Introducing the Hub SDK Improvement for Messaging and Live Chat | #customersupport #supporticket

Living in the Digital Age, so much of our lives are saturated with data and information. But with so much information available, sometimes we can feel like Johnny Mnemonic, past cranial-storage capacity, where additional data doesn’t help us solve any problems, and instead makes it even more difficult to solve problems.

We probably won’t suffer permanent psychological damage if we take on too much information like Johnny (phew), but information overload and analysis paralysis are quite real. Obscure Keanu Reeves filmography references aside, at TeamSupport we want to help you unlock the power of information and data and make your teams more effective and efficient, without overloading them. With that goal in mind, we are excited to announce the release of our new Messaging and Live Chat Hub SDK.

What is Hub SDK Messaging and Live Chat?

The Hub SDK (Software Development Kit) provides a way for developers to build and integrate fully custom solutions into the Messaging Hub experience. It allows TeamSupport Messaging & Live Chat customers to access Messaging customer hub data and provides a persistent panel within the application to add both UI elements and load in information to help agents better handle chats.

The Hub SDK facilitates two-way communication between the Hub and external applications, and includes “send” events that enable reading data directly from the hub, and also “receive” events to transmit data to the hub from other applications.

Ultimately this means that the SDK panel can understand what is happening in the Messaging Hub, display relevant information, and then update based on what is typed in the ongoing chat. Conversely, action in the panel might result in chat text being posted to the ongoing chat. The new Hub SDK provides even more robust, flexible data integration with other apps in a highly secure and stable manner.

How does Hub SDK help the customer?

The Messaging Hub SDK is designed to help you increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your agents through custom apps and integrations. The SDK panel frees up the in-app agent experience to more herculean integration and customization options – which can all be designed by the customer to fit their own business needs.

By providing an integration panel in-app, the Hub SDK allows TeamSupport customers to connect with other external custom apps, services, and data sources without ever compromising on security. It also enables customers to be even more targeted with the data and information displayed to agents, combating data overload by showing a clear map of connected and relevant information (unlike the Johnny Mnemonic brain implant, this comes at no cost to your own memories).

The new data freedoms enables customers to cut down on the number of applications and windows your teams need to have open and increases response times and customer satisfaction.

What is an example use-case for Messaging and Live Chat?

As in all things, our customers will always find new ways to use the Hub SDK that we never thought of. Naturally we are excited about the prospect of our customers’ creativity, but here is one of the ways we envisioned it being used while building its bits and baubles:

Agent Assist

Problem: Sometimes agents are overloaded with more chats than they can handle, and their response times suffer. New agents in particular have trouble providing quick responses, since they don’t always know where to go to get the right information.

Outcomes and Value:

If agents are able to respond with the right information faster, they can handle more chats efficiently and increase productivity without making costly headcount additions. Faster responses directly correlate with higher customer satisfaction too, meaning an overall better customer experience. Finally, new agents would be less overwhelmed with onboarding and get up to speed much faster.

How could this work?

There could be bidirectional transcript parsing to analyze and send data from the custom app directly to the Messaging and Live Chat product and into the chat transcript.

What could you do with this?

Give agents contextual canned answers or hints during the chat, provide links to resources for the agents to share, or show the agents how to progress in the sales process and lead funnel.

How do I get started?

The Hub SDK is available today. To learn more and see more technical information on how it works, contact our team or check out the Hub SDK Knowledge Base article. If you are not a customer and would like to learn more about TeamSupport Messaging and Live Chat, be sure to check out Live Chat and Messaging and try it out for yourself. We can’t wait to see what our customers build!