What's the Difference between Accept in Direct Messages and Join with @Live Chat Messages

With our Webex Live Chat integration, you have two ways to answer or reply to website Live Chats from within Webex:  Accept in Direct Messages and Join with @Live Chat messages.

You can see the two buttons in the Webex Live Chat request below.

We'll discuss the differences between these to ways to answer live chats below.

Option 1: Accept in Direct Messages

When you choose the Accept in Direct Messages reply method in Webex, we move the live chat from a Shared space in Webex to your DMs or Direct Messages.  This has the affect of making the chat private and one on one between you and the website visitor. 

You'l see the live chat request as a new invite into your DM's once you click this, and you can respond directly to the website visitor without having to @mention the @Live Chat bot in each response.  Just make sure to click 'Reply to thread' since we create each new Chat conversation as a separate thread in Webex in order effectively manage simultaneous live chats.

Simply respond by clicking 'Reply to thread' and responding.  When you reply this way, you can respond right to your visitor as below:

Option 2:  Join with @Live Chat Messages

The second option to respond to website live chats in Webex is to click 'Join with @LIve Chat Messages'.  This type of join keeps the conversation in the Webex Space.  Your other Space members will be able to see the entire conversation and they will also be able to respond to your chat visitors.  This is especially helpful when you want to escalate or handoff chats between your team members.

Keep in mind, that when you respond in the Space this way, you will need to mention the @Live Chat bot in EACH response.  This is because our bot is not able to listen to all messages in your Spaces, just the ones that we are mentioned on as a security constraint (that's a good thing).  

So you would respond to a chat link this.  Just start typing @Live Chat and you should see a popup that lists the bot.  

Just select the bot and then enter your message.  Once you select the bot, you'll see the work "Live" highlighted in blue.  This is just our bot mention at the beginning of the message.

Once you click send, this message will be sent back to your visitor.  As always, make sure to Reply in the thread.

If you just mention the chat bot outside of a Live Chat thread, you'll see some helpful links where you can ask generic questions to our bot.

Now from a company standpoint, you can decide which response method works best for you.  Happy chatting in Webex!