Offline Communication

Any customer can leave an offline message directly from the site that is monitored by Sales-n-Stats. A special button integrated into the site allows the site visitors to contact the customer service operator. Depending on the operator's availability, this button may say either 'Click for Live Help' or 'Leave a message'.

'Click for Live Help' means the operator is currently online and the visitor can invite him to chat by clicking on the button. However, if any other site visitors have requested live help at the same time and the operator cannot accept the invitation to chat at once, the visitor is asked either to wait or to leave a message. To leave a message he needs to click on the appropriate link ('leave a message') and complete a special form.

The 'Leave a message' button means the operator is offline and clicking on the button will take the visitor directly to 'Leave a message' form.

Please note that the button changes from 'Click for Live Help' to 'Leave a message' not immediately after the operator goes offline. The delay is caused by the fact that Data Collector needs some time to “realize” that connection with Data Center has broken. Sales-n-Stats works so that Data Collector is supposed to periodically receive from Data Center a list of operators who are currently online. If an updated list is not received before the time period specified in the 'Operators list expiration (sec)' option is exceeded, the system “understands” the operator has gone offline and changes the button to 'Leave a message'.

If a visitor attempts to start a chat session with an operator while the button still says 'Click for Live Help' but the operator is already offline, Sales-n-Stats tries to route the call to the operator, and when that does not work out, the visitor gets an invitation to wait or to leave a message.

To leave a message, the customer needs to complete and submit an online form. The form requires the visitor to enter the same information he would be asked to provide when sending an ordinary email (the name by which he wants to be addressed, the email address to which he wants the reply to be mailed, the subject of the message and the message text) and click Send Message.

The operator finds out he has some new messages to answer by looking at the 'Communication Summary' panel (bottom left corner of the screen). There, in the 'Queues' section, the line that says 'MSG' shows the number of messages that need to be answered. Clicking on the number in this line opens the 'Message Queue' section of the Operator Terminal (an alternative way to access this section would be to click on the 'Communication Overview' tab and to select 'Message Queue' there). The 'Message Queue' displays all the messages received from the site visitors in one stream.

To reply to a message, the operator needs to open the 'Visitor's Profile' dialog of the visitor to whom he wants to answer.

Clicking on the email address in the header of the necessary message ('Message::Posted by Username (username@example.com)') opens the 'Visitor's Profile' of the visitor who posted the message (namely, the 'Messages' tab of the Visitor's Profile dialog). The central area of the 'Messages' tab (also called the 'Message board') displays the history of communication with the visitor, including his newest unanswered messages. Please note that the headers of the messages which have not been answered are colored light blue (the closed messages have grey headers).

1. Use the 'Email' drop-down box to select the email address to which the message needs to be sent.

If the needed email is not in the list, select <add email>, enter the email into the input box that will appear and click OK. The new email address will be added to the list of the visitor's email addresses.

To send the message to all the available email addresses of the visitor, select <all emails>.

2. Enter the subject and the body of your message into the appropriate fields. If necessary, use a 'canned' message.

3. Click Send. The message gets sent to the email addresses selected in the 'Email' box and gets added to the list of messages in the 'Message board'.

After the operator replies to a visitor's message, he should mark this message as 'closed' not to reply to it a second time. To close a message, the operator needs to select the check box in the message header (Notice that when a tick appears in the check box the color of the message header is changed from blue to grey.) The operation of closing a message is reversible: if necessary, you will be able to unclose any message by clearing the before-mentioned check box and confirming the operation.

If the operator does not want to send any email messages, but just wants to create a note for himself about the visitor whose profile is opened, he can take the same steps as in the process of creating an email message, but select <don't send> from the' Email' drop-down box. The note created in such a way will appear in the 'Message board' along with the other messages, but it will not be sent to the visitor.

