Chat Data Ask

Feature Overview

Being able to collect important pieces of information during the course of a chat conversation is crucial for marketers looking to use that information to customize their marketing experiences, and for sales reps to customize their continued outreach. 

Data Asks and Data Elements allow Terminus Chat administrators to define critical pieces of data (fields) that can be pulled from a chat conversation. These data points can be used to advance the conversation, route the chat to different reps, or tag the chat in a specific way. 

A Data Asks allows you to ask the visitor a question so that they provide a piece of information that you do not already know, (For example: Name, Email, How did you hear about us, etc.). Data Elements house internally tracked information, like a campaign name, internal ID, etc.

Using 1st and 3rd Party Information to Customize a Chat 

Terminus Chat Experiences has access to information about the chat user that can be sourced from our native firmographic data, as well as information you have collected through your CRM, marketing automation system, or through tagging on your website. Using reverse IP lookup, and our B2B Account Graph technology, we are able to associate a chat user on your site to a specific organization or contact in your database.

Collecting Specific Information From a Chat 

Chat Experiences has preconfigured questions for the typical “asks” of a visitor; for example, their company name, phone number or email address. Terminus Chat also allows chat administrators to create custom questions that are specific to your business, which will help a ChatBot conversation to progress effectively, can be used to validate information about a visitor, or have the chat routed in a specific way. 

Users will be able to see the responses to Data Asks or the observed Data Elements in their chat information window. 

Users can request the information in the chat window, or they can type in the information manually by selecting the ask in the box below.

Creating New Data Asks

Data Asks should be used by Chat administrators to define the most important information they are looking to collect throughout the course of a chat. When creating a Data Ask, you should consider keeping the number of pre-configured questions to a minimum; we would advise that Chat users include no more than six questions in a Data Ask. 

To create a new Data Ask:  

1. Navigate to the Data Asks page from the Admin menu, and select “+ New Data Ask”.

2. On the Data Ask configuration screen, you will be able to define the type of information you want to collect in chat. Your options will include:

• Name
• Email
• Phone
• Website
• Company
• Survey
• Text
• Select
• Number 

3. For each Data Ask, you will need to provide the copy for the initial message that will be shown to the visitor, the message you will respond with when the information is provided, and optional placeholder text that can be used to provide an example of the format in which you’d like the visitor to respond.
4. You will also have the option to define a set of validation criteria when you receive a Data Ask response. This can be beneficial when you are going to use the response to drive a routing or tagging option.
   • For example, if you require an email address to qualify a chat as an SQL, you can use validation to ensure that the user provides their email address, and let the user know that their response “failed” validation. 

• Validation Regex is a technical coding term that allows systems to ensure that a response is given in the appropriate format. The most commonly used Regex statement ensures that the information provided meets phone number and email standards. You will need to work with a technical resource to determine the right Regex statement for your validation needs.  
• Failed Validation Message: Will be shown if the user enters a response that does not meet the validation criteria. 

5. Finally, you will have the option of using data collected from UTM codes embedded in your URL string to pre-populate information in the Data Ask. When you decide to use this feature, you will want to select how long a variable will live on beyond the conversation. You will also need to confirm how long you would like the data to live on in the Persistence Section of the Data Asks configuration screen.

• For example, if a Customer Success rep is chatting with a customer about a specific support ticket number, you may decide that the ticket number is only necessary for the duration of the chat, and once the chat is concluded the detail will no longer be stored.  You may, however, want to ensure that the account number is always present on the contact, and persists well beyond the interaction. 

To leverage a UTM variable for the data element you will need to:

1. Select “Set Form Variable” from the Persistence section of the Data Ask configuration screen and enter the UTM Variable Name.