Live chat on the website

During working hours

The bubble opens a live conversation. It joins Waiting until somebody takes it, and from there it is answered like everything else in Chat - see Talking to customers in Chat.

Outside working hours

Working hours come from the shop's work schedule and the organisation's public holidays, both kept in Human Resources. Outside them, the widget tells the visitor when you are back and asks for their name, email and message rather than leaving them in an empty chat.

What happens to that message depends on one switch in the shop's settings, Answer offline messages by email:

• Off - the message stays a website conversation. It waits in the website list, and your answer is written into the same widget. If the visitor has closed the tab, they only see it if they come back and open the widget.
• On - the conversation moves to the email channel. It waits in the email list, your answer is sent from the shop's mailbox, and their reply comes back into the same conversation. If the visitor already had a website conversation open, that one moves to email too. The switch does nothing until a mailbox is connected, so an answer is never sent nowhere.

Whether a shop uses it is the chat supervisor's decision. Most visitors who write out of hours have left long before anyone answers, which is why email reaches far more of them.

Spotting an out-of-hours message

Inside the conversation, the customer's message shows a small Offline message label. The row in the list has no mark, so in the email list these look like any other email until you open them.

Emailing a customer who is not there any more

During working hours, a customer sometimes asks a question and closes the tab before you answer. ⋮ → Email notification set to On also sends what you write to them by email. It appears only in a conversation you are holding, where there is an address to write to, and never on an email conversation, which is already an email.