Overview: Say + Gather workflow module (Console)

Console > Workflows > Workflow modules > Overview: Say + Gather workflow module (Console)

This article provides an overview of the Say + Gather workflow module in Console.

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Overview

The Say + Gather workflow module is a tool used for gathering information from customers. With the Say + Gather module, you can prompt a customer for a piece of information (like a phone number, account number, or name) and assign it to a custom variable. You can then use the variable later on in other workflow modules in the workflow.

For example, you could use the Say + Gather module to ask for a customer’s account number. With the account number saved to a variable, you could use it with a Look Up module or a Webhook module to search for the customer’s information in a third-party CRM database like Salesforce.

In the screenshot below, the Say + Gather module is being used to collect an account number that can be used for paying an invoice (an option that can be provided by the Say + Intent module).

In this workflow example, the customer can choose to pay an invoice with a trigger from the Say + Intent module. Then, they’re routed to the Say + Gather module to collect their account number. 

The Say + Gather module can collect information from customers through any of the following channels:

For example, it’s common to use the Say + Gather module to collect an identifying value like a name, address, pin number, email address, invoice number, or business account number. With that data saved in the workflow, it’s then possible to use a module like the Look Up module or the Webhook module to search for data related to that identifying value.

Continue reading this article to learn more about how the Say + Gather module works.

How it works

The Say + Gather module enables you to collect information from your customers. This enables you to build dynamic workflows that are customized and route based on specific information provided by the customer.

When a workflow reaches the Say + Gather module, it asks the customer for a piece of information. You can configure the Say + Gather module to detect a certain type of information, including:

Also, keep in mind that the Say + Gather module gives you the ability to encrypt and/or redact data submitted by the customer. So, for example, if a customer provides their Social Security Number, you can encrypt it so that it's secure from unauthorized access, and you can redact it so that the queue user can’t see it on the interaction feed.

Note: We recommend that you always encrypt and redact sensitive customer data. Best practice is to encrypt and redact everything that you don’t expressly need unencrypted or unredacted.

Once you’ve collected the customer’s data, you have the option to set a variable from the Say + Gather module. For example, if want to ask a customer for their email address to send them an email, you would use two Say + Gather modules:

The Validation and Set Variable sections of the Say + Gather module are where you can do both of these actions: set that you’re detecting an email from the customer and then assign it to the variable customerEmailAddress.


You can then use the variable collected in the Say + Gather module in the Send Email module. This way, you can make dynamic workflows that adapt to customers’ data.

Text to speech

The Say + Gather  module can synthesize speech in 40+ languages and variants. With text to speech, you:

In the example to the right, the Say + Gather module is configured to recite a message (Good day. What is your email address) in Italian with the voice “Female 4” via text-to-speech

Audio files

With phone calls, instead of using text-to-speech, you can opt to have the system play  an audio file for the customer. There are two types of audio files the Say + Gather module can play:

Read more about static audio files and dynamic audio files in the visual breakdown section below.

Visual breakdown

Exterior structure

This is the exterior structure of a Say + Gather module. All modules share this same structure.

Reference the Overview: Workflow modules article to take a deeper dive into each of these components.

Interior structure

Below is the deep dive explanation for each interior area of the Say + Gather module. 

General settings

Phone prompts

The Phone prompt section is where you define the prompts to be used for phone interactions. The fields available to you configure depend on which prompt type you select: Text, Audio, or Dynamic Audio.

A workflow with a webhook retrieving a dynamic audio file to play in a Say + Gather module

For example, in the screenshot to the left, the Webhook module retrieves an audio file via the API Platform based on the inbound phone number. This could be an audio file custom tailored to a specific customer (identified by the inbound phone number). 

The webhook can return a variable or an advanced (soundFileId) value that you can provide to the Say + Gather module.

In the Webhook module, you can create a variable for the sound file you want to use.

You can use the variable from the Webhook module to play the dynamic audio file.

Advanced phone prompt settings

There are several advanced settings available to you for phone prompts in the Say + Gather module.

Messaging prompts

For messaging interactions, the prompts provided by the Say + Gather module are comparably simpler than those for phone interactions. For messaging interactions, you can simply provide text that will be sent to the customer. You can also add multiple prompts that the system will randomly choose (the same way the phone prompts function). Note that whatever is typed into the messaging prompt is exactly what is sent to the customer.

Note: Though the Text prompt appears as a dropdown selector, the only option available is Text.

Buttons

The Buttons section is where you define buttons to appear in web chats. When a customer opens a web chat that’s hooked up to a workflow with a Say + Gather module, the buttons defined in the module are populated for the user (like in the screenshots below).

Buttons configured for Yes / No on a web chat

The buttons configured in the Say + Gather module in the workflow