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AurionAI

Set up live chat

11 min readBy Emmanuel Yazbeck

With live chat, a visitor in the web widget can ask to talk to a person. An agent of your team then takes the chat in the Inbox and writes to the visitor live. While an agent is in the chat, the bot stays silent. When nobody can take the chat, the bot asks about the problem and files a ticket. On the Live Chat page you turn live chat on, choose the teams that take the chats, and set the limits, timers and texts.

Availability: Helpdesk and AI Voice + Helpdesk profiles, with the Aurion Inbox as your customer service tool. Administrators only.

Who sees this

  • Owners and administrators open and change the settings.
  • Agents of the teams you choose receive the chat offers in the dashboard and answer the chats in the Inbox.
  • Supervisors, administrators and owners also see the list of waiting chats while a chat waits.
  • Visitors of your website and Help Center use live chat in the widget.

Prerequisites

  • You have the Owner or Admin role. Other users see Access Denied.
  • Your organization uses the Helpdesk or the AI Voice + Helpdesk profile. With the AI Voice profile, there is no Live Chat page.
  • The Aurion Inbox is your customer service tool. Read Integrations overview.
  • The web widget is turned on for your website. Read Add the web widget to your site.
  • You have at least one team with agents. Read Teams.

Open the live chat settings

  1. In the sidebar, select Configuration.
  2. Open the AI category.
  3. Select Live Chat.

The Live Chat card opens. At the top, View the live chat report opens the live chat report.

Without the Aurion Inbox, the card shows: "Live chat needs the Aurion Inbox. Connect the Aurion Inbox as your customer service tool to turn it on. Until then the bot answers every chat." All fields are greyed out and there is no Save button.

Turn on live chat

Live chat is off when you start.

  1. Turn on Live chat with agents.
  2. In Team for IT chats, select the team that takes chats about IT support.
  3. In Team for customer service chats, select the team that takes customer service chats.
  4. Select Save. You see "Live chat settings saved."

The widget sends each chat to the IT support line or to the customer service line, as before. Each line uses its own team. A lane with no team has no live chat: the bot files a ticket instead. If your organization has no IT support line, set only Team for customer service chats.

Bot answers first

Bot answers first is on when you start. The bot answers the visitor, and the visitor can ask for a person at any time. When you turn it off, the bot does not answer questions: each message of a visitor is a request for a person. If nobody can take the chat, the bot asks one fixed question about the problem and files a ticket.

Who can receive a chat

AurionAI offers a waiting chat to one agent at a time. An agent can receive an offer only when all of these are true:

  • The agent is a member of the team of that line, is an active user and has accepted the invitation.
  • The availability status of the agent allows assignment, for example Online. Read Agent availability and log.
  • The agent has the dashboard open, on any page. About two minutes after the agent closes the dashboard, they receive no more offers.
  • The agent has fewer live chats than Live chats per agent.
  • The team is open. When the team is linked to business hours, live chat works only during those hours. A team without business hours is always open. Read Business hours.

Among these agents, AurionAI chooses the one with the fewest live chats. With a tie, it chooses the agent who started a live chat the longest time ago. When a visitor comes back within 24 hours of a live chat, the new request goes first to the agent of that earlier chat, if that agent can take it.

The agent sees the New live chat pop-up, on any dashboard page, with "A visitor is waiting for an agent." and the buttons Accept and Decline. When the agent selects Accept, the Inbox opens the chat. When the agent declines or does not answer in time, AurionAI offers the chat to the next agent. An agent who declined does not get the same chat again. After two offers in a row with no answer, the status of the agent changes to Away.

While a chat waits, supervisors, administrators and owners see the Waiting chats list. They can select Take to take a chat, or Assign to give it to an agent.

Set the limits and timers

All values are whole numbers of 1 or more. Times are in seconds, up to 86400 (one day).

Setting Default What it does
Wait limit (seconds) 300 How long a visitor waits for an agent. At half this time, the agents and the supervisors of the team get an alert. At the end, the bot apologizes and asks about the problem for a ticket.
Maximum waiting chats 10 How many chats can wait at the same time, up to 50. When the queue is full, a new request goes straight to the ticket questions.
Live chats per agent 3 How many live chats one agent can have at the same time, up to 50. An agent at this limit gets no new offers.
Time to accept an offer (seconds) 30 How long an agent has to accept an offer before it goes to the next agent.
Wait after the user leaves (seconds) 120 When the visitor closes the widget while waiting, the chat waits this long. Then AurionAI files a ticket with the chat so far.
User idle before "Are you still there?" (seconds) 300 When the visitor does not answer the last message of the agent for this long, the widget asks "Are you still there?" (or your own text).
Then close the chat after (seconds) 300 When the visitor still writes nothing after that question, the chat closes.
Agent idle before an alert (seconds) 180 When the agent does not answer a message of the visitor for this long, the agent gets an alert: "A visitor is waiting for your reply".
Then alert a supervisor after (seconds) 180 When the agent still does not reply after that alert, the supervisors of the team get an alert.

