You can require customers to enter information, like name, phone number, or a question, by enabling the pre-chat form.
To enable the pre-chat form
- From the dashboard, select Settings > Widget.
- Click Forms at the top of the page.
- Next to Pre-Chat Form, click On.
- Select the information you want end users to enter before they can start a chat, like in the example below:
Some of the displayed options vary depending on your settings in other areas:
-
For the Require Phone Number option to appear, you must select Allow Phone Number under the Visitor Profile section of the same page.
-
For the Require Department option to appear, you have to have departments enabled. For details, see Creating agents and departments.
In rare situations, information required in the pre-chat form may not be passed into the chat:
- If the chat is started by a proactive trigger, the pre-chat form requirement is bypassed and chats can be created without users having to fill in their name and email address. For more information, see Why do I keep receiving chats with no customer contact information?
- If a chat is interrupted or disconnected, pre-chat data may not be reapplied upon reconnection, including department and visitor tags.
For more information, see How do I customize the pre-chat form?
32 Comments
Hello,
Is it possible to use a pre-configured ticket forms (contact form) before starting a chat instead of the given pre-chat.-form?
To explain: To start a chat we require the custom ticket fields that are configured in the ticket forms.
Thanks
Hi @...
Unfortunately it is not possible to switch or edit the pre-chat form. This is a limitation of the chat product. That being said, there are some work arounds explained in this article: How to customize the pre-chat form.
I hope that helps!
Hello !
Thank you for all this information!
I have a question about the Chat preform :
- I display the Chat in the Help Center.
- When my visitor is not connected, it is normal to ask for his email and his name in the preform.
- On the other hand, when he is connected, I would like not to ask him and automatically recognize him in my chat.
- When I start the chat, my visitor authenticated on the HC is not recognized in the Chat ... and he is asked for his name and email in the preform.
Do you have a solution ?
Thanks !
Serge.
Hi Serge,
If you'd like to have a visitor authentication on your WebWidget, you can do so by setting up JWT authentication. You can find the steps to do so in this articles.
If the user is authenticated successfully, then the name and email won't be asked and they'll simply have to enter their message and the chat will start.
Hope that this helps!
Hello, I implemented the integration of visitors
through jwt, so my customers click on a button on
my website and then they are directed to the
zendesk support screen, there is only one problem,
on this screen there is the chat and I noticed
that the "name" fields and "e-mail" although
already filled in, they can be edited.
how can I do so that the user cannot edit
these fields in the pre-chat?
Hi Raphael, you can hide the fields using Javascript, you just need to change my "xszt60-1.dLJShQ" for your widget's unique ID:
<script type="text/javascript">
zE('webWidget:on', 'open', function () {
var style = document.createElement('style');
style.innerHTML = `.xszt60-1.dLJShQ > div:nth-child(1) {display: none;}`;
style.innerHTML += `.xszt60-1.dLJShQ > div:nth-child(2) {display: none;}`;
parent.document.getElementById('webWidget').contentDocument.head.appendChild(style);
});
</script>
Hello,
We are working on enabling chat for our company. We would like to customize the prechat form, and I do understand it is done via SDK/API for the widget. However, we will be utilizing the link and not the widget to initiate chat. Is it still possible to customize this prechat form?
Hi Nicole!
Thanks for reaching out!
My understanding is you are going to use the direct link to a live chat popout window instead of using the widget and wanting to customize the pre-chat form.
Unfortunately, it's not possible to customize the pre-chat form in the direct link. By default, it would follow your Widget appearance settings from the Chat dashboard. You could only customize the language from a direct chat link.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Adrian
I'm not seeing the pre-chat form in settings --> widget. Is this still there?
Kate, I still see it there. Settings (in chat, not Support) --> Widget and then Forms on the top bar.
After enabling the form, customers are no longer give the option to chat in the widget. They are only given the option to leave a mesage.
Is this a known issue?
Do you have business hours set that may be preventing the chat option, and/or maybe no agents are currently online (which I think would disable the chat feature)?
I don't know much, but hopefully these are two spots you can check until someone from ZenDesk can reply to you.
@... Thanks! That helped. I had been on invisible!
i go to settings under Chat and when you go to the web widget it takes you to the new messaging channel settings. where is this rechat form located at now to edit? i have been through all the messaging channel settings already.
