What Visitors See in the Chat Messenger

This is the chat experience from your visitors' side, from the first click to rating the conversation. Colors, names and wording come from your Messenger settings, and your website's own styles can't change how the messenger looks.

The chat button

A round chat button sits in the bottom-right or bottom-left corner of the page, with a red badge counting unread replies. If a reply arrives while the chat is closed, a short preview pops up above the button, and clicking it opens that conversation. While the chat is open, the button is hidden and the chat window takes its place. The window has its own close button.

Home screen

• Your greeting and introduction. Signed-in customers are greeted by name when your website passes it: their full name ("Hi Mason Lee 👋") when you verify who they are with identity verification, otherwise their first name ("Hi Mason 👋"). A name too long for the line is shortened with "…". To place the name yourself, put {first_name} or {name} in the Greeting; either reads "there" when the name isn't known.
• Who's online: the first names and photos of teammates who are online, for example "Rob, Maya are online". Outside support hours it reads "The team is away · back …" instead.
• Ask a question comes first. It's the main way in, and clicking it starts a new conversation.
• Recent message shows the visitor's latest conversation. All their conversations are on the Messages tab.

The header's brand color fades into the page behind these cards. There's no search box on Home; searching your articles is on the Help tab.

Starting a conversation

The AI opens every new conversation with its Welcome message, introducing itself by name, labeled AI. This is the same inside and outside your support hours. If you've set suggested questions in Configuring the Chat AI Agent, they appear as buttons under the welcome, and tapping one asks it.

Visitors type their message and press Enter to send (Shift+Enter starts a new line). The message box grows as they type, without scrollbars.

• Formatting: selecting text shows a small toolbar for bold, italic, bulleted and numbered lists, and links. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+K also work, and lists continue when Enter is pressed.
• Emoji: the 🙂 button opens an emoji picker.
• Files and images: the 📎 button attaches screenshots, photos or documents, up to 5 per message and 10 MB each. Pasting a screenshot or dropping a file on the message box works too. Images appear in the conversation and open full size when clicked; other files show as a download card with their size. See Sending Files and Images in Chat.

How the AI answers

1. As soon as the question is sent, the AI's avatar and typing dots appear with a status such as "Thinking…" or "Reading up…". The status changes every couple of seconds until the answer starts.
2. The answer appears word by word, formatted with numbered steps, bold button names and links. A long answer stays scrolled to its start, so the visitor reads it from the top.
3. A Sources box lists the articles it used. Each opens in a new tab.
4. Two buttons appear underneath: That helped 👍 and Talk to a person.

• The AI only uses your published help content, which can come from several of your HelpGuides sites (see Chat Knowledge Sources). If the answer isn't there, it says so plainly and offers your team. It doesn't guess.
• If a question could mean several things, it asks one short clarifying question.
• It understands follow-up questions in the context of the conversation, and replies in the visitor's language.
• A greeting or a thank-you gets a short, natural reply rather than a search.
• If you've set up Chat Actions, it can look things up in your own systems, such as a price. For signed-in customers it can look up their own account, never anyone else's.

Outside support hours

The AI is your first line of support, so outside your support hours a conversation starts the same way, with the AI's welcome, unless you've written a separate out-of-hours welcome. Only the wording about people changes: the Home screen shows "The team is away · back …", and if the AI hands the conversation to your team, the visitor is told when the team is back. The AI keeps answering questions, and anything that needs a person is picked up when your team returns.

Help articles in the messenger

A Help tab sits beside Home and Messages. Visitors can search your help center, browse its collections (your categories) and read articles without leaving the messenger. Each article has Open in help center for the full page and Still need help? Ask a question to start a chat.

The Help tab shows one project's help center, chosen under General, Appearance, Help articles from. By default it's the messenger's own project. Its categories, articles and search all come from that project, even when the AI answers from several knowledge sources. You can turn the tab off with Show help articles in the messenger.

If they go quiet after an answer

If a visitor doesn't reply to an answer for a couple of minutes while the chat is still open, the AI checks in once about that answer, for example "I hope the password reset steps were helpful! I'm here if you need anything else." It shows That helped 👍 and Talk to a person again. It never checks in with someone who has left, and never more than twice per conversation.

