Chat channel
Personalize your real-time conversations with customers. Learn how to create, customize, and manage Kustomer Chat for each brand in your organization.Categories
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Introduction to Kustomer chat
Create powerful, personalized chat experiences for your customers with chat. Access multi-brand chat settings and communicate with customers efficiently using contextualized, automated conversational support.Learn how you can build seamless mobile and web chat experiences with chat.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access chat settings.In this articleKey features for chatTurn on chatManage chat settingsKey features for chatWith chat, you can:Customize the look and feel: Style and customize the chat widget experience with colors and chat widget experience settings.Create branded chat experiences: With multi-brand chat settings, you can apply distinct brand settings, conversational assistants, and business schedules for multiple brands.Provide personalized chat support: Personalize and automate customer chat interactions with conversational assistants.Build with chat SDKs: Develop performant, stable, and seamless custom web and mobile embedded chat experiences with the updated Kustomer chat SDKs for web and mobile (iOS and Android).Send attachments and images: Customers and agents can upload attachments to a conversation, up to 5MB per file. Currently supported file types are JPG, PNG, PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, ZIP, TXT, MOV, and MP4. We do block a selection of file extensions for security purposes. The total attachment size limit is 9.5MB.Other features that improve the chat experience include:Chat widget experienceSelect from three different Chat widget experience formats to design how your customers interact with your chat widget:Live ChatKnowledge BaseKnowledge Base + Live ChatMulti-brand chat settingsCustomize the visual design, business schedules, and chat support experience for each brand under your organization. You can also turn chat on or off separately for each brand. Learn more in Multi-brand chat.Conversational AssistantsStyle and automate customer chat support interactions with the conversational assistants (chatbots) feature. Collect relevant customer information, boost agent productivity, and streamline the support experience with conversational assistants.Learn more about the updated conversational assistant features in Introduction to Customer Assist.Learn how to design and customize conversational assistants for your teams in Tutorial: Build a conversational assistant.You can set a default conversational assistant or turn off assistants for each brand and channel.Chat SDKs for web and mobileThe Kustomer Chat SDKs provide greater customization, performance, and stability for web-based and mobile (iOS and Android) chat experiences.Mobile SDK features include the following:Push notifications: Integrate with push notifications to send any missed messages to your customers as push notifications on their mobile devices.CSAT survey settings: Customize which customers will receive CSAT surveys based on set customer attributes. Send CSAT surveys with push notifications to ensure more accurate survey results.Native Knowledge Base: Promote self-service and give your customers access to a native knowledge base directly from within the chat widget on your mobile apps.Dark Mode support: Automatically display the chat widget in dark mode for your customers with dark mode settings enabled on their mobile devices.Landscape Mode support: Automatically adapt the chat widget display for landscape mode on mobile devices.Learn more about the Kustomer Chat SDKs in our developer documentation.Turn on chatAll organizations have access to chat. You can turn chat on or off for each brand under your organization by going to Appsand selecting Chat.You can view and customize chat settings separately for your default brand and any additional brands with chat.If you have multiple brands under your organization, configure and manage chat settings for each brand with Multi-brand chat.Manage chat settingsYou can customize your chat settings for each brand in your Kustomer organization:Chat Management: DesignStyle and customize the chat widget design, appearance, and default messaging to provide a seamless chat experience for your customers on web and mobile apps. With chat, you can design and configure your chat widget to match the voice, style, branding, and reply time for each brand in your organization.Learn how to manage your chat design settings in Chat Management: Design.Chat Management: SettingsSet and communicate reliable support expectations with customers with customized chat support functionality. With chat, you have control over the chat settings for each brand. Choose when, where, and how your teams connect with customers over chat.Learn how to manage your main chat settings in Chat Management: Settings.Chat Management: DomainsSecurely control the domains and web pages that can host and display the code for your custom chat widget. The Chat Management: Domains settings allow you to authorize specific domains and create URL overrides to ensure full command over where your chat widget appears. Learn how to manage your chat domain settings in Chat Management: Domains.Chat Management: Install ChatEasily generate and implement your custom chat widget code to connect with customers over chat. The Kustomer Chat SDK settings allow you to generate a custom chat widget code to use with your web site or create a keyset to enable mobile push notifications for apps on Android and iOS mobile devices.Learn how to manage your chat SDK settings in Chat Management: Install Chat.Chat Management: Design
