Working with canned responses

Canned responses are pre-defined bits of text that are frequently used when communicating with customers. Support engineers usually define greetings and answers to frequently asked questions as canned responses in order to shorten the time needed to satisfy the customer.

A canned response consists of a tag name and the response text. The tag name allows you to quickly insert the response to your chat message.

Support chat allows you to define canned responses of two types. The types of canned responses determine their availability to users:

  • public canned responses available for all support engineers registered in the system
  • personal canned responses created by, and available only for a particular user

Creating canned responses

The way you create canned responses depends on the type that you want to create.

Creating public canned responses

Public canned responses are available for any user who is entitled to use support chat. To define public canned responses, you must have a modify permission for Chat.

  1. Open the Chat application and select the Canned responses tab.
  2. Click New canned response.
  3. Type a Tag name.
    • For example: greeting 1
  4. Type the Canned response text.
    • For example: Hello, how can I help you?
  5. Click Save.

The system saves the canned response to the database. Users can now use the response in their support chat messages. See  Inserting canned responses into chat messages.

Creating personal canned responses

When you create a personal canned response, it is available to use only by you. Other people cannot see or use the response. You can create personal canned responses if you have the Enter support permission for Chat and only if support chat is enabled in settings.

  1. Click Support chat in the top header.
  2. Click Settings, then click My canned responses.
  3. Click New canned response.
  4. Type a Tag name.
    • For example: greeting 1
  5. Type the Canned response text.
    • For example: Hello, how can I help you?
  6. Click Save.

The system saves the canned response to the database. You can now use the response in your support chat messages. See Inserting canned responses into chat messages.

Inserting canned responses into chat messages

  1. While in the live chat window, click Canned responses.
  2. Click the response you want to insert.

To insert a canned response using the keyboard, type “#” into the message text box. Then start typing a tag name or use keyboard arrows to select a response. Press Enter to insert the selected response.

Using macros in canned responses

Support chat allows inserting Macro expressions into canned responses. Entered macro expressions are resolved upon opening the support room window. Supported are the standard macro types, including custom macros.