Email Connect

Get more out of email with LivePerson's Email Connect, a single platform to manage email and all customer communications
  • Messaging

LivePerson would like to inform you of the official end of life schedule for the Email Connect channel within LivePerson’s Conversational Cloud platform.

The end of support date for LivePerson’s Email Connect channel was Feb 1st 2024. The channel will be no longer be available as of July 2024. LivePerson are committed to working with you to offer alternative solutions to help you deflect email traffic towards popular messaging channels such as Web, In App Messaging and WhatsApp. Please contact your account team for more information.

With Email Connect, brands can manage, analyze and respond to emails from the same command center that powers conversations on the world’s most popular messaging channels.

Brands can easily manage email conversations alongside conversations in messaging channels like Apple Messages for Business, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Web Messaging, and Google RBM, eliminating the need to switch between tools to respond to emails.

Email Connect utilizes the powerful features available with other messaging channels, including support for bots powered by the Conversation Orchestrator, predefined content, reporting, and Dynamic Capacity.

Why brands should use Email Connect

Increase agent efficiency through a better email management tool

Email Connect increases agent efficiency by unifying operations so that agents can manage all messaging conversations, including email conversations, within the Conversational Cloud instead of using a separate platform for handling consumer emails.

Single interface for all messaging

Agents handle emails in the same easy-to-use Conversational Cloud interface they use for all other messaging conversations, meaning the same set of agents can support email while they simultaneously support other messaging channels.

Use bots and automation for emails

Email Connect is fully compatible with LivePerson-powered bots and AI, allowing brands to create email auto-responses or AI-powered responses based on the content of emails.

Simple email replies using predefined content

Email Connect has access to the same predefined content tools that are available across other messaging channels. Agents can drop in predefined email text to provide polish to every email response.

Rich Conversation capabilities

Send and receive email attachments using Email Connect making emailing a more visual experience, increasing communication efficiency, and reducing time to resolution. Attachments include images, pdf and Microsoft Word, and Excel documents. This may require feature enablement by LivePerson - see “Email Connect Setup” below.

Easy setup & onboarding

Brands can set up Email Connect in minutes by connecting to a company email address and uploading simple design elements, such as a header and footer (no tagging is required). Once the email address is set up, test the connection and then begin using Email Connect. Note that passwords are hidden and all your email credentials will be fully encrypted so that only you have access to them.

For Gmail based integrations

Since May 30th 2022, Google has sunset "less secure apps". If you have a Gmail integration for testing purposes etc. it will have stopped working if you did not migrate to "app passwords". The Email Connect team is work with LP Support to disable any Email Connect inbox configurations which are currently failing due to this upgrade procedure not being executed.

To ensure your account continues to work please follow the above and update the password in the Email Connector onboarding app. If you no longer require synchronization between Conversation Cloud and your Gmail inbox please action accordingly.

Email Connect Setup

Email Connect is not yet compatible with Microsoft on-premise.

To set up Email Connect, your account must have Messaging and Liveperson Functions enabled.

Step 1: Connect your email in the Conversational Cloud

There are two ways to launch Email Connect set up page:

Option 1.) Email Connect Setup via Data Sources.

Login to the Conversational Cloud and click the Campaign Builder icon located in the left navigation bar. Click on Data Sources in the Campaign Builder footnote.

Click the Connect button in the Email Connect tile.

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Option 2.) Email Connect Setup via Conversational Cloud Applications

Login to the Conversational Cloud and click the Quick launch menu at the bottom left of your screen. Click Email Connect.

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Step 2: Provide your email credentials to set up your email

Prerequisites to setting up your email

The email address must be configured as below:

  • IMAP must be enabled.
  • Multi-factor authentication must be disabled. “Less secure apps” must be enabled for Gmail accounts.
  • Standard IMAP settings: IMAP, port 993, SSL enabled.
  • Standard SMTP settings: SMTP, port 587, SSL disabled.

Follow the instructions on the screen to save your email configuration details.

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Step 3: Save email configuration and skill settings

Click Test Connection and then click Save.

Step 4 Start receiving and responding to emails in the Conversational Cloud

You can test your setup by sending an email from your email account to the email address you connected to in the Conversational Cloud. When the message shows up in the Agent Workspace, you can respond like an agent and see the response in the sender’s email account.

Email Connect service will wait for 10 minutes before start polling emails from Brand’s configured email address. It may take up to 10 minutes for brand to see the first email in the Conversational Cloud.

Step 5: Setup for file attachments (optional)

Email Connect uses Agent and Consumer File Sharing feature and supports these file types - JPEG, JPG, PNG, GIF, PDF, DOCx, XLSx, and PPTx.

To enable file attachments, please contact your LivePerson account team.

Once you have received a response that this step is complete, you will need to change the following settings in the Conversational Cloud.

Log into the Conversational Cloud account as Administrator to enable the following configuration:

  • Select the 'Profiles' tab from the Users module
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Turn on the following settings for Agent and Agent Manager Profiles:

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Configure Auto-Response Text

Step 6 Add custom text in your preferred language

This custom text will be used as an auto-response to consumer email when the same consumer has an existing open conversation in the Conversational Cloud. You can use any language of your choice. The maximum number of characters limit is 1000.

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Configure Email Header and Footer (Optional)

Prerequisites to setting up HTML header and footer

Please see the table at the bottom of the article for a list of allowed HTML elements and attributes. Every header and footer provided to Email Connect during the onboarding process is subjected to a security check. Deviating from this list could yield HTML that might be rejected by the Email Connect Setup.

Step 7: Download example HTML header and footer

Click on the Download HTML example which will download a .Zip file containing 3 Files: READ ME - How to create header and footer.pdf, EmailConnect_Header_Template.html, EmailConnect_Footer_Template.html.

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Step 8: Upload HTML header

Click Upload and select your custom .html header file.

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Step 9: Upload HTML footer

Click Upload and select your custom .html footer file.

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Step 10: Save Email Header and Footer

Re-enter the password for your email, click Test Connection, and click Save.

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Multiple email addresses

Brands can add an unlimited number of email addresses to Conversational Cloud and even route each email address to a different skill. For example, you can route info@, support@, and sales@ to different skills, allowing specialized bots and agents to handle your email interactions.

Reporting

Agent Effectiveness reports are available for all email conversations to brand administrators and agent managers.

Step 11: Open the Analytics Builder

Login to the Conversational Cloud and click the Conversational Cloud Applications menu at the bottom left of your screen. Click on Analytics Builder.

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Step 12: Open Advanced Messaging Dashboard

Click on RunDashboard at the bottom left of the page.

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Open Agent Effectiveness| Agent Analysis Report tab and select Email in the Source filter in the left panel.

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Attributes and elements allowed as part of HTML

ElementsAttributesNotes
HTMLn\aRequired, top-most element
bodybgcolor, width, styleRequired, placed within the HTML element
tablealign, bgcolor, cellpadding, cellspacing, border, height, width, style, color, classUseful for creating a table in HTML that most email clients honor
trn\aUsed to define a row in a table
tdstyleUsed to define a column in a table
bn\abold
in\aitalic
centern\acenters text in HTML
divstylecreates a division of sections within HTML
ahref, targetcreates an anchor tag for HTML links
imgsrc, width, height, alt, borderCreates an image within HTML (usually placed within a tag
fontfacespecifies the font family

Missing Something?

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