Customer support wait times can be frustrating to customers. This article explores how SnapCall, integrated within your Zendesk messaging widget, allows customers to initiate video calls, allowing your team to deliver a customized support experience.

Results User Can Expect

Streamlined Communication: Visual communication clarifies issues and expedites troubleshooting.
It allows a customer to better explain their issue using audio, video and screenshare instead of writing a long email.
All support channels will be consolidated into a single channel, minimizing the customer's efforts required to initiate a ticket, impacting positively the Customer Effort Score (CES)

The benefits above are particularly useful in the use cases listed below, where video as a support channel can indeed make a difference in resolution time.

Technical Support: Customers can visually demonstrate technical issues, error messages or unexpected system behavior, leading to faster solutions.
Customer Onboarding: Walk customers through product features and functionalities efficiently.
Damaged product: a customer can show an issue with their product using video instead of describing it in a long email.

While specific numbers depend on your industry and use case, analysis ran on our customer case show self-service video calls can significantly improve:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) by offering an alternative resolution path. We saw this metric increasing up to 16% when video was implemented in specific use cases.
Average resolution time can drop up to 46% thanks when customers are given a clearer way to describe their issue, such as audio and video.

Video calls can be added into your Zendesk Flow builder using API call, and the whole configuration can be basically summarized as below:

Create or amend an existing Flow Builder configuration

Open a bot on your Zendesk Admin Panel, then create a new answer using Zendesk's Flow Builder. If you're not sure how to locate your list of bots, here you find a useful guide from Zendesk.
It's up to you how you would like to flow to start. We suggest giving the customer the option to start a video call as a first step, then you can inform them on how this works (they don't need to install third party apps or switch the experience from their phone).
Collect customer information (name and email) for follow-up purposes. You can achieve so by adding a new step into the Flow named 'Ask for details'.

Integrating SnapCall Services:

Now that you have client information and they are aware of how SnapCall video calls works, add a new step on the Flow Builder: 'Make an API Call'.

Configure the API call as specified below:

Name and description can be set up as you prefer. We suggest calling this 'SnapCall API Call'.

Request method should be set up as: POST

Type the following Endpoint URL: https://api.snapcall.io/v2/companies/XXXX/streams
Replace the 'X' with your company ID, which you can obtain by contacting SnapCall Support Team

Add the following body into the API Call:

{ "name": "Call with {{name}} (chatbot)", "context":{"externalId":"","externalIdLink":""},"origin":"zendesk", "short_url": true, "type": "instant"}

After setting up the body of your call, you will be asked to select a Connection to securely send this API request to SnapCall. You will have to create one specifically for SnapCall, so we recommend dupllicating the tab you're working on (we will get back to the Flow Builder later), look for 'Connections' on the search bar located on the left side of the screen, head to the option which should appear just below and click on the blue button 'Create connection'.

C- Set up your Connection

On the page just next to it, you will need to define the following parameters of the connection:

The name of your connection is up to your preferences, we suggest using 'SnapCall'.

The type of connection should be 'Bearer token'

Place your SnapCall token inside the dedicate field. If you don't have this, contact SnapCall support team.

Lastly, the URL of the connection should be 'api.snapcall.io'.

Once done, save changes and head back to the previous tab, where the Flow builder configuration is open.
Now that you have a connection, select that from the drop down menu on the right side of the screen and click on the button 'Make API Call'.

Store video call dynamic fields and finalize your configuration

If all went well, you should be redirected into the screen below

From here, save the variable 'token'. This is the dynamic identifier for each videocall, which would allow you to give a unique call url to each client that wants to contact support. We're done with the API Call configuration!
Now let's give the call link to the customer, in order to do so let's add the 'Transfer to an agent' step just below the 'API call successful' step. This step will allow us to take advantage of the Zendesk routing engine, plus will allow us to send a message to the customer.
Inside the message let's write the following:

Thank you. You are now invited to join the call

%[Join the call](https://stream.snapcall.io/index.html?room={{token}})

The syntax %[]() will allow you to place the link inside a button, which improves a bit the overall experience given to the customer. Inside the [] parenthesis you can add the text displayed in the button.

Your configuration is now done, you can Publish changes of the bot and test the whole configuration on your bot.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact SnapCall support at support@snapcall.io