Chat Templates

The chat widget interrupts, and the script decides whether the interruption was welcome. That's what these templates really are — pre-written conversation flows for the first sixty seconds: greetings, qualifying questions, FAQ answers, capture. The flows are worth cloning because conversation design is genuinely hard; the words are worth rewriting because canned ones announce themselves instantly.

Start with the opener, since it does the most damage or the most work. "Hi there! 👋 How can I help?" is wallpaper — visitors have dismissed it a thousand times. Page-aware specificity is the fix the flow-builders (pinned above) make easy: on the pricing page, offer the pricing question; on a product page, offer the product question. An opener that proves the widget knows where the visitor is standing earns the reply the generic one begs for.

Timing is half of welcome. Immediate pop-ups punish arrival; the workable defaults are a quiet presence that waits, opening only on signals — time on a decision page, a pricing visit, an exit movement. And not every page deserves chat at all: a reader mid-article wants nothing from you yet. Configure where the widget exists, not just what it says.

Blend bot and human honestly. The bot handles the sixty seconds — routing, FAQs, capture — and must never impersonate a person; visitors forgive automation and punish deception. Label it, let it do bounded work, and hand off cleanly with the transcript attached, inside stated human hours. A chat that closes with "a human will reply by 10am, here's what I've noted" beats one that strands the visitor pretending.