Style and customize the chat widget design, appearance, and default messaging to provide a seamless chat experience for your customers on web and mobile apps. With chat, you can design and configure your chat widget to match the voice, style, branding, and reply time for each brand in your organization.In this article, we'll explore the design settings available in chat and how you can customize the chat widget design for a brand.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access chat settings.In this articleChat widget experienceTeam infoIcon designSet a reply timeSet up a footer messageColorsTo access the Chat Design settings for a brand, go Appsand select Chat. From the Chat Management page, select the brand and then go to the Design tab.Learn more about Chat Management settings in Kustomer.Chat widget experienceProvide customers with a versatile chat support experience with live chat support, a native knowledge base in the chat widget, or both. Choose the best chat support experience for your customers from three different chat widget formats:Live ChatKnowledge BaseKnowledge Base + Live ChatLive ChatSelect the Live Chat format to support customers through real-time conversations with an agent.Knowledge BaseSelect the Knowledge Base format to support customers with a native knowledge base in the chat widget. Customers will be able to access and search your public knowledge base articles directly from the widget.Knowledge Base + Live ChatSelect the Knowledge Base + Live Chat format to support customers with the option to access a native knowledge base from the chat widget and to have a real-time conversation with an agent for additional support.Team infoCustomize the team logo, name, and default messaging in the chat widget to represent your brand or the team on chat support. The following settings are available:Team Name: The brand name or the name of the specific team (for example, Support or Sales) on chat support. The team name appears below the team logo or avatar in the chat.Team Logo: Upload the image of your brand logo or a logo for the team on chat support. This team logo appears as the team avatar in the chat before the customer connects with an agent or when an agent is unavailable.Supported image file types: PNG and JPGRecommended image height and width: 50pxGreeting Message (When Available): A short, introductory greeting to display in the chat header under your team name when the chat widget first opens for customers.Greeting Message (When Unavailable): A short greeting to display in the chat header if you have chat set to Appear Available outside of your business hours. You can use this greeting to communicate with customers your business hours or the offline status of your chat support team.Greeting Image (When Unavailable): Upload the image for a custom, branded image placeholder to display in a chat conversation when chat support is offline. This image only displays if there are no previous chats for the customer and the customer opens chat outside of business hours.Supported image file types: PNG and JPGRecommended image height and width: 250pxIcon designCustomize the design and a border color for the chat icon that opens the chat widget for customers. Kustomer uses the Kustomer logo as the default chat icon with a dark navy border color: . The following settings are available:Chat Icon: Upload the image used as a custom chat icon to display on your site for the customer to open chat.Supported image file types: PNG and JPGRecommended image height and width: 50pxChat Icon Color: The chat icon border color to match your brand.Set a reply timeSet a reply time to let your customers know when they can expect a chat reply from your team, especially when chat volume is high. The expected reply time is displayed within active chats and inside the chat header when a customer first opens chat. You can choose how to display the reply time with the following options:"Typically responds in 45 minutes" The response time is automatically calculated from when the message is received."Typically responds in a few minutes""Typically responds in an hour""Typically responds in the same day"Custom Message: Select this option to display a custom reply time message.Set up a footer messageSet a short message that displays in the chat footer. By default, the footer message notifies the customer that they are consenting to the chat being stored according to your privacy policy.Note: As required by applicable law, you should obtain customers’ consent to record conversations, and provide transparency to customers that you use Kustomer, Inc. to facilitate this chat function. For tips on how to disclose that your conversational assistant is not a person, see our best practices article.ColorsStyle the chat widget to match your custom brand colors. Use the color pickers or enter hex color codes to set the background and text colors for the chat header, chat bubbles, and chat response buttons.The Colors setting allows you to choose colors for the following:Chat header: Background, Primary Text, Secondary TextAgent chat bubble: Background, Primary TextCustomer chat bubble: Primary Text, Secondary TextPrimary button: Background, Background (Hover), TextTip: Test your custom chat colors for an accessible color contrast ratio.Chat Management: Settings
