Category Archives: Terminology

Zingtree Pricing: How Agent Credits and Session Credits Work

September 14, 2017 | Categories: For Beginners, Terminology | by Bill Zing

At Zingtree, not only do we make it easy to build powerful interactive troubleshooters, but we also make it affordable and scalable. Our credits-based pricing system has some tremendous benefits:

  • You only pay for what you use.
  • Scaling up and down requires no effort on your part.
  • You don’t need to provision for agents or end users. Your usage is calculated automatically.

Our pricing uses two types of credits: Agent Credits (for employees and internal use) and Session Credits (for customers and end-users). Let’s take a look at how these credits function.

How Do Agent Credits Work?

Agent Credits are charged when the employees inside your organization use your decision trees. This applies to call centers, live support teams, and internal-only troubleshooters and process guides.

One Agent Credit equals one person’s unlimited use of Zingtree for a 24 hour period.

Here’s an example scenario:

You’re a small business with 10 employees using your decision trees regularly throughout their work day. The employees are all full-time working about 22 days per month. You’d need 10 x 22 = 220 Agent Credits per month.

An Agent Credit is counted when a person uses a tree in your account within a 24-hour period, no matter how many times they may click. Your plan provides a specified number of Agent Credits each month. If you go over the allotment, you are charged for extra credits at month’s end, or you have the option to purchase pre-paid discount Agent Credits to supplement the amount of credits provisioned in your Plan.

How Do Session Credits Work?

Alternatively, Session Credits are used when people outside of your business (end-users) are using your decision trees; customers in search of support, troubleshooting, etc.

When an individual views your tree and clicks at least one button, a single session credit will be counted. Once a decision tree session begins, the end-user can click as many times as they please and it will still just cost one session credit. Your plan provides a specified number of Session Credits each month. If you go over the allotment, you are charged for extra credits at month’s end, or you have the option to purchase pre-paid discount Session Credits to supplement the amount of credits provisioned in your Plan.

The pre-paid discount credits have a 10-year expiration and work like a bank account. The credits provisioned in your Plan are counted first. Then the prepaid credits are counted after the Plan credits are used.

See the volume discount levels below for each credit category:

Pre-Paid Session Pricing

100 to 999 sessions $0.10 per session
1000 to 2499 sessions $0.09 per session
2500 to 4999 sessions $0.08 per session
5000 to 9999 sessions $0.07 per session
10000 to 24999 sessions $0.06 per session
25000 to 100000 sessions $0.05 per session

Pre-Paid Agent Credit Pricing

100 to 999 credits $0.50 per agent per day
1000 to 2499 credits $0.45 per agent per day
2500 to 4999 credits $0.40 per agent per day
5000 to 9999 credits $0.35 per agent per day
10000 to 24999 credits $0.30 per agent per day
25000 to 100000 credits $0.25 per agent per day

Important Note: Our pricing plans include a fixed number of credits each month. If you go over your allotment, you are charged a per-credit rate, depending on your plan. You can also buy both agent and session credits in bulk by prepaying for blocks of credits. Either way, as long as you have a valid payment option in place, we will never shut you down if you go over your credit allotment.

We can also offer a fixed price custom plan if required, but most of our customers save money using the credits system. Our flexible pricing model means that you only pay for what you use.

Any questions on pricing? Feel free to contact us.

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Adding Authors and Granting Permissions for Your Decision Trees

September 23, 2016 | Categories: How To, Product Updates, Terminology | by Bill Zing

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In this quick article, we explain how Zingtree handles administrative rights and access rules for organizations that have many decision tree authors.

Let’s break things down…

The Three Types of Authors

In Zingtree, anyone who can create and manage trees or invite others to join is an Author. An author can be one of the following:

  • Billing Administrator: This one individual can make purchases, change plans, and see credit usage and view previous transactions. They can also transfer this role to another person.
  • Super User: This one person can do everything an Author can do, and can also delete Authors, or make themselves an administrator on any tree. The Super User can transfer this role to another person.
  • Author: Any organization can have multiple Authors. They can create and edit trees, and invite other Authors to the organization.

