Web
Messenger 5
Smooch's old Web Messenger suffered from both tech and design debt.
With a strategic expansion into the enterprise market, a redesign was needed to support the possibility for rich and engaging customer interactions.
About Smooch & Zendesk
Smooch developed omnichannel messaging solutions for SMBs and ISVs. They were acquired by Zendesk in 2019, one of the world's leaders in customer service. It became a core part of Zendesk's offering as Sunshine Conversations.
Responsibilities
Product design lead
Point resource for external collaborators
Design system manager
The
objectives
1
Create a modular, customizable messaging client aimed at providing tools for small scale businesses and enterprise level organisations.
2
Enable rich conversational interactions for businesses to engage and convert customers through conversations.
3
Share messaging components between the messaging client and the customer support platform.
Chapter 1
Flexibility at
any scale
Part of the strategy was selling to ISVs, therefore the client had to be white-label which meant extensive themeability features.
I designed a customization framework with variables reflected in the API. Developers could then refer to these tokens and implement designs at scale.
An example of the customization framework adapted to Expedia.
For small scale businesses, designers could use the simple options allowing them to customize the colors at a high level.
Larger companies with development resources, they could choose to engage with the client at a much more granular level using variables.
Chapter 2
Conversation extensions
2018 saw a large shift in consumer behavior. People wanted to handle their business like they do everything else - through text.
Buying designer shoes through conversation.
To that end, one of the missions of Web Messenger 5 was to enable interactions that weren't possible through chat before. Placing orders, shopping, canceling plane tickets - anything could happen in this chatty little rectangle.
Canceling a flight.
Ordering food.
Receiving order updates.
The northstar was to have Web Messenger become a messaging platform. Businesses could create their own integrations, or use third party integrations from services they already use, like calendly for scheduling or shopify for inventory management.
An in-conversation validation form.
Chapter 3
Conversational design components
With this project well and properly in-flight, a pretty big curve-ball was thrown - Zendesk acquired Smooch.
Zendesk is one of the major players in the customer service space and were already one of Smooch's biggest partners. The two design teams already had a relationship and were immediately excited to see what was next for the product.
The strategy for Web Messenger expanded to be integrated into the already extensive design system operations at Zendesk.
The Smooch team popularized and socialized the idea through collaboration between the existing messaging team at Zendesk, both remote and through an impressive workshop week in Zendesk's Dublin office.
One specifically ambitious idea was to have the composer (the area in which you write) and conversation be shared components between the messaging client and the customer agent dashboard.
Smooch being an omnichannel messaging API at its core, this meant less of a need to lean on translation layers for customer support agents - they would see what the customer saw.
Conclusion
Web Messenger 5 became the basis for what is today Zendesk's AI powered chat widget, allowing businesses to engage with their customers through rich and comprehensive interactions.
