Improved emoji support for SnapEngage clients and visitors

We’re excited to announce that we recently added expanded emoji support to our live chat interface on both the client and visitor sides. So, now, whether you’re chatting with your team or chatting with your website visitors, you can say what you want to say with emojis. The new release brings the following enhancements:

Improved image library

We’ve added an expansive library of commonly (and not-so-commonly) used emojis so every emotion, symbol and reaction is at your fingertips. From animals to food to sports, whatever you have to say, you can now say with an emoji!

Easier search and selection

Intuitive and accessible search functions in the Chat Portal make finding your desired emoji easy and convenient. Use simple keyboard shortcuts or search our categorized library of emojis right in the message bar.

Visitor-friendly

All of the emojis that we’ve made available to agents in the SnapEngage Chat Portal will be displayed in the visitor chat window.

So, all of this emoji work got us thinking… How did these seemingly silly little symbols become important enough to make it into our product roadmap, span a couple sprints with our dev team, and warrant a big announcement? Well, we went searching…

The Evolution of Emoticons and Emojis

The terms emoticon and emoji are often interchanged, but there is actually a distinct difference between the two. Emoticons were the predecessors to emojis, referring only to pictorial representations of facial expressions using punctuation marks, numbers and letters. Some of us still use these…

(^.^)    {^_^}     ¯\_(ツ)_/¯     

Emojis then came along and blew our minds, unleashing the ability to carry on entire conversations using only images. Although still used as a form of pictorial representation, emojis span all genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, animals, and beyond. The rise of popularity in emoji usage was born out of the mass adoption of text message communications on mobile phones, as most of us are all too familiar with.

And here we are today. Emojis have become a mainstream standard, making their way into virtually every communication technology platform out there, including SnapEngage. 

Do emojis really make happier customers?

But in the end, why spend time and resources on something so simple as an emoji? Emojis play a more important role in modern communication, particularly when it comes to customer experience. Happy customers are cultivated through positive brand experiences, and those interactions (between customers and brands) often involve one-to-one communication, whether in-person, over the phone or through email or live chat.

With text-based communications, you lose the social cues that come from body language, facial expressions and vocal inflections, which can sometimes lead to messages getting lost in translation. This is particularly common with live chat, where the stressed importance of quick response time can result in choppy sentence structure with loose grammar. For those not accustomed to chat-style communication, these shortened messages can be perceived as rude or unprofessional.

A strategically-placed emoji can single-handedly change the tone of a conversation. Take, for example, the following interaction. Without the emoji, the agent’s response sounds curt and almost a little aggravated. The smiley face emoji instantly adds a light-heartedness that conveys the agent’s intention to impress the customer with his/her speed to resolution.

Emojis establish a level of familiarity that can go a long way towards adding a human touch to otherwise tone-less communications.

A word of caution though: Be mindful of your overall brand voice, and be sure to always err on the side of conservatism when using and selecting emojis in your conversations with customers and prospects.