your response. iService doesn't know what type of response you're creating until you finalize your draft and click one of the action buttons. For example, you might compose a private note to be added to the case history and click the Save - Private Note button. Or, you might click the Send button and generate an agent response. You can think of the unsent response interaction as work in progress, because it will eventually be converted into another type of answer.

Find answer article – the iService knowledgebase stores its content within the database as an interaction, similar to other questions and answers. These types of interactions are unique because they are not associated with a contact. They are created when you create a new article in the knowledgebase.

Answer Statuses

Answers that are sent to a customer only have a single status. Most answers have a status of Sent, but if the agent selected the expect customer reply parameter the status will be Sent Waiting Reply. The waiting reply parameter causes a copy of the answer to the displayed in the My Pending Messages page. When the customer replies to the agent's answer, the new customer question is automatically assigned to the agent and the answer is removed from the My Pending Messages page. Answers that are not sent to the customer have a status of completed.

The exception to this is the Unsent Response interaction type. Unsent response is a temporary interaction type that will eventually become an answer. When an agent composes an answer, iService doesn't know the type until they finished their composition and select an action button. The unsent response is work in progress that will eventually become an agent response, agent email, note, etc. When an agent reassigned there work in progress to another agent, the unsent response is then edited by the new agent.

System notifications are used to keep people informed of events. They usually direct the recipient to take an action. They are outgoing answers, except for private emails. Private emails are incoming emails that contain an answer to a question. iService extracts text from the private email and uses it to compose an agent response.

The sent waiting reply status is used when the agent selects "Expect Reply" in the Send menu. Selecting that option places a copy of the response into your Pending Messages tab. When the contact replies, the pending message is removed and the customer reply is automatically assigned to you.

Interaction types and statuses for notifications

Notifications are created in the Segment – Notifications page.

Agent notification - iService can notify agents when questions arrive that they can answer. This requires configuration within your segment and agent settings. These notifications can include options for answering via email in addition to details about the question.

Message acknowledgment – when iService receives a new question, it can send an acknowledgment to the submitter letting them know the question was received.

Contact creation – if you're using a customer portal, your customers will need to know where and how they can login to access their history. iService automatically creates a password for every new contact that is created from an incoming question. This notification can send those login details to the customer and direct them to your customer portal.

External agent notification – when you use the Forward to External Agent action, iService sends a notification to that email address asking them to answer the question. These notifications are listed in the drop-down menu for the Forward to External Agent action button. These notification templates must be configured before the Forward to External Agent menu can be used.

Find answers article update – the iService knowledgbase allows customers to subscribe to articles so they can be notified when they are updated. This notification is used to notify those subscribers when articles are updated. These are only used if you are using the iService knowledgbase.

Password reset – iService includes a password read it function that will email a reset link to the contact. These notification templates are listed in the website settings page.

Alert – iService alerts monitor your queues and take automated actions. One of the actions is sending an email to a list of agents with details about the questions matching the alert. For example, you might create an alert to email managers at the end of every day for all questions that are more than 24 hours old.

Secure notification – when you answer a question using the secure response option, iService sends a notification to the customer letting them know an answer is available. That email uses a secure notification template.

There is an interaction type that is not a question or answer, and does not use a notification template. This is the Private Email interaction.

Private email – most incoming email received by an iService mailbox will become a customer email interaction type. These are questions that are presented to agents within the message queues. However, there are a few scenarios where incoming email does not create a customer email. In these cases, a private email is created.

Agent response by email – agent notification templates can be designed to allow agents to answer questions by responding to the notification they receive in their personal mailbox. Agent Notification templates can be configured to allow agents to answer a question by responding to the notification they receive.  When iService receives their email response, it knows the message is intended to be an answer and not a new question. IService will strip out the answer portion from the email and use it to compose an agent response. The email sent by the agent is labeled as a private email and is not sent to the customer.

Multiple responses by email – if a question has already been resolved, you don't want to send multiple answers to the customer. If an agent sends an answer using the agent notification email template, but the question has already been answered, the incoming email from the agent is marked as Private Email and not used. iService does not inform the agent that their answer was not used.

Notification statuses

Except for private email, which has a status of resolved, all notifications have the status of sent.

The SEND action buttons

Clicking the main Send button will send the answer back to the contact as a standard email. This will also mark the original question as resolved, removing it from the work queue pages. The response will become part of the contact's history.

Clicking the drop down provides four additional Send options.

1 -Leave Open

If you want to send a response but leave the original question open, check the Leave Open box and then click Send. This will convert your unsent response to an Agent Email that is part of the message thread, and will reload the original message.