Collaborator Roles

An Author who is helping to build a tree is a Collaborator on that tree. Collaborators can have one of these permissions on any given tree:

  • Administrator: Can invite others, edit the tree, and change the permissions of any other Author on a tree.
  • Editor: Can edit the tree, but cannot delete it or change the permissions of any Author.
  • View-only: Can view and examine the tree, but cannot edit it or manage Collaborators.

In order to be a Collaborator, you must first be added as an Author.

Adding Authors

Anyone who is an author can add another author. Here’s how:

  1. Go to Account > My Authors.
  2. Click Add an Author.
  3. Enter the email address for the author.

The new author receives an invitation via email to sign up for Zingtree. If the author already has a Zingtree account, they are automatically added to the organization.

You can see all the Authors for your organization under Account > My Authors.

My Authors view

Deleting Authors

Only the Super User for your organization can delete an Author.  You cannot delete a Super User or a Billing Administrator.

To delete an Author:

  1. Go to Account > My Authors.
  2. Click the Details button next to the Author. The Author Details view appears.
  3. Click the Remove button for the Author.  If there is no Remove button, then the author cannot be deleted by you.

Assigning a Collaborator to a Tree

If you are an administrator of a tree, you can give other collaborators rights to administrate, edit or view the tree. Here’s how:

  1. Go to My Trees, and select a tree.
  2. Click Add/Manage Collaborators.
  3. Click Add Collaborator.
  4. Pick an Author from the list.
  5. Select the rights to assign (Administrator, Editor or View-only.)
  6. Click Add Collaborator.

See What Others are Working on

When you go to the My Trees tool, you’ll see an option to select an author. This shows you all of the decision trees this person is collaborating on. You can also choose “(all trees)” from the Author selector, which will show you every tree in your organization, including what rights YOU have.

My Trees view

If you’d like access to a tree, click on the Rights icon next to that tree. If you are the Super User, you’ll get immediate Administrator rights on that tree — otherwise, a request will be emailed to the administrators of that tree that you’d like access. You can also include a custom message when requesting access.

Any questions? Please feel free to reach out to us at any time!

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Terminology: Understanding Your Decision Trees Pt. 4

May 19, 2016 | Categories: For Beginners, Terminology | by Bill Zing

Understanding how our Zingtree interactive decision trees work on a fundamental level can help you generate more effective trees to fit your needs. If you’re new, or just curious, our glossary of basic terms and phrases will help you understand how Zingtree works.

A/B Testing

Split testing different messages, offers and more is critical to any online sales system (including contact centers), and can be incredibly helpful for other departments and teams (including marketing). We developed a way to use Scoring Nodes in Zingtree to perform powerful A/B testing that helps you optimize your trees continuously.

Agent Portal

The Zingtree Agent Portal is a one-stop location for your Contact Center agents to access all of the customized, interactive support scripts in your organization. From the Portal, support agents can also see script and communication histories, send direct feedback based on specific decision trees / nodes, and more.

Breadcrumbs

In the same family as our History feature, Breadcrumbs show the sequence of node titles that appeared throughout the entire exploration of the decision tree. With both options, you can simply click on a link and it will lead you back to any previous node.

Exporting

We understand that our users want complete control of the input and output of information in their decision trees. For this reason, we allowed easy exporting directly from your account so that you can save decision trees as an XML file on your computer. Just go to My Trees and select the tree, then More Tools, then Export to File.

History

The small, but mighty History feature allows you to see every single step you, or your end-user, took while navigating through your decision tree. This is incredibly helpful for any type of Zingtree user to see an overview of the journey itself. 

Integrations

We built Zingtree to play nicely with other useful tools to allow you to be as flexible as possible with your decision trees, as well as the information that is collected from them. You can check out all of our apps, plugins and integrations from the Zingtree Integrations page on our website, including: Slack, WordPress, Salesforce, Freshdesk, Zopim and more.

IP Filtering

Using CIDR notation, Zingtree allows you to add a series of IP addresses as restricted “white lists” for security purposes. This means that any request coming from outside the range you designate will be denied access to your decision tree. If you opt-out of restricting access, anyone can easily view your tree. 

