Live chat
Live chat lets your team step into a conversation and answer the visitor yourselves, in the same chat widget. While a person handles a conversation the AI assistant stays silent; when you hand it back, the assistant takes over again.
Live chat is off until you turn it on.
Turning it on
Open Settings > Live chat.
- Let my team take over conversations: turns live chat on. Off by default.
- Agent name: the name visitors see on your team's replies, for example
Velofiets Support. Everyone on your team replies under this name. Leave it empty to use the store name.
Handover
- Who answers visitors: what happens to a visitor's message while live chat is on.
- The AI, always - my team joins when asked (default): the AI answers every message. Your team joins when a visitor asks for a person, or when someone takes the conversation over.
- My team while available, the AI otherwise: while someone on your team is Available, a visitor's message goes to your team and waits for an answer. While nobody is, the AI answers. A conversation you handed back with Return to AI stays with the AI.
- Let the AI draft replies for your team: while a person handles a conversation, the AI drafts a reply to each visitor message. See AI drafts. On by default.
Either way, a visitor who asks for a person is handed to your team while someone is Available.
Notifications
- Notification emails: where eChat sends an email when a visitor has waited 3 minutes for a person, and every message a visitor leaves while nobody is available. Defaults to the store owner.
Your availability
The status at the bottom of the eChat backend sidebar tells eChat whether your team is there:
- Available: visitors can ask to talk to a person.
- Unavailable: visitors can leave a message instead.
The status shows Live chat off while live chat is turned off.
The Live chat page
Live chat in the main navigation lists the visitors on your store right now. A badge on the menu item counts the visitors waiting for a person.
Visitors are grouped by what they need from you:
| Group | Who is in it |
|---|---|
| Waiting for answer | Visitors who asked for a person, or whose message was routed to your team, and nobody has joined yet. |
| Served now | Conversations a person from your team is handling. |
| Chatting with AI | Visitors talking to the AI assistant. |
| Active visitors | Visitors browsing the store without a chat. |
| Idle visitors | Visitors with the store open but no recent activity. |
Each row shows the page the visitor is on and how long they have been inactive. Conversations from the Playground are labelled Playground.
The Visitors / History switch at the top moves between this page and Conversations.
With live chat turned off you can still follow visitors here, but taking a conversation over and replying need live chat on.
Handling a conversation
Open a visitor to see their conversation, the pages they visited, and what eChat knows about them.
- Take over: you take the conversation from the AI. The visitor sees that your agent joined the chat, and the AI stops answering.
- Return to AI: hands the conversation back to the AI. If the visitor's last message is still unanswered, the AI answers it.
- Close conversation: ends the conversation. If the visitor writes again, the conversation reopens.
- Open in history: opens the conversation in Conversations.
When the visitor has an earlier conversation still open, the page tells you and links to it.
Replying
The reply box takes formatted text and emojis. You can also:
- Attach a file: send a document or an image to the visitor. This works even when the widget's Allow file attachments setting is off, because that setting governs what visitors may send.
- Add a product: search the products synced to the knowledge base by name or SKU and add one or more of them to the reply as product cards.
Press Ctrl/⌘ + Enter to send.
The reply box shows when the visitor is typing. When the visitor has closed the store, it shows Visitor is offline: they see your reply when they open the chat again.
Visitor info
Visitor info holds the visitor's Name, Email and Phone number. Fill in what you learn during the chat and it is saved with the visitor. Environment details shows their location, browser, platform, device and IP address.
AI drafts
While a person handles a conversation, the AI drafts a reply to each visitor message. Only your team sees the draft.
- Use puts the draft into the reply box, so you can edit it before sending.
- Send sends it to the visitor as it is.
- Ask the AI to change it rewrites the draft as you ask, for example
add product recommendations.
When the AI has something to tell you rather than the visitor, such as what it could not check, it adds it as Note for you beside the draft. The note is never sent.
Drafts answer from your knowledge base, the same way the assistant does. They cannot look up orders, so a draft for an order question tells you what to check instead.
Each draft is a request to your AI provider. To limit the cost, eChat drafts at most 20 replies per visitor session and 300 per workspace in an hour. Past that, you answer without a draft.
What the visitor sees
While live chat is on, the chat widget header has a Talk to a person button.
- Someone is Available: the visitor sees Connecting you to a team member… and can keep typing. When your agent joins, the visitor sees that they joined the chat, and their name on the replies. When you return the conversation to the AI, the visitor sees You're back with the AI assistant.
- Nobody joins in time: the visitor is offered Leave a message.
- Nobody is Available: the visitor sees Our team is offline right now and can Leave a message. The AI keeps answering in the meantime.
The visitor can also ask the AI for a person. The AI then hands the conversation to your team in the same way.
A left message asks for the visitor's email, and optionally their name. It is emailed to your notification emails, so you can answer by email. It also appears in Conversations with the status Left a message, and the visitor's email and name are saved with the visitor.