How the reply to email notification feature works

Did you know that users can reply to a TalkJS email notification and that the message appears back in the chat? It’s a powerful feature we’re super proud of and would like to explain it in detail. As far as we know, TalkJS is the only chat API and SDK provider that supports syncing email replies to chat out of the box.

Here’s an example of how it works. If the user you are chatting with goes offline for whatever reason, an email is automatically triggered and sent to that user with the message you just posted on the chat. The user can then reply to the email, and the message will land back in the chat closing the loop and making sure that the conversation is not lost.

This feature makes for much better user experience because sometimes the users don’t want to fire up their browser, go to a website, and reply from there. Doing it directly from email makes communication a lot more fluent.

For this feature to work, there are a few prerequisites. The user needs to have a role set, and of course, have at least one email address. That user will automatically start receiving email notifications when they are offline. If a user happens to have more than one email address, TalkJS will notify all email addresses on record.

At this point, you may ask yourself, are we spamming users with a tonne of emails? We had that in mind, and set up email notifications so they’re not sent with each message but rather grouped to avoid spamming the user’s inbox.

It’s also good to know that in case a user, inadvertently or on purpose, deletes the content of the notification email and then replies anyway, you can be assured that the message will safely land in the chat.

Alexander Sedimann from Red Thread, a German e-learning startup had a great experience with the reply to email feature:

“The creators and students both love the chat feature and the E-Mail integration that allows them to just answer directly from their mail client.”

— Alexander Seidmann, CEO at Red Thread

To know more about their use case and how they make use of the reply to email feature, take a look at the Red Thread case study.

If you want to set up it up for your TalkJS chat, you should get started with the email notifications docs. Have a question about the feature? Have a chat with one of our developers.