Product Requirements Document for Quick Replies Feature

Objective 🎯

Enable agents to respond faster with consistent, brand-aligned, and context-aware messages by creating and reusing personalized quick replies in the agent console across channels.

• Primary goal: Reduce average handle time (AHT) without sacrificing personalization.

• Secondary goal: Increase first contact resolution (FCR) through accurate, templated guidance.

User stories

• As an agent, I can create a quick reply from scratch or from a sent message so I can reuse it later in similar cases.

• As an agent, I can insert a quick reply with a keyboard shortcut or slash command while composing, to respond faster without leaving the editor.

Key scenarios

1. Create and manage replies

   • Create from composer selection or library modal, add title, body, tags, channel scope, and visibility (Personal or Team).

   • Edit, duplicate, archive, and restore replies with version notes.

2. Insert during live conversation

   • Open quick reply picker via /, Cmd/Ctrl+K, or icon; type-ahead search and tag filters.

   • Auto-fill variables from conversation context (customer profile, ticket fields).

3. Team governance

   • Team leads approve and publish team replies; analytics show usage and performance.

Functional requirements

Non-functional requirements

• Performance: Reply picker opens and returns results within 150 ms for libraries up to 10,000 replies.

• Reliability: Offline-safe creation; local cache with background sync and conflict resolution.

• Security: Role-based access; audit log of create/edit/publish actions; PII redaction in analytics.

Success metrics 📈

User experience and flows

• Empty state: Encourage first reply creation with templates (shipping delay, refund policy, escalation).

• Error states: Variable missing fallback, permission denied, archived reply used in draft.

Data model

• Reply{id, title, body, variables[], tags[], scope: Personal|Team, channels[], language, status: draft|approved|archived, version, ownerId, teamId, createdAt, updatedAt}

• Usage{id, replyId, ticketId, agentId, timestamp, channel, outcomes{csat?, resolved?, handleTime?}}

Technical approach

• Service layer: Quick Replies API with endpoints for CRUD, search, versioning, and analytics aggregation; indexed search on title/tags/body.

• Variable resolver: Pluggable mapping to customer profile and ticket fields; safe fallbacks with syntax {{var|fallback}}.

• Client: Composer plugin providing picker UI, offline cache, and insertion; feature flags for gradual rollout.

Security, privacy, and compliance

• Least-privilege permissions; separation of personal vs team assets; redact PII in analytics payloads.

• Content moderation hooks for prohibited phrases; export and deletion to honor data subject requests.

Milestones and timeline

Risks and mitigations ⚠️

• Risk: Over-reliance leads to robotic tone. Mitigation: Require preview, encourage variables, provide tone guidelines and examples.

• Risk: Search latency with large libraries. Mitigation: Client-side cache, prefix indexing, debounce, and result pagination.

• Risk: Governance gaps for team replies. Mitigation: Approval workflow, audit trail, and ownership rules.

Out of scope

• Generative AI authoring of replies (future consideration).

• Customer-facing knowledge base synchronization.

Open questions

Acceptance criteria

• Agents can save a message as a quick reply in ≤ 2 clicks from the composer.

• Typing / and three characters surfaces relevant replies within 150 ms.

• Variables resolve with correct values and fallbacks when missing; preview shows final text before insert.

• Team replies require approval before visible to non-admin agents; audit log records publish events.

Go-to-market and adoption

• Pilot with 2–3 support teams, collect AHT/CSAT deltas, iterate on search and variables.

• In-product education: empty-state tips, sample replies, and shortcut hints.