2 - Expect Customer Reply

If you expect the customer to reply to you (e.g., when asking for additional details), you'll want to keep a copy of your reply that you can use for following up. Check the "Expect Customer Reply" box before sending your answer and a copy of your message will be stored in My Pending Messages. The answer will remain there until the customer responds to your request, at which time it will be automatically removed and the customer's response will be assigned to you and listed in your My Message Inbox list.

3 - Add Reference Number

By default, iService includes a reference number in the subject line. This is used to create message threads by linking related messages together. You can suppress this number from your response by unchecking the "Add Reference Number" check box. When the reference number is removed, replies from the customer will create a new case.

4 - Send Secure

To send a secure message, click the Send Secure (Notification) link and pick a secure message template from the drop down menu. Then click on the Send Secure button to send the response (instead of the main SEND button).

This will send the customer a secure notification indicating a secure message is available for them. They must return to your iService website and login to read their message in a secure manner. This process requires configuration by your administrator before it can be used.

The Resolve action button

Sometimes questions don't need an answer. For example, your customer might thank you for your reply and there is no reason to respond to them. In those cases click the resolve button to mark the original question resolved and save a resolve note for the case history.

The Forward action buttons

The Forward button is used to change the question assignment. Options are to forward the message to another agent, remove the assignment, forward to a different iService segment, or forward to someone without an iService agent login (External Agent). Clicking on the Forward button reveals the following options.

1 - Forward to Agent

To assign the message to another agent, pick the agent from the drop down menu and click the Assign To Agent button. The agent listing can be filtered by typing into the filter box in the forward menu. The drop down menu will show the status of each agent and whether they are available for message assignment.

The Forward to Agent menu indicates whether agents are logged out of iService. Agents that have the "Empty inbox on Logout" setting are unavailable to receive questions when they're  logged out, and are shown as disabled in the menu.

Managers have the ability to assign messages to any agent, regardless of their skills. CSRs are limited to assigning questions to agents that have all of the required skills.

2 - Unassigned Question

This changes the operator assignment to unassigned. This will trigger the sending of Agent Notifications for agents that have the skills to answer the question (for agents configured to receive notifications).

3 - Forward To Segment…

This allows the agent to reassign a request to a different segment for answering.  This would be useful when an agent has been routed a request for something related to a different department within the organization (i.e., a request for a credit increase was sent to technical support instead of customer service). When you select this option, you must pick the mailbox to receive the question in the new segment. Filters associated with the mailbox you select will be run, and the topic will be determined by that mailbox. If you know the appropriate topic in the other segment, and the question doesn't need to be filtered, use the Change Topic action instead.

4 - Forward To External Agent…

This option forwards the question to someone outside of iService.  An example of when this would be useful is when someone else in the company, who is not a user of iService, is best suited to provide the answer. Messages forwarded to an external agent are shown with a special icon in the Assigned To column (the email address to which the message was forwarded, or name if known). The message will remain assigned to the external email address until that user responds.

After clicking Forward to External Agent, select the appropriate template and enter the email address of the external agent. Then click Forward Now. The Forward Now link will not appear until you enter the email address and select your template. Your iService administrator must configure the external template before it can be selected. If your segment doesn't have any agent notifications configured for external agents, you will see the notice below when using this option.

See the Segment Notifications section for details on creating Forward External templates.

The Save action buttons

The default action for the save button is to save a draft of your response. There are two other options in the drop-down.

Private Note

This saves your draft as a Private Note.  Private Notes are internal-use only notes which can be searched or referenced by other agents, but not by the contact or others outside of iService.

Public Note

This saves the message as a Public Note.  Public Notes are available for internal use and are also viewable by the contact with whom it was associated. The note is viewable by the contact by logging into an iService customer portal.

The Change Topic action

If you receive a question that is queued in the wrong topic, use the Change Topic menu to pick the correct topic. You can pick any topic in the tenant, but if you don't know the correct topic in the other segment use the Forward to Segment option.

The Mark As Spam action button

The SPAM button is a convenient way to handle SPAM that is not filtered out of the system. This button takes three actions when selected.

1.Changes the topic to _SPAM. This helps ensure the reports within iService are accurate.

2.Creates a resolve note for history and marks the question as resolved. This will eliminate the question from the message queue and keep a record of the actions taken by the agent.

3.Adds the Customer Type of SPAM to the contact that sent the message. This will help in the future when performing database maintenance, as these contacts can more easily be purged from the system, and filters can be created to deal with any new message from this user.