Webhooks

Zingtree’s data exchange feature makes use of Webhooks with JSON formatted data to to send and receive certain data from your decision trees.

Once you add the webhook you want to your organization’s apps and include a call to the webhook in a node within your decision tree, the call is executed when that node is visited. Any JSON variables that are returned by the call automatically become Zingtree variables.

Stay tuned for Part 5 of our Terminology series and check out previous posts right here. If you have any questions, please contact the team!

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Zingtree Terminology: Understanding Your Decision Trees Pt. 3

February 18, 2016 | Categories: For Beginners, Terminology | by Bill Zing

Understanding how our Zingtree interactive decision trees work on a fundamental level can help you generate more effective trees to fit your needs. If you’re new, or just curious, our glossary of basic terms and phrases will help you understand how Zingtree works.

Custom CSS

Customizing your decision trees as much as possible can unify the experience for your customers as an extension of your brand. For this reason, we made it easy to personalize the look and feel with custom CSS! You can upload a custom CSS file, or download our simple CSS file for Zingtree styling to modify to your liking, to customize colors, node styles, icons and more.

Data Entry Fields

Data entry fields allow you to collect information directly from your customers as they are going through your decision tree, in the form of text, list boxes, check boxes, or radio buttons. Then, it allows you to view this data or export it into any system you may need (such as CRMs). Form data can also be included dynamically, meaning that, for example, you could collect a user’s name in one node, and then have that name appear later in the decision tree.

Try the Form Fields and Data Entry Demo tree from the gallery to view a live example.

Designer Tool

We know it’s important to make the process of building your decision trees as simple as it is for your users to navigate through them. The Designer tool is just one of the ways we enable you to create – it allows you to draw out your decision tree in a totally visual way, so you can easily view each node along with their connections.

Persistent Buttons

As its name implies, a persistent button is one that remains constant. In the case of your Zingtrees, a persistent button stays at the bottom of the decision tree during the entire session, and allows your users to jump directly to specific nodes. For instance, these buttons could display options like “Start Over” or “Submit Ticket.”

Thumbnail Overview

To ensure that your decision trees are structured to your liking, we offer a few different ways to see a preview of your entire tree. Thumbnail Overview is an easy way to take a quick glance at all of your nodes, providing helpful thumbnail images of each node in its current state for reference as you made edits.

Wizard Tool

The Wizard tool is another way to build decision trees, this time in a step-by-step process. With the Wizard, you’ll fill out simple forms to generate your decision tree; you provide the questions and answers that your customers will see in the tree, and the system will prompt you to for more information as you continue along through each path.

 

Stay tuned for Part 4 of our Zingtree Terminology series coming soon, and check out previous posts right here. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact the team!

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Zingtree Terminology: Understanding Your Decision Trees Pt. 2

December 15, 2015 | Categories: For Beginners, Terminology | by Bill Zing

Understanding how our Zingtree interactive decision trees work on a fundamental level can help you generate more effective trees to fit your needs. If you’re new to Zingtree, or just have a curious mind, our glossary of basic terms will help you understand how our system works.

Analytics

Zingtree Analytics includes data on your custom decision trees’ outcomes, traffic, location breakdowns and more. You’ll get detailed insights into how your trees are being used to guide product, service and process optimizations.

Authors

Authors are the individuals that have created a Zingtree decision tree, along with those who have access to view and edit. You can also refer to your Authors as “collaborators.” With various Zingtree plans, you can add anywhere from 1 to 50 different Authors to contribute to and collaborate on your decision trees; ideal for call centers and other companies with large teams.

End-User Sessions

In the digital world, an end-user is simply the person who is using your product and navigating through your decision tree. An end-user session refers to a person outside your company (not an employee or call center agent) interacting with your tree.

Zingtree’s pricing for support, troubleshooting, and other external applications works by counting these end-user sessions, meaning that you only get charged when a person clicks a button in your tree. Whether they use one click or 100, the cost remains the same.

Scoring

Zingtree’s Scoring feature allows you to assign a numeric value to each answered question, along with actions based on the running total score. Scoring with an Evaluation tree is ideal for generating interactive online tests, quizzes, assessments, training simulations and more.