Set and communicate reliable support expectations with your customers. With Kustomer chat, you have control over each brand's chat settings and functionality. Choose when, where, and how your teams connect with customers over chat.In this article, we'll explore the main chat settings available in chat and how you can do the following for each brand:Turn on chat settingsTailor the chat support experienceSet chat widget business hours availabilityAdd a fallback email for missed chatsAssign a conversational assistantWho can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access chat settings.In this articleAccess chat settingsTurn on chat for a brandTyping indicatorsSynchronous chat settingsFallback emailBusiness hours availabilityDefault assistantAccess chat settingsTo access the chat settings, go to Apps> Chat and then go to the Settings tab.Turn on chat for a brandChat is turned on by default when you create a brand. This means the chat widget will be available for that brand's website.You can turn chat off for a specific brand by navigating to the Chat page, selecting the brand from the drop-down menu, and turning the Chat toggle off.Typing indicatorsTyping indicators signal when the person on the other side of the chat is typing a response.With chat, you can provide typing indicators for agents, customers, or both.Note: Typing indicators are also available in the Kustomer Chat Mobile SDKs for iOS and Android.Synchronous chat settings You can configure real-time chat settings to end customer chats to experience more synchronous chats with your customers. Allow chats to be endedSelect the Allow chats to be ended option to allow customers to select End Chat in the chat widget to end a chat immediately for the customer and the agent. When a customer ends the chat, the widget notifies the agent that the conversation has ended.Kustomer automatically completes and logs conversations ended by the customer without agent action. When a conversation is marked done in Kustomer, the Ended value for the conversation is set to True and customers must start a new conversation to request additional support. For a customer to be able to reopen their chat conversation, the value for Ended must be updated from True to False in Kustomer.Restrict to single open chatSelect Restrict to single open chat to ensure customers have only one chat open at a time. This means that a customer won’t be able to open a second chat if they already have a chat open with an agent. Note: Select Allow chats to be ended to make this option available.Hide chat historyBy default, customers can see their previous chat history if Kustomer can identify them through their email address or other criteria you pass through the API.Select Hide chat history to hide the previous chat history from view for the customer. This option removes the current chat from the widget once the agent or customer closes the chat, Note: Select both Allow chats to be ended and Restrict to single open chat to make this option available.Hide attachments buttonSelect the Hide attachments button to prevent customers from sending attachments in a chat message.Display "Bot" as a note underneath automated messagesThis option displays the word Bot underneath messages sent by the assistant to disclose to your customers that they are not speaking to a person.For additional tips on how to disclose that your conversational assistant is not a person, see our best practices article.Fallback emailAutomatically deliver agent messages over email when a customer is inactive on chat.Select a fallback email address to send the agent message from when a customer leaves chat before the conversation is completed or the customer is inactive.When the Fallback Email setting is turned on, Kustomer Chat will send any missed messages to the customer if they are inactive for over 5 minutes.Note: You cannot edit the fallback email template and its contents at this time.Business hours availabilityNote: Define business hours for your brand with business schedules to use this setting. You can create up to 50 individual business schedules for the regions where you provide customer support.If you have business hours defined for your brand, you can decide how your chat icon (the icon customers use to open the chat widget) appears for customers outside of your set business hours.Appear AvailableSelect Appear Available to keep your chat icon available on your website outside of your set business hours. When customers open your chat outside of business hours, the chat widget displays your Available Online Greeting and allows customers to create new conversations from the chat.Appear OfflineSelect Appear Offline to keep your chat icon available on your site and to display your available offline greeting outside of your business hours. Learn how to create an offline chat greeting and prompt customers to leave a message with Chat Management: Design settings.Hide ChatSelect Hide Chat to remove the chat icon from your site outside of your business hours. Removing the chat prevents customers from opening chat to chat with your agents or conversational assistant.Note: Customers who start a chat before the end of your business hours can continue their conversation. However, the chat icon will be hidden once the customer refreshes their browser.Chat availability by time zoneKustomer provides the ability to set the availability of your chat widget for multiple regions and time zones.After you define the business