The Chat feature is a web-enabled chat interface that creates a messaging service between customers (current and potential) visiting your website and your agents. Chat enables a customer-initiated conversation to be instantly routed to a group of agents, who can engage the customers in a real-time messaging dialog. The Chat application is faster than email and more efficient than a voice call. Chat helps ensure that agents can provide the best customer service possible in a timely manner, which benefits both agents and customers. A website with a live chat feature improves customer satisfaction by improving agent efficiency. 

With Chat, an agent can work in multiple chat windows simultaneously and service a greater volume of calls, instead of relying on the slower one-to-one interactions that phone support requires. Because the natural cadence of chat allows for a brief pause between responses, an agent can more easily access the necessary information and determine the best solution without placing the customer on hold.

A web widget is an independent application that you can embed into your website to provide your customers (including visitors) with a single support system by enabling them to chat with an agent, access your Knowledge Base (KB) articles, or submit a ticket. Adding a web widget to a business website is becoming standard practice for the following reasons:

• Most website visitors expect the chat feature to be available on a website.
• Web chat has minimal response time and efficient issue resolution.
• Web chat provides a personable experience for customers. 

Chat Feature on the Agent Panel

Features of Chat

You can create and manage the following types of web widgets in Chat:

• Chat widget: Enables your customers to chat with an agent. 
• Knowledge Base widget: Enables your customers to access knowledge base articles. 
• Ticketing widget: Enables your customers to submit tickets through the widget.

Chat User Interface (UI)

The following provides an example of the Chat user interface (UI) for your customer:  

The Chat UI includes the following options for the customer:

• A button to accept a web call.  
• A button to decline a web call.  
• A mute button to mute the audio and an End button to end the call.
• An option to rate the chat. Customers can select 1 - 5 stars for the chat rating.

Benefits of Chat

You can use Chat to:

• Save time and money by supporting customers who need only minimal help.
• Reduce call volume for busy contact centers.
• Reduce the hold time for those customers who need human intervention.
• Create conversations on your website that improve customer satisfaction and use artificial intelligence for self-service use cases.
• Personalize the customer experience using Contacts Management.
• Provide a cohesive agent experience and add context to chats using omnichannel interaction history and tickets.
• Increase customer engagement using proactive chat.
• Reduce response time using chatbots.
• Facilitate complex issue resolution using web calling and co-browsing.
• View the supervisor and agent chat history which is available until the browser cache is cleared.

This section contains the following topics:

• Understanding and Using a Web Widget: This section describes the web widget and the functionalities associated with a web widget.
• Understanding the Web Widget Fields: This section describes the fields on the web widget configuration tabs. 
• Chat Monitor Dashboard:  This section describes the information related to chat statistics and chat monitor.