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Notifying end users of legal terms in Zendesk's web-based widgets

TobyH Howard
Suite Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus

Some jurisdictions may require that you provide notice to end users of how their information is shared with third parties, including Zendesk. Although a published privacy policy is helpful, many customers have implemented additional notices and/or consents. Zendesk offers several options to enable you to achieve your compliance goals.

Zendesk offers native functionality to disclose legal terms to your end users directly within the messaging user experience. You can seamlessly incorporate a link to your privacy notice, which will be seamlessly surfaced to customers at the start of a messaging conversation.

You can also custom-configure web-based conversational widgets – Web Widget, Web Widget (Classic), and Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger – to inform your customers of a privacy notice.

This article discusses the following methods for informing customers of information at the beginning of a chat:

Adding a privacy notice

You can add a privacy notice to a messaging Web Widget. The privacy notice can be included as part of the initial widget configuration process or added to an existing widget.

When added, the text “This chat is recorded using a cloud service.” appears at the top of the messaging widget:

If you’ve published your own privacy documentation, you can also include a link to it as part of the privacy notice. This adds the text “This chat is recorded using a cloud service and is subject to the terms of our Privacy Notice.” to the top of the messaging widget:

To add a privacy notice to a messaging widget

  1. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Messaging and social > Messaging.
  2. Click the name of the messaging widget you want to update.
  3. Expand the Basics tab and scroll down to the Privacy notice section.

  4. Select Add privacy notice.
  5. Enter a link to your own privacy notice (optional).
  6. Click Save.

You can remove the privacy notice by deselecting the Add privacy notice setting.

Adding a cookie banner

One option is for a customer to add a banner to their website, as is done in Europe for cookie banners, that hides or controls access to the widget. For example, some customers have a popup stating the following:
  • “This website uses cookies…”

    as well as

  • “...we share information about your use of our site with analytics partners according to our Privacy Policy.”

The pop-up can be configured to hide the widget until acknowledged.

If you want the cookie banner to support a “no” option, where the widget will not appear if the customer does not agree to the consent language, you can achieve this via cookie consent technology.

Relying on Zendesk branding

By default, the Zendesk widgets include the Zendesk branding. While many customers choose to remove this logo to “white label” the widget if allowed on their account, leaving it in place signals to the end user that the widget experience is powered by a third party.

Including a notice in an initial greeting

In Web Widget, you can:

  • Update the default message (the first message sent by Web Widget) to describe your privacy policy. This way, if the user does not proceed with a chat, no transcript will be recorded.
In Web Widget (Classic), you can:
In Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger, you can code your widget to:

Creating an AI agent with options for refusing consent (legacy AI agents and Web Widget only)

You can use bot builder to create an AI agent that informs all visitors of the privacy policy terms. If the user does not consent to this, you should configure bot builder to not transfer their conversation to an agent (after which a transcript is stored).

Admins can put in a message prior to the transfer step to let end users know they will be transferred to an agent and let them know of your privacy policy terms.

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