schedule for a particular region, your developer team can use the schedule attribute to include the individual ID for the schedule in your Kustomer.start() function. You also can override the default business schedule. For more information, see the Kustomer Chat SDKs.On Android, you can initialize the chat with options to override the business schedule id.On iOS, you can use the businessScheduleId option on chat initialization to pass in a specific business schedule. See Chat iOS SDK.Default assistantYou can assign a default conversational assistant for each channel and brand by going to Settings> Kustomer IQ > Conversational Assistants. Select the Rules tab to see a list of available conversational assistants for the available channels. Your chat widget will automatically implement the selected assistant for chats unless you have another assistant specified in the Chat SDK.Learn more about conversational assistants in Kustomer.Learn more about conversational assistant overrides in the Kustomer Chat SDK developer documentation.Chat Management: Domains
Securely control the domains and web pages that can host and display the code for your custom chat widget. The Kustomer Chat Domains settings allow you to authorize specific domains and create URL overrides to ensure full command over where your chat widget appears. Your custom chat widget code won't work for a web page unless you've authorized the address for your widget.In this article, we'll explore the domain settings available for chat and how you can control domain- and page-level access to your custom chat widget code for each brand.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access chat settings.In this articleIntroduction to Chat Domains settingsAuthorize DomainsURL OverridesIntroduction to Chat Domains settingsTo access the Chat Domain settings for a brand, go to Appsand select Chat. From the Chat Management page, select the brand and then go to the Domains tab.Once you add your custom chat widget code to your sites, you can authorize where the widget appears at both the domain level and URL, or page, level.Authorize specific domains to protect your custom chat code and to prevent unauthorized domains from hosting or displaying your chat widget.Create URL overrides to enable or turn off chat widget access for specific web pages on your site.Learn more about Chat Management settings in Kustomer.Authorize DomainsNote: Authorize Domains is a global setting for your entire Kustomer organization and does not need to be configured for each brand.Prevent unauthorized domains from hosting or displaying your custom chat widget code with the Authorize Domains settings. Important: If you do not authorize any domains, any domain will be able to host and display your custom chat widget code.Authorize multiple domainsTo authorize multiple web domains to host your custom chat code, add and separate each domain address with a comma.Note: Always remove the URL scheme (for example, http:// or https://) and the final slash / in the URL before you add the domain address.Wildcard placeholdersYou can use an asterisk, *, as a wildcard placeholder for several similar subdomains. For example, instead of support.examplebrand.com, shop.examplebrand.com, apidocs.examplebrand.com, you can enter *.examplebrand.com.URL OverridesManage chat widget access for specific web pages on your site with the URL Overrides settings. You can have your developers add the code snippet for the Kustomer Chat widget to every page of your website, and then create URL overrides to choose which pages will display your custom chat widget for customers.For each URL override, you can set rules to either match all or any criteria based on the following logic for the URL:Contains [URL]Does Not Contain [URL]Does Not Equal [URL]Is Equal To [URL]Tip: To exclude a specific page from displaying your chat widget, use Does Not Equal. To exclude a specific section of your site from displaying the chat widget, use Does Not Contain.To create URL overrides:Select + Add to create a new URL override to match either ALL or ANY criteria entered.For a new URL override, select Website> URL and choose a rule to apply to the URL:Select Is Equal to to target the exact URLSelect Contains to target a part of the URLSelect Does Not Equal to exclude the exact URLSelect Does Not Contain to exclude a set of URLs in a sectionEnter the URL for each override rule and add criteria as necessary.Select Save Changes to apply the URL overrides to your Kustomer Chat widget code.Select Save Changes.Related ArticlesSynchronous chat settingsBusiness schedulesChat Management: DesignEmbed chat on your siteChat management: Install chat
Connect with customers over chat using our web and mobile SDKs. You can generate a custom chat code snippet to embed your chat widget on your website and create keysets to turn on push notifications for Android and iOS devices.Learn more about the Kustomer Chat SDKs for web and mobile in Chat SDK developer documentation.