'Canned' messages are templates which can be used for creating messages. For example, if different site visitors regularly ask you the same question, it is natural to store the answer to it somewhere on your system and then just cut and paste it into each new message sent in reply to that question. Of course, you can save these frequently used phrases and explanations in any file, but Sales-n-Stats provides a way in which such messages can be handled directly from the Web control and communication center, which is probably more convenient. You only have to enter each typical phrase once creating a 'canned' message, and then you get the ability to access it from any Visitor's profile. To substitute for the operator's name use %name% variable. In this case you will not have to change all your canned messages in case the operator name changes - it will change automatically when you edit it in the Operator Profile.

When you first install Sales-n-Stats, there are no 'canned' messages in it. To create a new 'canned' message, you need to do the following:

1.	Click Canned in a Visitor's profile. A popup menu will appear (For the first time it will contain a single entry: <configure messages>).

Select <configure messages> from the menu. 'Configure canned messages' dialog will appear. The left side of the 'Configure canned messages' dialog displays the tree of your canned messages. The right side contains two fields (meant for entering the name and the body of a canned message, but inactive at the time you open the dialog.

3.	Select the level of the message tree where you want to add a new 'canned' message or a new message folder.

•	Click Add message. A new branch named <enter title> will be added to the tree on the level you selected, the topic field (top right) will become active and will show <enter title> message as well.

•	Make sure the location of the folder being created is correct and enter a title for this new folder into the topic field instead of <enter title>. Click Save.

•	Click Add message. A new branch named <enter title> will be added to the tree on the level you selected, the topic field and the message field will become active.

•	Make sure the location of the message being created is correct and enter the title for this new message and the text into the appropriate fields on the right side of the dialog. Click Save.

Created 'canned' messages are added to the popup menu which appears when you click Canned button in the bottom left corner of the 'Messages' tab in a Visitor's profile. To insert a 'canned' message into a letter you are creating for a visitor, select the necessary 'canned' message title from there.

Open the 'Configure canned messages' dialog, select the message you want to delete from the message tree and click Delete.

Open the 'Configure canned messages' dialog, select the message you want to edit. It will be displayed in the right section of the dialog, edit the title and body of the message and click Save.

You can export your 'canned' messages to a text file. To do this select Main Menu -> File -> Export settings and clear all the check boxes except ''Canned' messages'. Your messages will be exported to an .sns file which you can import later on.

There are two ways to export 'canned' messages to your system. The first one is to use Main Menu -> File -> Import settings function. This is possible if you have exported some messages earlier. However there is a way to import regular text files and whole directories.

To import text files, in the 'Configure 'canned' messages' dialog click on Import files/directory button. Locate the necessary files or directories and click Open. Directory names are exported as tree node names, file names - as message titles, file text - as message body. If a message is bigger than 10 Kb, you will get a message asking you to confirm if you want to continue importing such a file.

As it has been mentioned above, all the visitor's messages (as well as the messages sent to this visitor by an operator) are saved to his personal profile. The same can be said about the visitor's chat conversations (both text or voice ones). Messages, chat transcripts and information about voice calls together constitute the visitor's communication history. This communication history can be viewed via the 'Message board' section of a Visitor's profile ('Messages' tab).

You can filter what is displayed in the Message board using the Messages, Chat and Calls buttons, the 'Only unclosed' check box and the 'Search' field.

•	To view the transcripts of the chats the visitor has taken part in, click Chat.

•	To view the records about the visitor's voice chats, click Calls.

Please note that the buttons can be used in different combinations or all at once (for example, pressing all the three buttons will display the whole of the communication history).

•	Selecting the 'Only unclosed' check box together with one or more of the mentioned three buttons will display only the part of the visitor's communication history that has the status of 'unclosed' (unanswered messages, unfinished chats – depending on which of the buttons are pressed).

•	Entering a word or a phrase into the 'Search' field will result in displaying only the messages/chat transcripts which contain this word or phrase.

•	If the chat transcript contains more than 5 lines only the beginning will be shown in the list. But you will see the Show all button at the end of the chat transcript. Clicking on this button opens the whole transcript.

•	The chat transcript can be rolled up by clicking on the Hide button.