When you use webchat to communicate with customers or visitors to your site, you can automate messages to be sent at certain points in the conversation.
You can also control when the chat widget appears on your site, and what happens when you have no agents currently online.
We have three automated message options:
Before you start
Things you need to know:
You must be a Chat admin to create and edit automated messages.
Learn more in Roles and permissions of Chat.
Automated messages and team working hours only apply to webchat. These settings are not applicable to SMS or WhatsApp chat.
Enable automated messages
Expand the User menu, then go to Settings > Chat > Chat settings.
Select the chat team you want to enable automated messages for.
Under the heading Webchat, for Automated messages, select ENABLE.
Welcome message
For Send a welcome message, select ENABLE.
In the Message field, enter the welcome message text you want to send.
Select SAVE.
In chat email address request
Learn more about configuring this setting in Enable in-chat email address requests.
End of chat message
We automatically send the end of chat message to your visitors at the end of a chat session.
For End of chat message, select ENABLE.
In the Message field, enter the welcome message text you want to send.
Select SAVE.
Set team working hours and out-of-hours message
For smaller teams, maintaining a constant online presence might be challenging. By configuring your team's out-of-hours settings, you can choose to remove the webchat widget from your site when you're offline or send automated responses to incoming chats, keeping your visitors informed about your offline status.
Set your team online hours
Expand the User menu, then go to Settings > Chat > Chat settings.
Select your team name tab.
Under Webchat, expand the Enable Out-of-hours drop-down menu and choose from:
Never
The out-of-hours setting is disabled and the chat widget is always shown on your site. This is useful if you’re a large team and always have agents online.
Outside team working hours
Enables the out-of-hours setting outside of your teams working hours. This is a good setting if you have agents available to cover each other during breaks within working hours.Expand the Timezone drop-down menu, and select the timezone of your team.
Expand the day and time drop-down menus to select the day, from time, and to time that your Chat team is online. To enter additional days and times, select + NEW TIME.
Select SAVE.
When no agents are online
Enables out-of-hours when none of your chat team’s agents are online. This setting is useful if you have a small team and cannot guarantee an agent will always be available for visitors during working hours.
A chat agent is considered unavailable if:They are logged out of their account.
They do not have the main chat page open.
They have set their status to away.
Out-of-hours message
If you’ve selected Outside team working hours or When no agents are online, you can choose what happens to the chat widget on your site during out-of-hours:
For When out-of-hours, choose from:
HIDE CHAT
The chat widget automatically hides from your site when out-of-hours is active.
SHOW CHAT
The chat widget shows on your site when out-of-hours is active and sends an automated message to your visitors.
In the Out-of-hours message field, enter the message you want to display to users when your team is offline.
Once you’ve finished configuring your team’s online hours and out-of-hours messaging, select SAVE at the bottom of the page.