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access the Chat page.In this articleGenerate the Web SDK codeEmbed the Web SDK code on your siteEmbed the Web SDK code to your Knowledge BaseTurn on mobile SDK push notificationsCustomize your push notifications contentTo access the Chat SDK settings for a brand in Kustomer, go to Apps> Chat. Select the desired brand from the Chat Management page and then go to the Install Chat tab.Generate the Web SDK codeThe Web SDK setting automatically generates the standard chat widget code for your brand customized with your brand ID and API key with the correct role to use with the Web SDK. Otherwise, you can manually create and enter an API Key with the org.tracking role. To create an API key go to Settings > Security > API Keys.The following two values are generated:data-kustomer-api-key is the unique API key tied to your Kustomer organization. brandId is the unique brand ID of the chat widget brand. To learn more, see Find your brand ID.Note: If you don't include a specific brand ID in your Chat SDK, Kustomer automatically assigns the default brand ID. To learn more, see Multi-brand Chat.Embed the Web SDK code on your siteCopy and paste the generated chat widget code to embed the chat widget on your site.To embed the code:Select Copy Code to copy the code snippet. Make sure that you have selected the correct brand and that there is an API key in the code.Locate the closing body tag in your HTML file for the website.Paste the code before the closing body tag and save your HTML file.Once you save the HTML file with the Web SDK code, you can chat and track visitors with chat on the site.Embed the Web SDK code to your knowledge baseTo learn how to add chat to your knowledge base, see Add chat to your knowledge base in the Chat SDK developer documentation.Turn on mobile SDK push notificationsThe chat mobile SDKs support push notifications for your mobile apps on Android and iOS. You can create keysets within your Kustomer chat settings to turn on push notifications for Android and iOS devices. For iOS only, you can test push notifications on a simulator before turning them on.AndroidBefore creating a keyset, ask your mobile developer for the Firebase Cloud Messaging Private Key fileFor more information, see Push notifications with FCM in our developer docs.iOSBefore creating a keyset, ask your mobile developer for the following information:Apple Developer account-wide push key as a p8 fileApple Developer Account Team IDApple Push Notifications service (APNs) KeyBundle IDs for each app you want to use with push notifications.Include bundle IDs for both your Kustomer sandbox and Kustomer production environments.See Push Keys and Certificates in our developer docs for more information. See Push notifications to learn more about implementing and testing push notifications in iOS.Customize your push notifications contentBy default, push notifications show a preview of the chat message content. To prevent sensitive information from appearing in the push notification preview, you can use this setting to redact it. For example, you can use this setting to replace the preview with a message that reads "You received a secure message".You can customize your push notifications by adding an emoji, personalizing the notification with contextual data (such as a customer's name) with dynamic text, or using a snippet for multi-lingual support. For notifications to display properly, we recommend a maximum length of 45 characters for the title and 128 for the body.Note: Selecting Reset to Default removes any custom overrides. Notifications will show the message preview instead.Advanced customization for chat
Chat allows you to customize chat settings for each brand in your organization from your Kustomer settings. You can configure the Kustomer Chat settings and the chat widget design from the Chat Management page without any custom code or developer resources.If your team would like to customize Kustomer Chat further, you can direct your developer team to the latest Kustomer Chat SDK documentation.Kustomer Chat Web SDKInstall, configure, and customize Kustomer Chat for your website or web app.Visit the Web SDK documentation.Kustomer Chat Mobile SDKsInstall, configure, and customize Kustomer Chat for your mobile app.Visit the iOS SDK documentation.Visit the Android SDK documentation.Visit the React Native SDK documentationMulti-brand chat
Provide a unique chat support experience for each brand under your Kustomer organization. Create, customize, and manage the style, chat support experience, and chat widget design for each brand directly in Kustomer without additional custom code from your developers. You can also assign a default conversational assistant for each brand. Learn how to create and configure chat for a new brand and how to customize your multi-brand chat support experience.To learn more about creating new brands under your organization, see Create and manage multiple brands in Kustomer.To learn how to find the unique brand id for a brand, see Find your brand ID.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access the Brands page.In this article:Configure chat settings for a brandCustomize multi-brand chat settingsSet Brand IDs in Chat SDKsConfigure chat settings for a brandNote: Kustomer automatically enables chat when you create a new brand. To learn how to add new brands to your organization, see Create a new brand.Kustomer supports multi-brand features for chat. Chat settings are automatically enabled when you create a new brand in Kustomer. You can configure and access your chat settings from the Brand Management page or from the Chat Management page. To configure chat settings from the Brand Management page:Go to Settingsand select Administration > Brands.Select the edit icon for a brand to open the Edit Brand page.On the Edit Brand page, select the chat settings category you would like to configure (Design, Settings, Domains, and Install Chat).You will be redirected to the chat settings on the Chat Management