Turning on messaging and placing the Web Widget

Switching messaging on and getting the widget onto your site. Twenty minutes, and then the real work starts.

Switching messaging on and getting the widget onto your site. Twenty minutes, and then the real work starts.

Turn it on

1. Open Admin Center, then Channels, then Messaging and social, then Messaging.
2. Add a messaging channel for your brand.
3. Configure the Web Widget: name, colours, greeting.
4. Copy the script Zendesk gives you.
5. Paste it before the closing body tag on every page of your site.
6. Load a page and check the widget appears.

Do this before you make it visible

The widget appearing is the easy half. Four things decide whether it works.

• Who answers, and during which hours.
• What happens outside those hours. An out-of-office response saying when you will reply.
• Routing. Which group receives messaging conversations.
• Capacity. How many conversations an agent holds at once.

Without those, the widget takes messages that nobody is assigned and nobody is watching.

Test on a page you have not looked at

Widgets get blocked by consent banners, ad blockers and content security policies. Load your site in a private window with a normal browser setup and confirm it appears and opens.

Start on part of the site

An allowlist lets you put the widget on your support pages before your whole site. That gives you real conversations at a volume you can handle while you learn what people ask.

See also

• Setting an out-of-office response
• Using an allowlist to control where the widget appears
• Why my customer cannot see the widget
• Giving agents access to messaging channels