Articles - Zoho SalesIQ

Articles

What are Articles?

Articles are a collection of self-service materials that you draft inside your SalesIQ dashboard and share with customers on the chat window during a conversation. These articles will also be available for access inside the live chat window in the ' Help ' tab. You can categorize the articles and help visitors find answers to their questions. Customers can click on the category and choose a topic from the list, which further eases the difficulty of browsing through all the articles in search of one.

The Articles module in SalesIQ is now integrated with Zoho Writer to enhance the writing experience. This will allow you to use a wide range of rich formatting tools to write and edit your articles.

Note: If you are already using articles, you need to migrate them to use this feature.

Benefits:

  1. Articles are the most expandable form of help that you can offer to visitors who visit your website. A perfectly drafted article can help a multitude of visitors at once - a herculean task for any operator in your organization.
  2. These articles also save visitors the trouble of navigating from one screen to another in search of help.
  3. Your operators can share articles during customer conversations instead of typing out the same response every time, which can be monotonous and time-consuming. This way, they can focus on more important and crucial queries. Thus, articles save a lot of time and effort.
  4. The more the number of articles, the more powerful your AI Bot will be. When you have a sturdy article collection, the functioning of your AI Bot becomes more effective and smooth - the bot gets trained to answer any question that comes from the visitor.
How to enable the Knowledge base in the chat window (Self-service)?
To enable self-service for your visitors and allow them to find solutions to their problems using your articles and FAQs, check out How to enable a Knowledge Base in your visitor chat window guide.

How to add a new article?

To add a new article,

  1. Inside the SalesIQ dashboard, navigate to  Resources > Articles.
  2. Click on  Add, and select  Compose .

  1. Give your article a title and click  Save .
  2. The new editor powered by Zoho Writer will open, and you can start drafting your article.

Roles and Permissions:

Operator Type

Roles/Permissions

Administrator

Can create and edit articles associated with all departments

Supervisor

Can create and edit articles in the departments they are associated to

Associate

Can only view articles in the departments they are associated to


Article Configuration:

Once your article is drafted completely, you can set the configuration for each article.


  1. Reference: Refer to other language variants of the same article for accurate composing.
  2. Language variant: Select the language variant of the current article. See multilingual support for details.
  3. Versions: View the version history of the current article. If you have already published the article, you can view the published version for reference. An article can have both a published version and a draft version simultaneously. Any changes made to the published version will be saved as a draft. Once the draft is published, the draft version is removed. Editing the newly published version will create another draft.
  4. Departments : Associate this article to a department.
  5. Category : Categorize your articles to keep your articles organized and make it easier to find the required articles from the self-service knowledge base.
  6. Channels : Select the channels in which this article should be visible in the self-service knowledge base.
  7. Make this article public : When enabled, this article will be displayed in the visitor chat window (if enabled).

How do I categorize my articles?

To organize your resources by categorizing them, check out How to categorize your resources. 

Assigning categories

To place the article that you are editing in a specific category,

  1. Select the parent category under which you want to place the article.

  1. To place this article under a sub-category, click on  Choose sub-category option.

  1. To further categorize this article in a sub-category, click on the  Choose sub-category option once again and select the sub-category. Now you have placed the article under the 3rd lever sub-category.

Saving and Publishing

  1. Once all of the settings are configured, click  Save .
  2. Finally, you can either choose to save the article as a draft or publish it directly on the website. 
  1. If you are still in the process of updating your content and don’t want to display it to customers yet, then use the  Save option.
  2. If you want to make the article available to visitors on the chat window, then you can directly click on  Publish .

How to edit/delete an article?

Editing an article:

To edit an article,

  1. Navigate to  Resources -> Articles.
  2. In the Articles dashboard, click on the article that you want to edit and then click on  Edit .
  3. You can make changes to the message, the departments associated, or the category of the article.
  4. You can also click on  Preview to get an idea of what the article will look like.
  5. Click  Save as Draft / Publish .


Note:  When you edit and save an existing article as a draft, the original version of that article will be displayed in the article tab of the chat window until the new version of the article is published.

Articles support in channels

Articles can be shared by operators to assist chats originating from channels as well.
  1. In case of chats from integrated channels like Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Telegram, LINE etc., articles can be shared in the usual manner by operators.

  1. The shared articles will be displayed to the visitors in the form of URL links.

  1. Visitors can open the link to display the shared article on a webpage.


Multi-lingual Support for Resources

Multi-lingual support brings you the ability to manage and provide support to your customers' queries in the language of their choice. You can easily create and manage resources in multiple languages for your articles and FAQs, helping you to provide a more personalized service to your global customers.