Website chat

Website chat adds a round chat button to the corner of your site. A visitor clicks it, writes a message, and the conversation lands in Conversations, where your team replies. No third-party account is needed: you add one line to your site.

Before you start

• Who can do it: owners and administrators of the company.
• Plan: available when your plan includes Conversations inbox and Website chat. The number of connected channels is a plan limit.
• A pipeline: each new visitor gets a contact and a deal in the stage you choose. See Deals and pipelines.
• Access to your site's code, or a plugin that lets you add a line of code to every page.

Step 1: add the channel

1. In the sidebar open Conversations, then click Channels.
2. Open Connect Website chat and fill in:

3. Click Add channel. The card shows your domain and the line under Add this line to your website, before the closing body tag.

Step 2: add the line to your site

1. Copy the line from the channel card.
2. Paste it into every page where the chat should appear, just before the end of the page body. On WordPress, use a plugin that adds code to the footer, or your theme's footer settings.
3. Open your site. A round chat button appears in the bottom corner.

The chat works on the domain and all its subdomains. It does not work on other domains, even if the line is pasted there.

If your site sets a Content Security Policy, allow https://rutbacrm.com in script-src and connect-src, or the button will not load.

Step 3: test it

1. Open your site in a private window and click the chat button.
2. Optionally fill in Name (optional) and Email (optional), write a message in Your message, and click Send.
3. In Conversations, the conversation appears with a new contact and a deal in the chosen stage.
4. Reply from the conversation. Your reply appears in the chat window within a few seconds.

What visitors see

• The button and the window follow the page's language, set in the page's lang attribute: English, Arabic (right to left), Turkish or French. Any other language shows English.
• The name and email boxes show until the first message; both are optional.
• While the window is open, it checks for replies every 5 seconds. A visitor who closes it sees the replies when they open it again.
• Messages can be up to 2000 characters. Files cannot be sent either way.

How visitors are identified

• The visitor's browser keeps a random code that alone opens their conversation. It is stored in the browser, and Rutba CRM keeps only a scrambled copy, so not even your team can act as the visitor. A visitor who clears their browser data, or changes browser or device, starts a new conversation.
• An email typed into the chat never links the visitor to an existing contact, because anyone can type a customer's email. Each new visitor becomes a new contact. If you confirm it is a known customer, merge the two; see Contacts.
• A typed email does not receive marketing, since it may not belong to the person who typed it.
• Messages are shown as plain text only.

Limits

These limits protect your inbox from floods. They can be exceeded slightly when many messages arrive at the same moment.

Good to know

• Every new visitor creates a contact and a deal. If that is too many for your pipeline, choose a stage your team reviews, and close deals that lead nowhere.
• Turn off on the channel card removes the button from your site. If your plan stops including website chat, the button disappears too.
• How your team answers, assigns and closes conversations is in Inbox.

Troubleshooting