Change the values and select Save. The Save button stays greyed out while a value is empty or out of range, and while nothing has changed.

Rating and email copy

Ask for a rating is on when you start. After the chat, the user can rate it good or bad. When an agent took the chat, the visitor sees, after the chat, "How was this chat?" with Good and Bad, and can add a comment. The visitor can rate a chat once. Turn the switch off to stop asking. You see the ratings in the Live chat report.

After a chat that an agent took, the visitor can also select Email me a copy. AurionAI sends the text of the chat once to the email address of the visitor. There is no setting for the email copy.

Change the texts and languages

You can change five messages that the visitor sees: Waiting in the queue, Agent joined, Being transferred, Chat ended (without a ticket) and Question to an idle user.

  1. In Language of the texts, select a language. All 11 languages of AurionAI are in the list.
  2. Type your text in a field. Each text can have up to 300 characters. The texts the user sees in this language. An empty field uses the default shown in grey. Words in curly brackets are filled in.
  3. Repeat for each language you need.
  4. Select Save.

For example, the default text for Agent joined is "{name} joined the chat". The widget shows the name of the agent in place of {name}. The widget shows the texts in the language of the visitor.

What the visitor sees

  1. The visitor selects Talk to a human in the widget, or writes that they want a person.
  2. On the customer service line, a visitor who is not signed in and gave no email address is asked for one: "To connect you with an agent, please enter your email address first." On the IT support line, a visitor who is not signed in is asked to sign in first.
  3. When an agent can take the chat, the bot says your Waiting in the queue text. The default is "I am connecting you to an agent. You are number 2. Wait time about 3 minutes." with the real number and time. The widget shows the place in the queue, the note "A human may read this chat.", and two buttons. Leave a message instead leaves the queue, and the bot asks about the problem for a ticket. Back to the assistant leaves the queue and goes back to the bot.
  4. When an agent accepts, the visitor sees the joined text with the name of the agent. Messages from the agent look different from bot messages. The widget shows an End chat button.
  5. The visitor or the agent ends the chat. The visitor sees "The chat has ended." (or your own text), then the rating and Email me a copy.

When nobody is available

When no agent can take the chat, the visitor does not wait in a queue. This happens outside the business hours of the team, when no agent of the team is available, when the queue is full, when the line has no team, and when live chat is off. The bot asks: "Before I pass this on: describe the problem in a few words, and tell me what you already tried." After the answer, AurionAI files a ticket with the chat and the answer, and the bot gives the visitor the ticket number.

When the wait limit ends, or when no agent of the team is available any more while the visitor waits, the bot says: "Sorry, no agent can join this chat right now." and asks the same question.

A visitor can wait for an agent three times per hour. After that, the bot goes straight to the ticket question. The bot files up to three tickets per hour for a visitor. A new request in the same chat within 10 minutes gives the number of the ticket already filed.

While a chat is live

Only the agent who has the chat can write to the visitor. Other agents and supervisors who open the chat see "This chat is live with another agent. You can add a private note." They have no reply box. They can use Private note, which the visitor never sees.

The same rule applies to other ways of writing to the visitor:

  • An AI answer card in the chat works only for the agent who has the chat. For anyone else, the card shows "This chat is live with another agent." and nothing is sent.
  • A bulk reply to several conversations skips a chat that is live with another agent, with the message "This chat is not live with you." The other conversations are updated.

While a chat is live, replies go only to the widget, not by email. The agent can transfer the chat, convert it to a ticket or end it.

If something goes wrong

  • The fields are greyed out. Your organization does not use the Aurion Inbox as its customer service tool. Connect it first. Read Integrations overview.
  • There is no Live Chat page. Your organization uses the AI Voice profile, or you are not an owner or administrator.
  • The selected team no longer exists. Choose another team. Someone deleted the team. Choose another team and save again.
  • The live chat settings could not be loaded. Reload the page.
  • The live chat settings could not be saved. Check the values and try again.
  • Visitors always get the ticket question. Check that Live chat with agents is on, that the line has a team, that the team is open, and that at least one member has an available status, has the dashboard open and is below Live chats per agent.
  • An agent stopped getting offers. The agent may have missed two offers and now has the status Away. The agent can set the status back. Read Your status and availability.

Still stuck? Submit a request or .