Answering Chats

The Chat Page

Open Chat from the app switcher (action chat.home). It shows, and keeps up to date on its own:

• Online or Offline: what visitors see right now. Visitors see you online during your office hours (Chat Settings), and, when Chat Settings ask for it, only while someone on your team is available.
• Set Me Available or Set Me Away (action chat.status.set): whether you are answering. Available lasts 12 hours unless you set it again, so nobody stays available overnight by accident. Only you change your own; nothing changes it on its own.
• Your Team: everyone who can answer chats, and who is available.
• On Your Websites Now: visitors with the chat on screen in the last two minutes, the page they are on, and whether they are in a chat. A visitor shows by their random id (such as V-4F2K9C1A) until they give a name.
• Open Chats: chats waiting for a reply first, then the newest. Each shows the visitor, whether they are still on the website, their last message, and who has it.
• Recently Closed: the last 20 closed chats.

A Chat

Open a chat to answer it (action chat.conversation.get). New messages from the visitor fade in as they arrive, and Seen appears under your last reply once the visitor has read it.

• Reply (action chat.reply): the visitor sees it right away, with your first name. Press Enter to send, or Shift and Enter for a new line. The first person to reply takes a chat no one has.
• Note (action chat.note): for your team only. The visitor never sees notes.
• Close Chat (action chat.close): the visitor sees that you closed it, and can start a new chat. The transcript is kept on the conversation.
• Assigned to (action chat.assign): owners and admins give a chat to anyone who answers chats, or to nobody. Everyone else can Take This Chat for themselves.
• Make a Ticket (action chat.ticket): a new Helpdesk ticket from the visitor, with the chat's transcript as its first message, linked to their CRM contact when one has their email. No email goes to the visitor. Shown when Helpdesk is added with its Tickets and Messages on.
• Make a Lead (action chat.lead): a new CRM lead with the visitor's name, email, and first message. When the CRM already has a contact or lead with their email, the chat is linked to them instead of adding them again. Shown when CRM is added with its Leads on.
• Email Transcript (action chat.transcript.send): emails the visitor the whole chat, when they ask you to. Shown when the visitor has given their email.

The ticket or lead a chat became is linked at the top of the chat, and the chat says who made it in a note.

Emails Visitors Get

Every email says why it was sent, uses Arial, and every link in it carries UTM tags (utm_source=mountdev-ops-chat, utm_medium=email, and the campaign below). Emails go from the address in Chat Settings.

• Your Chat Transcript: when a visitor asks for it from the chat's menu, or you send it. Campaign chat_transcript.
• We Replied to Your Chat: when you answered and the visitor has not read it within the wait set in Chat Settings (20 minutes at first), once per answer, and only when they gave their email. Its link opens the same chat again on the page where it started, on any browser, for 7 days. Campaign chat_reply.

Your team gets an email about each new chat and each message left outside office hours, as Chat Settings say (campaign chat_notice). An email that could not be sent is marked as not sent and never tried twice.