You can find the Web Widget settings from the Chat product page settings. Go to the Zendesk product tray from the upper right corner. Select Chat, go to Settings, and then select Widget.
From there, go to the Forms tab and from there you can see the Pre-chat form settings.
Thank you and have a wonderful day ahead!
Kind regards,
Why my chat settings different from yours? Pls check screenshot
A lot of the chat documentation in the Help Centre doesn't align with the Web Widget Classic. Where can I find these features using Web Widget Classic or have they been removed?
There are some Chat-focused articles listed here: Web Widget (Classic) resources
Agreed with John Andrew Asaria.
When I go to chat>settings. I see most of the options in the screenshot but there is no web widget setting. Is this page referencing an older version of web widget or something? Kind of difficult sometimes to know when the instructions apply to new Zendesk or old Zendesk so that can be annoying. We is the pre-chat form located now?
I encounter the same issue as John Andrew Asaria and Zach Combs - the supposed widget settings to configure the pre-chat form are not where the documentation on this page indicates and I can't locate them elsewhere.
Could it be related to the fact that I only just switched from classic to new widget and the settings need to propagate internally? Without customising the pre-chat message the new widget is not useful to me.
Regards,
David
It appears that this article applies to the old classic widget. How do you setup the pre-chat messaging requirements (like forcing email and name) in the new web widget?
Thanks,
Jason
Hello,
I am trying to set up the pre-chat form, it is enabled in settings>widget but it does not appear to function when starting a new chat- could this be because we are using the mobile version of the chat? We offer chat on both mobile and desktop versions of our site, the form does not appear when initiating from either platform:
Xavier C the pre-chat form is working fine on desktop and mobile web for your account.
If you are talking about the mobile SDK integrations in your app, you need to specify the pre-chat fields to be shown in code and it doesn't rely on the Chat dashboard settings: https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/classic-web-widget-sdks/chat-sdk-v2/android/customizing_the_look/
Hi John Andrew Asaria, Zach Combs & David!
These settings only apply to Web Widget (Classic). Newer accounts have Messaging enabled by default but once you disable it, these chat features would show up in your chat dashboard. Hope this helps!
Hello,
I'm trying to update Zendesk chat version in my code. When I updated from $zopim to new version, and if I start chat conversation with an agent and refresh the page, the chat window is getting refreshed and asking to fill in all details again and starts a new chat all over again. That issue was not happening with $zopim version.
I noticed that there is a localStorage object called "ZD-store" getting reset for every page refresh, which shouldn't happen once the chat is started I believe (specifically the key in the object named "is_chatting"). I'm guessing that Zendesk API is resetting it for every page refresh. How do I stop that object from resetting?
Can anyone please help me with this issue? Has anyone faced this issue with new version?
It should also be the same not unless you are using Messaging or have added API on your script.
Hi,
I can see that we can add a greeting message, however can only be plain text.
Is there a way to have a message or header appear once a customer comes through to live chat, advising the use of customer data and a link to our company's privacy policy?
Hello Shannon, I hope you are well! Thank you for your question.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, the pre-chat form does not support markdown or HTML, so it is currently not possible to add a hyperlink. As of now, the only possibility would be to have the URL as plain text.
But this is a good suggestion to have. I can recommend that you create a feedback Post in our Community requesting this feature here.
You can explain your use case and the more traction this post gets, the more chances there are for our Development team to consider implementing this in the future.
I hope this was helpful!
Is it possible to completely hide the Choose a department option? (Not just make selecting a department optional, but hide the drop-down menu completely).
I had to set up a department-centered schedule in order to end chat early on a specific day each week and restart it later that same day. (There's no other way do to do this, unfortunately, that I can see).
But now, even though I have the Choose a department feature set to optional, our customers would still see the drop down menu, including the name of the chat group/department.
It would be MUCH easier if I could either:
1) set an account-based schedule that allows for a break during the day (i.e. starting chat at 8AM, turning off chat from 11AM-12PM every day, then turning it on again from 12-3)
or
2) use a department-driven schedule that doesn't force me to show the department choices to the customer.
Hello
I don't seem to have the option to enable the Department under the Pre-chat form.
Any ideas?
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