page.You can configure the chat settings from the Chat Management page. You can select each option to customize your chat settings further.To learn more, see Chat Management settings.Customize chat for each brandThe Chat Management page displays each brand and its chat status. From there, you can customize chat settings and turn on chat for each brand.Learn how to customize your multi-brand chat settings further with the following:Chat Management: DesignChat Management: SettingsChat Management: DomainsChat Management: Install ChatSet Brand IDs in Chat SDKsSpecify a brand ID in your Chat SDKs to embed a branded Kustomer chat support experience in your own web site or mobile app.If you include a specific brand ID in your Chat SDK code, Kustomer will filter chat conversations automatically for your customers based on the set brand. This ensures that a customer only sees their chat conversations with one brand even if the customer has interacted with other brands under your Kustomer organization.If you don't include a specific brand ID in your Chat SDK, Kustomer automatically assigns the default brand ID to the SDK.Add chat version and platform info to insight cards
When updating your chat version to the newest releases of the Kustomer Chat SDK, it's important to know which version of the SDKs your customers are using. This info helps you diagnose whether a customer is on an older version and experiencing an issue that may potentially already be resolved in a newer update. Additionally, it cuts down on support time if agents don't need to ask a customer what version of an app they're on.The Conversation Chat Platform and Conversation Chat Version attributes are available in insight cards to help you identify which version of an app a customer is using.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access the Klasses page.In this articleOverviewAdd attributes to a card using the visual builderAdd attributes to a card using the code editorChecking chat version and platform via APIOverviewKustomer regularly updates the Chat SDK with improvements and fixes for issues that have been reported. If an agent and customer are troubleshooting with differing versions of the SDK, a customer may be experiencing an issue from a previous version that has since been resolved. You can minimize support turnaround by collecting version information without agents having to do so manually.Learn more about recent fixes and changes in our Developer Portal at the Kustomer Chat SDK Changelog.The Conversation Chat Platform and Conversation Chat Version attributes are available on the Conversation klass for use in insight cards, and can be added by using either the visual builder or code editor. This allows agents to navigate to any chat conversation and view which platform and version your customers are using.Add attributes to a card using the visual builderTo use this method, the insight card should be labeled with Visual Builder in the settings.Go to Settings and select Platform > Klasses.Select Conversation.Go to the Insight Cards tab.Edit the desired card.Select Add Attribute.Select Conversation Chat Platform and Conversation Chat Version from the list.When you're finished, Save Changes.Add attributes to a card using the code editorTo use this method, the insight card should be labeled with Code Editor in the settings.To add attributes using the code editor:Go to Settings and select Platform > Klasses.Select Conversation.Go to the Insight Cards tab.Edit the desired card.Select the Insight Card you would like to add the attributes to.Add the following code for each attribute. When you're finished, Save Changes.Conversation Chat Platform<Row field={"clientType"} value={_.get(conversation, 'firstMessageIn.firstDelivered.clientType')} object="conversation" />Conversation Chat Version<Row field={"clientVersion"} value={_.get(conversation, 'firstMessageIn.firstDelivered.clientVersion')} object="conversation" />Checking chat version and platform via APIAs an alternative to the above methods using exposed attributes, you can also make an HTTP GET request to the conversation's endpoint. This method requires more technical effort than using the other methods, but may still be useful if the earlier options aren't available.To find version information using API:Create an API key.Get the ID for the conversation you wish to investigate.Make an HTTP GETrequest to the conversation's endpoint. This address depends on the production point of deployment for your organization instance:Prod1 (US): https://api.kustomerapp.com/v1/conversations/{conversation ID}Prod2 (EU): https://api.prod2.kustomerapp.com/v1/conversations/{conversation ID}Review the returned JSON to find the firstMessageIn object.Outbound chat
