When do chats time out?

Question

What is the expected behavior for chat sessions to time out? When do idle conversations time out? Why can't I end a chat in messaging?

Answer

A conversation between an agent and an end-user comes to an end differently depending on whether your account is using live chat or messaging.

Click on each of the buttons below to understand how to end chat or messaging conversations in different setups.

End a chat in live chat

End a chat in Agent Workspace

End a conversation in messaging

End a chat session in live chat

The visitor is in control of the chat session and the chat session is considered active unless ended by the visitor in one of the following ways:

• The visitor closes their browser window and the conversation times out.
• The visitor minimizes their chat with an agent and the conversation times out.
• The visitor remains idle on the site and the conversation times out.
• The visitor ends the chat by clicking the three dots of options and then End chat.

  

The agent experience

An agent can leave a live chat, but not end the session, by following these steps:

1. Click the X button in the chat window.

   

2. Click End chat.

   

Remember: An agent can leave a live chat, but the widget stays open from the visitor side until one of the above conditions ends the chat session.

A chat can reopen and the agent will experience the following:

• If the end user chats in again after an agent leaves, it returns to the agent's queue.
• The history of their previous chat is present for the agent because it’s still considered the same chat conversation.
• Any subsequent messages are added to the chat script.
• Once the live chat has ended, all additional messages are added to the chat script history as a single entry.

Chat time-out conditions

For the Chat Mobile SDK versions, the chat conversation terminates after any of the below conditions.

• There was no activity on the chat for 1 hour.
• The visitor was disconnected for an hour.
• The agent ends the chat, at which point the session disconnect timeout is reset to 5 minutes.
• The visitor ends the chat at which time the session immediately terminates.
• If push notifications are disabled, the session will timeout 30 minutes after the user backgrounds the app.

For more information about idle statuses, see the following notes:

• In the event that the visitor closes the browser (no windows with the chat widget are open) the session times out within a timeframe of 20 seconds to 2 minutes.
• In the event that the visitor using a browser on a mobile device minimizes, tabs away from, or closes the browser containing the chat, the session times out within a timeframe of 20 seconds to 2 minutes. 
  
• In the event that the visitor idles on a site with the widget, their session stays open for 20 minutes before the session automatically ends. An idle status is defined as no mouse or keyboard input on the site for 10 minutes. The user does not need to interact with the widget itself, but must be actively working on the page the widget is loaded on. Additionally, there can be a variance of up to 5 minutes depending on their connection to Chat.

Remember: If an agent never joined the chat, that is considered a missed chat, and the conversation is moved into a ticket. A missed chat ticket won't be created until the session is ended by the visitor.

Additional resources

• Why can my customers still chat after all agents have gone offline?
• Why do missed chats have different ticket timestamps?

End a chat session in Agent Workspace

Visitors can still end chats in all the ways described in the live chat section of this article. The only difference in Agent Workspace is that the agent can end a chat in Agent Workspace with an end user by following these steps:

1. In Agent Workspace, click End chat.
2. In the pop-up window, click End chat.

   

3. The chat will show the visitor that the agent left the chat session.

End a conversation in messaging

Contrary to live chat, a session is not a customer-facing concept in messaging. The visitor does not have the ability to end a chat. Instead, conversations go through active and inactive states.

• A messaging conversation is Active when the end user and/or agents have exchanged messages in the last ten minutes. This has implications for the workload of the agent.
• A messaging conversation becomes Inactive after ten minutes of no activity elapse or the agent changes the ticket status category to On-hold, Pending, or Solved. This also releases the agent’s capacity to take new conversations or phone calls if you have omnichannel routing enabled.

Additional resources

• Using ticket tabs to manage conversations with active and inactive statuses.
• Why does my update timestamp change when there are no system or comment updates in the event log?