When your team says hello first

A teammate can start a conversation with someone who's on your site (see Using the Chat Inbox). On a computer, the messenger opens with their message, from a named person rather than the AI. On a phone it appears as a bubble above the chat button. A visitor who is already chatting just sees an unread badge. They reply like any other conversation.

Opening the chat from a link

A link to any page on your site with ?chat=1 added, for example in an email, opens the messenger as soon as the page loads, on the home screen or the conversation the visitor was last in. Adding &chat_name=James greets them as "Hi James" and shows the name to your team. The extra parameters disappear from the address bar once the page loads. See Chat Messenger JavaScript API.

Proactive messages

On pages you choose, such as your pricing page, the messenger can start the conversation after a few seconds by showing a message in a bubble above the chat button, on computers and phones alike. It never opens the chat uninvited; clicking the bubble does, and the conversation starts from that message. It can offer its own suggested questions. Visitors who are already chatting are never interrupted. See Chat Proactive Messages.

Reaching a person

• Visitors can click Talk to a person or just ask ("can I speak to someone?"). The AI also hands off when it can't help, notices frustration, or runs into a problem.
• Team online: "I've passed this to the team — someone will be with you shortly.", with your expected reply time. The header switches to your team name.
• Team offline: they see your offline message, then "If you share your name and email below, someone from our team will follow up with you." A small form with Your name and Your email address appears in the chat, with a note that it's only used to follow up on this conversation. Once they send it, they see a confirmation with that address.
• Nobody replies: if your team was online at the handoff but nobody has replied after 5 minutes, the AI apologizes for the wait ("Sorry for the wait…") and offers the same form, or confirms the email it already has.
• Buying questions: for questions such as "can I get a quote?" or "can we book a demo?", the AI answers as usual and then offers the form under its answer, once per conversation. Sending it brings your team in.
• Asking more while waiting: they're told the question has been added to the conversation and asked whether the AI should try to answer in the meantime (Yes, please answer / No, I'll wait for the team). With Yes, the AI keeps answering until a person picks the conversation up.
• When a teammate takes over, the visitor sees "Name joined the conversation". Messages then show that person's name and photo (or initials), and "Name is typing…" appears while they write. See Taking Over a Chat from the AI.
• If the visitor has left when a teammate replies, and they gave an email, they get an email about a minute later with the reply and a Continue the conversation button that reopens the chat on the page they were on. If they're still on your site, the email waits a few minutes in case they read it in the chat.

The follow-up form only appears at these moments, and never when you already have the visitor's email. If it's been offered more than once, only the newest form is shown.

Closing and rating

When a conversation is closed, whether a teammate closed it or the visitor said the AI's answer helped, the visitor is asked How would you rate this conversation? with five faces from 😞 to 🤩, then thanked for their feedback. Writing again reopens the conversation, and the AI answers first, just like a new conversation.

Past conversations

The Messages tab lists every conversation with who wrote the last message, a preview and how long ago. The name is whoever actually wrote that message, so if the AI's handoff message is the latest, it shows the AI's name. Closed ones are ticked, and unread ones are bold with a red dot. Its Ask a question button starts a new conversation.

The ⋯ button in the header holds the chat's options:

• Expand / Collapse makes the messenger wider and as tall as the window, for long answers. It's on every screen, on computers only.
• Download transcript saves the open conversation as a text file. It appears only inside a conversation.
• Clear unread marks every conversation as read. It appears whenever something is unread.

On phones

On small screens the chat opens full-screen, with a back arrow and a close button. Text boxes are sized so phones don't zoom in when they're tapped. The chat fits the visible screen as the browser's toolbars appear and disappear, keeps clear of the notch and home indicator, and scrolling it doesn't scroll the page behind. The ⋯ button appears only when it has something to offer.

Moving around your site

The chat follows visitors from page to page. If it was open, it's still open on the next page, on the same screen and conversation, and anything they had typed but not sent is still in the box. Replies that arrive while a page is loading show as unread. With Share visitors across subdomains of set, this also works between subdomains such as www.example.com and docs.example.com. See Installing the Chat Messenger on Your Website.

Privacy

Visitors don't need to sign up. Visitors never see your team's internal notes, AI summaries, the actions the AI called, or articles from internal knowledge sources. When your site passes a verified signed-in user, their conversations follow them across devices; see Chat Identity Verification for how those conversations are protected.