Agents can initiate chat conversations with authenticated customers that are not actively viewing your site or mobile app using our outbound chat feature. Initiating conversations with a customer is beneficial in instances when you want to share information with them or need them to provide you with additional information. With outbound chat, you can:Send a push notification to a customer's device when you can't reach them via another channel such as, email.Provide updates for events, such as their refund status or a schedule change.Ask a customer to submit additional information you may need, such as proof of identity to activate a new user account.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can access Chat settings. Agents can send outbound chat messages once the feature is turned on.For pricing information, see Understand outbound chat billing.In this articleTurn on featureSend an outbound chat messageSend bulk outbound chat messagesTurn on featureGo to Appsand select Chat.Select the Settings tab and then select Turn on outbound chat.A customer can receive an outbound chat as long as they have opened your app or website at least once after the setting is turned on.Note: Outbound chat is only supported on iOS SDK v2.6.0 & higher and Android SDK v2.9.6 & higher.Send an outbound chat messageYou can send outbound chat messages to authenticated customers from directly within the timeline. To do so, select theicon and then select Start new chat . An empty message will open where you can enter the new message.Note: The Start New Chat button will not appear if the customer is not eligible to receive an outbound chat.After sending the message, customers that previously initiated chat will receive a push notification on their device, alerting them that they have a new message from an agent.Send bulk outbound chat messagesYou can send outbound chats to a group of customers at once using bulk messaging.Select Searches and then select New.Select Customers from the drop-down menu.Create your search query and then select the customers you want to message.Select Bulk Message in the toolbar and select the Chat channel.Once you are done composing your message, select Continue, and then select Send to confirm the bulk message. For more information on the options available, see Bulk Messaging.Understand proactive vs outbound chat
Kustomer provides different ways for you to proactively engage your customers in a chat conversation. The table below explains the key differences between the two.Proactive chatOutbound chatDescriptionProactively engage with customers who are actively viewing your website.1 proactive chat message is shown to many different users in the defined target audience. Example: popup after x seconds on x page.Initiate chat conversations with customers who may not be actively viewing your website or mobile app. Specific customers will receive push notifications when an outbound brand initiated conversation has been started, helping you to bring customers back into your app and provide support. Example: send a bulk chat message to customers to alert them of an upcoming sale.How to useCreate a conversational assistant rule and turn on the Proactive Chat setting to invite your customers to start a chat conversation with you using a specific dialog of your assistant flow.Agents can initiate send an outbound chat via the customer timeline or send customized chat messages using the bulk message feature.AudienceAnonymous and authenticated end customers that meets your rule criteria and are viewing your website.Authenticated end customers that have used Kustomer chat since you turned the feature on in Chat Settings.Available onWebWeb, iOS (v2.6.0+), and Android (v2.9.6+)Conversation created?Conversation does not display on the customer timeline unless the customer engages.Conversation is always created and displayed on the customer timeline.For more information on these features, see:Conversational assistant rules and proactive chatOutbound chatUnderstand outbound chat billing
You can initiate chat conversations with authenticated customers through your Kustomer chat widget. This article provides details on how to initiate these outbound chat conversations, and how these conversations are priced.Who can access this feature?User typesAdmins can turn on the outbound chat feature.In this articleHow do I initiate an outbound chat?Outbound chat usage costsHow do I track my organization's usage?How do I initiate an outbound chat?Outbound chats are conversations initiated by your agents with authenticated customers. All replies sent to or from a customer within that conversation are considered part of the same outbound chat conversation. If an agent initiates a new chat conversation with that customer after a previous conversation was marked Done, that new chat conversation will count as a new outbound chat conversation.Note: If you reopen a chat conversation that was initially started by an agent, it will be considered part of the original outbound chat and not count as a new outbound chat for the purpose of calculating your usage costs.Agents can initiate outbound chats with authenticated customers by sending:A chat message from directly within the customer's timelineA bulk chat message. You can either:Create a custom chat messageUse an existing conversational assistantOutbound chat usage costsKustomer provides each plan type a monthly bundle of outbound chat conversations for free every billing month. Once your organization goes over the monthly limit, you will be charged per outbound chat sent per the table below. PlanOutbound chat conversation monthly bundleOverage costPro1,000$.001Business2,000$.001Enterprise5,000$.001Ultimate10,000$.001See this page for more information. How do I track my organization's usage?You can track how many outbound chats you've sent by going to Settingsand selecting Billing > Manage Subscription. Expand the Monthly Add-on section and look for the Usage section for Outbound Chat. Here, you can see the total amount of outbound chats included in your plan, as well as how many you have sent over your monthly bundle and the current overage cost. Note: It can take up to one hour for usage totals to update after sending an outbound chat.
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