Set Up Live Chat and Web Chat

Website visitors can chat with your business in real time, right from a widget on your site, with every message landing in the same Conversations inbox as your email and SMS.

A note on naming

You may see this feature referred to as both "Live Chat" and "Web Chat" — they're the same underlying channel. Setup screens currently use "Live Chat" terminology, while conversation filters may label these chats as "Live Chat" for identification. Either way, it's the chat widget on your website routing messages into your inbox.

Setting it up

1. Install the chat widget on your website.
2. Make sure the widget's chat type is set to Live Chat so it routes into Conversations.
3. Customize the widget: an intro message, an agent avatar, your branding colors, and a fallback message for when no one's available.
4. Set an inactivity timeout so conversations close automatically if a visitor goes quiet.

Handling incoming chats

Chats can be assigned to a team member manually, or routed automatically using an automation trigger, the same way you'd route an SMS or email conversation.

If no one responds in time

You can configure a fallback: if your team doesn't respond within a set window, an automated message steps in to collect the visitor's contact details so you can follow up later instead of losing the lead entirely.

Filtering just chat conversations

Use the conversation filters to show only chat-channel conversations, separate from your SMS and email threads, when you want to focus on live website visitors.