How to Use Chat

In this article, we’ll explore the customer-facing Chat experience, as well as how to use chat internally as an Agent or Admin. Learn more about how to install chat here.

How Chat Appears to Your Customers

Once you’ve installed the Chat widget on your preferred page, users should see a chat box appear on the lower right-hand side of the page. You can customize the look of your chat widget in the widget settings.

When a customer clicks on the Chat Widget, a box will open requesting information to start a chat. This will be a FormReactor form on your end, which you can customize for users to fill out with your preferred information before initializing the chat.

After the customer submits their information, they will see any auto-start messages from your team or the form information they submitted to open the chat (as pictured below), depending on your chat widget settings.

Customers will receive a notification when one of your agents has entered the chat.

Customers will receive a notification when one of your agents has entered the chat.

Customers also have the ability to resume a chat conversation that has ended, which will allow the same chat record to re-enter the queue again and ring agents by clicking on the Resume Chat button. The chat request may or may not automatically go back to the same agent who was previously communicating with the customer, depending on your queue settings. Visit your queue settings to update whether you want to route for repeat callers to go back to Any Agent, the Same Agent, or a New Agent.

Customers can also include attachments in the chat message thread if the agent has enabled it from their chat window.

Customers will automatically receive chat transcriptions at the end of a chat if they provide you with their email.

Agent Actions

Chats will route to your Agents based on your Call Queue settings and will appear to “ring” similarly to calls in your call log.

Agents will receive 2 types of desktop notifications, pictured below:

Once your agent answers a chat, they will transition into full Desk Mode.

Agents can customize their own personal macros and team-based macros to use in chat conversations. To input a macro into the chatbox, the agent must type “/” into the type input field to reveal a drop-down with available canned responses to choose from. To create a personal macro, go to the agent’s User profile → Message Responses. Team-based macros can be customized in Settings → Teams → Message Responses.

Additional settings can be accessed from the sandwich menu in the upper right-hand corner of the chat widget. Select Enable Attachments to allow users to attach and send files (JPEG, JPG, PNG, GIF, max size 150MB). Agents can also customize their sound settings, or transfer the chat to other agents or queues.

Agents can leave the chat at any time, which will automatically end the conversation for the Customer. There will be a prompt beforehand to your agent because this action cannot be undone. If the chat is ended but the customer has further questions, they will need to start a new chat.

Agents can easily search for past conversations in the call log by applying a filter for the contact and type of activity to “chats.”

Admin Actions

Admins have the ability to view chats in progress via the call log:

Admins can also redact chats, similar to calls. To learn more about redaction and how to set it up, refer to this help article.