As the user goes through your decision tree, Zingtree keeps a running total of the score values of all the clicked buttons. When you’re ready to act upon the total score, create a new “Score Branch Node,” where you can specify a range of score values to redirect to specific nodes.

Scripts

Much like in learning your lines for a play, a script is used as a guide for customer service agents to follow along with. Scripts are written in the company’s tone of voice, and adhere’s to its personalized standards, making it easier for agents to portray the correct information and provide help to the customers.

Zingtree offers a powerful call center agent scripting solution that lets you quickly create and deploy custom scripts, and then analyze them per session and view performance summaries.

Snapshots

Snapshots are a handy feature within Zingtree that collects and data that has changed from one decision tree version to another. With Snapshots, you can recover old versions of your trees, view your teammates’ edits, and compare revisions to the current tree you’re working on, and more.

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Snapshots are very helpful when creating trees with multiple revisions or working with a team. To find this tool, select More Tools, then Snapshots in your Zingtree account.

Tagging

Tagging lets you add a list of category tags to both nodes and trees, making it easier to organize nodes in large trees, as well as organize large libraries of trees.

If you’re working from your nodes and searching for a specific type, you can add one or more tags to each node, then use the Overview to show only those nodes that include a certain tag. You can also add one or more tags to each tree from the My Trees page, allowing you filter your list of trees based upon those tags.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of our Zingtree Terminology series coming soon, and check out Part 1 right here. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact the team!

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Zingtree Terminology: Understanding Your Decision Trees Pt. 1

November 13, 2015 | Categories: For Beginners, How To, Terminology | by Bill Zing

Behind every great Zingtree decision tree is a powerfully built system. Understanding how these interactive decision trees work on a more fundamental level can help you to generate more effective, better customized trees to fit your needs. If you’re new to Zingtree, this glossary of basic terms will help you understand how our system works.

Buttons

These are the clickable actions an end-user takes when interacting with a tree. You can see examples of buttons below in “buttons style” and “panels style”.

Buttons Style

Buttons are the traditional display method of your decision trees’ interface. With this design, your customers will see answer options shown as clickable buttons. Each individual button answer will lead to a separate path respectively, depending on your customer’s selection.

Link Nodes

Following up the Q&A nodes for most-utilized are Link Nodes, which can allow your customer to click through to another web page, such as a scheduling system, how-to video and more. The action of opening this new page is tracked automatically in your Zingtree Reporting for that specific tree.

Nodes

A node is a page an end-user sees while using your tree, or an action that occurs.  Question Nodes and Answer Nodes show information, and give choices where to go next. Other kinds of nodes perform actions like sending an email, linking to a web page, opening another tree, or acting upon a session score.

Panels Style

We developed a second user interface style that you can adopt for your custom decision trees. The Panels style displays the same information as the traditional Button style does, in a fresh way that is optimized for longer answers. Each panel answer will lead to the next step in the path depending on your customer’s choice.

You can try out both Buttons and Panels style in the Zingtree Gallery to see which method is right for you.

Question Nodes, Answer Nodes

Old fashioned Q&A nodes are by far the most popular. As the name implies, Question nodes allow you to ask a question to your customer and provide one or more answer buttons. On the other hand, final Answer nodes propose a solution for your customer and contain no buttons. You can add unlimited nodes and grow your decision trees as big as you want!

Trees

Interactive Decision Trees are why we’re in business. They form the logic and structure of the knowledge you wantto share with others.

Trackable, customizable and dependable, Zingtrees are set up using three basic methods: Wizard, Designer, or right from scratch. After completing and saving your custom interactive decision tree, it can be embedded in your web site, or hosted by us. You can edit, preview and update your Trees whenever you’d like.

Here’s what one of our example trees looks like:

Tree Nodes (Sub-trees)

For larger, more complex projects, Tree Nodes (or sub-trees) come in handy to break down your decision tree in a more digestible way.  Simply put, you can have a button open another tree.

You’ll find that these sub-trees can occur naturally during the planning stages of complex trees; by containing themes in different trees, and later linking them into one final tree using Tree Nodes, you can concentrate freely on one step at a time.

 

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Zingtree Terminology series coming soon. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact the team!

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