The Drop is our monthly update that highlights new features and recent enhancements we’ve made to the platform, so you can easily stay informed on what’s new in Smooch. Here’s what we launched in October.

October was a huge month for Smooch. We released a new capability that we believe will change the game for software makers looking to deliver a more personal and interactive messaging experience for customers. We’ve also updated our SDKs to add image attachment previews for iOS and typing indicators for Android.

What’s new

Start building better experiences with Conversation Extensions

Let’s face it. Conversional UIs can be limiting, especially for complex transactions like completing a purchase, answering a survey, or booking an appointment. Because of technological and design constraints, these types of tasks tend to be tedious for the user – who likes to answer a never ending-list of questions? – or simply impractical within the boundaries of a chat window.

That’s where Conversation Extensions come in.

We’re super excited to introduce this new capability in Smooch. Conversation Extensions give you new real estate on top of the chat window to design more complex and delightful conversational experiences.

Put another way, we’ve just made it easier to do things like order a pizza and choose your own toppings or buy a plane ticket and then select a seat way easier (and more fun!), not just for end-users, but also for you to implement.

Conversation Extensions allow you to combine the best of conversational interfaces (like intimacy, immediacy and context-awareness) with the flexibility and power of a traditional UI. With Conversation Extensions, you’ll be able to create custom interactive experiences based on standard web technologies (HTML, JavaScript and CSS). You’ll have all the freedom and control you need to build something truly exceptional.

For example, using Conversation Extensions, you could build a hotel room reservation workflow that allows users to make a booking without ever leaving the conversation. From selecting a room type, to picking dates and paying for a purchase, Conversation Extensions allow multi-step transactions or tasks to be delivered seamlessly through an intuitive workflow, enhancing the user’s experience and increasing revenue opportunities.

Stay tuned for more info on this new capability soon. In the meantime you can get started with Conversation Extensions here.

Smooch SDK & API updates ⚙

• Image attachment previews: To prevent users from sending photos they really didn’t want to send, we’ve added a confirmation step to our iOS SDK that lets a user preview a photo before sending it from their photo gallery. Get the details here.
• Typing indicators: You can now send typing activities to our Android SDK so that users are aware when an agent is typing. Upgrade to Android SDK 5.3.0 to get this new feature.

Sneak peak 👀

Many businesses would prefer to chat with customers on their own branded channels rather than on popular messaging apps, whether for security reasons or to better control the customer experience. But brands still want their customers to be able to easily reach them anywhere.

What if you could transfer customers from one channel to another – say, from Facebook Messenger to your mobile app – while preserving the conversation history for a seamless user experience? We’re working on this capability right now and will have more details for you next month!