Chat overview

Chat lets your customers talk to your team live. Visitors start a chat from your website, the customer portal, the tray on a managed computer, or Microsoft Teams and Slack, and your people answer every one of them from the same Console. A chat belongs to a customer, a contact and (when it came from a managed computer) a device, and it becomes a ticket, an opportunity or a lead in one action.

Chats are split into channels, such as Support, Sales and Accounts, so each one rings the right people. See Chat channels and routing.

Where chats come from#

Visitors who are not known contacts can still chat. The console marks them Not a known contact so you can place them with the right customer. See Answering a chat.

People also reach you from Microsoft Teams and Slack once you have set up those apps with your own Microsoft and Slack accounts. See The Teams and Slack apps.

How a chat runs#

1. Start. Where you offer more than one channel, the visitor chooses who to chat with, or the page they are on or what they write picks the channel for them. They describe the problem. A bare "hello" is turned back with a friendly nudge, so the first minute is not spent asking what is wrong. The chat starts Waiting, rings the people who answer its channel and shows as a count on Service desk in the rail, beside Chat in the sidebar, and on Home.
2. Take it. A technician presses Accept or simply replies: replying accepts the chat. Each technician can take a limited number of chats at once (4 by default).
3. Work together. Transfer the chat to a colleague, or invite one to join alongside you. System lines in the conversation record each step.
4. Talk. Messages go both ways, with internal notes that only staff see, files and pictures, read receipts and typing indicators.
5. End. Either side ends the chat. A quiet chat gets a "still there?" warning and then closes. A chat nobody takes in time closes and becomes a ticket request (or, in a sales channel, a lead), so it is never lost. When you end a chat you can be asked how it ended: an outcome, tags and a note.
6. Follow up. Raise a ticket from the chat, or add it to an existing ticket, at any point; the chat carries on and the ticket keeps up with it. A sales chat becomes an opportunity or a lead with Add opportunity. You can also have every ended chat with a known customer become a ticket on its own.
7. Rating. After it ends the visitor can rate the chat from 1 to 5 with a comment, and ask for the transcript by email.

A visitor who writes again soon after a chat ends (within 30 minutes by default) opens the same chat again, back with the same technician when they are free.

You can also start a chat yourself: Message the user on a device page opens a chat in that computer's tray, and Start a chat on a contact opens one in their portal.

Note: When the AI assistant is switched on, new chats can go to it first. It answers from your knowledge base, checks the visitor's computer and can carry out actions they confirm, then hands over to your team when it cannot help. See The chat bot.

Where chat lives#

Open Service desk > Chat. It is under Conversations in the Service desk sidebar, with the number of chats that need you beside it. The page has four tabs:

• Console: the live queue and conversations. Chats in channels you do not answer show in their own group and never ring you. See The chat console.
• Chat history: every chat, with search and transcripts. See Chat history.
• Chat ticket requests: people who asked for help while chat was closed or nobody was free, with how many are waiting to be placed. See Chats and tickets.
• Knowledge gaps: what people asked the chat bot that it handed over, was unsure about or found no article for, grouped by topic, with Write an article and Mark covered. See Saved prompts, feedback and limits.

On the right of the tab row, on every one of these tabs, are your chat controls:

• Available and Away: your status. Hover over it to see how many chats you are taking out of your limit.
• The bell: turns the chat sounds off and on.
• Online now: the technicians who are online, and how many chats each has.
• Chat settings (the cog, administrators only): opens Settings > Chat.

When chat is open#

Chat is open to visitors when all of these are true:

• chat is not switched off for the visitor's customer;
• today is not one of your closed days;
• it is within the opening hours (your business hours by default);
• at least one person who answers the chat's channel is online and set to Available, if Closed when nobody is online is on (it is by default).

A channel can keep hours of its own on top of these.

A technician counts as online while any Tenvara window is open, not only the console, so chat does not close while someone is working in tickets. Setting yourself to Away stops the ring and counts as not available.

While chat is closed, visitors see the closed message with the next opening time and can leave a ticket request instead, or the chat button is hidden, depending on your settings. See Chat settings.

Where chats show up elsewhere#

• Home: chats waiting.
• Customer page: the Chats tab, under Service, with figures for the last 30 days and every chat for that customer.
• Contact page: that contact's chats.
• Device page: Chats from this device, for chats started from the tray (shown only when there are some).
• Ticket: the chat a ticket came from, in the ticket's details panel.
• Timesheets: a chat with no time logged for the customer around then is listed under Time nobody logged.
• Search (Ctrl K or Cmd K): open the console, jump to chats going on now, history, requests and settings, or find a chat by its reference (such as C-1042), the visitor's name or what was said.
• Notifications: a chat waiting too long, a chat transferred or reopened to you, an invitation to join a chat, and ticket requests to place. Only the people who answer a chat's channel are told.
• Reports > Chat: volumes, waiting and response times, outcomes, tags and ratings by channel, customer and technician.

Switching chat on and permissions#

Chat is a module. Switch it on or off in Modules. While it is off, the widget, the portal's Chat page and the tray option all disappear.

Chat has its own permission area in Roles and permissions:

Raising a ticket from a chat or adding it to a ticket also needs manage rights on tickets. Adding an unknown visitor as a contact needs manage rights on customers and contacts.