How to get started with live chat

You can use live chat to talk in real time with your visitors. Your team can handle more complicated and sensitive issues with 

Where to find the live chat inbox

You can find the new live chat inbox by clicking on Live chat link in the top navigation.

Where to find your live chat settings

Once you have clicked on the Live Chat link in the top navigation. On the left side, you will see a settings link, click this to go to your live chat settings.

How to turn live chat on / off

Livechat is turned on by default for your account. If you want to turn off Livechat go to live chat Settings, then click on the Disable Live chat and toggle the option Turn live chat Off

When the toggle is Off : This is the default setting, livechat is turned on and will be displayed on your bots. Your leads will be able to send you livechat messages.

When the toggle is On: This means Livechat is turned off. Livechat message field will be hidden from your visitors and they won't be able to contact you via livechat.

How to set your online/offline status

There are two options to control your availability on Continually. You can configure the live chat app to show you as Online when you or your agents are logged into Continually or you can set fixed working hours for live chat.

1. Checking availability across signed in agents

This is the default setting for your live chat availability. You can find its settings by going to the Availability section in Live chat Settings, under the status detection choose the "Check availability across signed in agents" option. 

What if I am signed out?

When you are signed out of Continually your status will automatically be set to offline.

What effect does this have for me?

When your availability is set to offline, you will no longer receive any live chat pop up notifications even when you are still signed in and working on Continually.

What effect does this have for my visitors?

In your settings, you can choose to send automatic responses. We check to see if any of your team are online in order for us to determine which automatic response we send. 

If your agents are offline, we display a note above the message field for your visitors to say "We are currently offline, leave a message and we will get back ASAP". This helps your customers know not to expect and immediate response.

2. Setting fixed working hours for live chat

Go to the Availability section in the Live Chat Settings. Choose Set company's days & hours available in the Status detection settings. Now set time zone and the hours you want to be shown as Online for your leads and visitors. You can click on the + button to add more time slots.

What if I am signed out?

Even if you are signed out, you will still be shown as Online during the working hours.

What if I want to add a break in-between the working hours?

You can set the working hours for each day individually or you can combine a few days that have the same settings. If you want to add a break in the working hours, add them in two slots. For example, let's assume your team works from Monday to Friday from 9 Am to 5 PM but you have a break from 2 PM to 3 PM. Your working hours should be from 9 AM to 2 PM, then you add another slot from 3PM to 5 PM. 

What will happen when I'm offline?

In your settings, you can choose to capture the lead's email/phone when you are offline, and you can choose to send automatic responses if you are offline as well. We will check your working hours and if you are outside the working hours we display a note above the message field for your visitors to say "We are currently offline, leave a message and we will get back ASAP". This helps your customers know not to expect and immediate response.

How to manage your inbox using chat status.

One new feature we implemented to help your support team keep on top of your live chat is chat status. We have added 3 labels to help you determine which customers need support right away and which conversations can be closed and removed from your inbox.

  NEW   - Chats that come in which have no response from you or your team (need attention)

  OPEN  - We automatically update the status to open once there is a response from you or one of your team (You or an agent has responded but still may need attention)

  CLOSED   - This is a chat that has been closed by you or your team. Once closed it can be re-opened again. Closed chats will not be displayed in All active chats and will be stored in the closed folder. (No longer needs attention)

Customize your notifications and sound effects.

With our new live chat app, we have added some notifications to help notify you when someone gets in touch or starts using your bot. To control these notifications you need to go to the new live chat section, on the left click on settings, then select live chat settings.

In app pop up notifications

These are notifications that appear on your screen when you go to another page in Continually outside of the new live chat app. These will link you to the chat directly so you can quickly start responding.

System notifications

These are notifications that are sent from your browser. Once you have system notifications enabled in your live chat settings your browser will then require you to give Continually permission to send these notifications.

This permission step will only appear when Continually tries to send your first notification then you will get a pop up asking to give permission.

System notifications

If you do not get this permission question and are still not receiving system notifications, you may need to go to your browser settings > permissions > notifications and check to see if you have blocked Continually from sending notifications.

Sound effects

We have added a sound effect for each of our notifications inside Continually which you can turn on / off. We have also added a sound effect for new messages that appear in your inbox. So if you are chatting with a customer and a second customer responds, we play the sound effect to alert you of their new message without sending a pop-up notification.

Start new conversation Button

How to enable it?

In your live chat settings, there is a new option for you to enable this button. Once you have enabled it you are then able to assign any bot to that button. This means whenever a returning visitor comes back to your website, they can easily start a new conversation without having to return to an old one.

 From your settings, you can also edit the placeholder text and color of the button on our sidebar home screen.

Using Slack with our live chat

You can still use Slack to message customers on your website. Simply connect your workspace and select a channel to send the live chat notifications.

Once you send a response on Slack, we will update that conversation in your Continually live chat inbox so you can always see when an agent has responded in Slack.

Slack status

We have removed the ability to use your Slack status to determine your online / offline availability. We found the Slack status was not as reliable as we would have liked. Your status is not set by the online / offline switcher in the top left of the new live chat section.

Using commands

We have added commands for your to quickly capture lead information. To see the list of commands you can use just hover on the commands link to see a pop-out menu. 

To use a command you can either click on the command from the pop-out menu, or you can type the command at the beginning of your sentence.

Once you have a command at the start of your message, you can customize the message that gets sent with it for example if you send:

/appointment

The default message for the /appointment will be "When suits you for a demo". 

But you can edit that message by adding your own message after the command to look like this:

/appointment Choose a date and time that suits you

Edit lead profile whilst in the live chat

In our new live chat section, we added a lead profile section for you to see any captured information on your visitor. You will be able to update the lead profile in the live chat section, whilst chatting with the visitor. Once you enter a new detail you can hit the return key and we will automatically save your change.

Active visitors - See any visitors using your bots.

In the new live chat section in the left navigation, you can see an option for Active visitors.

What is Active visitors?

Active visitors is a list of all the visitors on your site who have engaged with your bot. They can either be known or anonymous.

Why is this useful?

On the Active Visitors section, you are able to jump into their conversation at any time whether they requested live chat or not. This means you can qualify a lead and capture their email address with the bot and then take over that conversation in live chat.

How long do visitors stay as active visitors?

Each of your visitors who engage with your bots will remain in your Active Visitors inbox for 24 hours.