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Overview

When a customer is signed in to your site, the chat widget can treat them as someone you already know. It greets them by name, shows the teammate who owns their record, sends their chat to that teammate, and books meetings on that teammate’s calendar. A visitor counts as a known customer only when your own server says who they are, with an identity token. An email someone types into the chat is never enough to show them anything from your CRM.

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What a known customer sees

  • A greeting by name: “Hi Priya! Ask me anything, or Dana can take it from here.” When no assistant is answering, the greeting says when Dana usually replies instead.
  • Their owner in the header: Dana’s name and picture, with “Your account manager”. Outside your office hours the header says when the team is back.
  • “Talk to Dana” in place of “Talk to a person”. It hands the chat over the same way.
  • “Book time with Dana” under the greeting, when Meeting Scheduling is on and Dana has a calendar connected. The booking screen says whose calendar it is and where the invite goes, without asking for an email.
Visitors your site hasn’t verified see the widget as usual.

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The owner

The owner is the teammate named in the record’s Owner person field. If your object calls that field something else, pick it under Owner property. A teammate who has left the workspace is no longer anyone’s owner.

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Chats go to the owner first

A new chat from a visitor linked to a record goes to the record’s owner, and so does a chat the assistant hands over. Your team sees a note in the conversation, visible only to them:
Routed to Dana Kim, the owner of Northwind Traders. Verified by your site.
This also works for a returning visitor whose typed email matched a record. The note then says “Not verified: matched from details they entered”, and the visitor sees no names. With no owner, or outside your office hours, the chat follows your routing rules as usual.

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Not asking twice

A returning visitor isn’t asked again for the name, email or phone number they already gave. The intake card says what it skipped: “We have your name and email from last time. One more thing:”. Their answers still reach the record. Verified customers aren’t shown the intake questions at all.

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Booking with the owner

With Book with the owner on, a verified customer’s meeting goes on their owner’s calendar when the owner has one connected, and on the workspace calendar otherwise. The booking is saved in the conversation as a card, so it’s still there after a reload and your team sees it in the inbox.

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Settings

Everything is on by default. Find it in Settings → Chat Widget → Settings → Known customers: The table under the switches shows what changes for each kind of visitor.

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Good to know

  • A visitor who only typed an email can fill in empty fields on their record, but never change a value that’s already there. Only a verified customer’s details replace what’s stored.
  • The widget never receives record or user IDs, only names.
  • A signed-out visitor is anonymous again. Call CustralChat.reset() when someone signs out of your site. See Widget Install.

Visitors

How widget visitors are tracked and synced to records.

Chat Routing

Where a chat goes when there’s no owner.