Visitors

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Overview

A visitor is a person who has used your chat widget. Custral remembers each one, so a returning visitor picks up their earlier chats, and adds them to your CRM as a record once they share their details.

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When someone becomes a visitor

With the script tag from the Install tab, a visitor is added when the chat loads, not when your page loads:

• when someone reaches for the chat button (points at it, tabs to it, or taps it);
• straight away for someone with a chat under way, so your replies reach them;
• straight away on a page whose page note is about to show.

People who never go near the chat aren’t counted. The React component loads the chat with the page, so there every page view can add a visitor. New visitors are anonymous. They appear as “Anonymous Visitor” until they give a name or email, in the intake questions or in the chat.

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How a returning visitor is recognised

• On the same browser, by a session the widget keeps there. A visitor’s chats stay on the browser they started on.
• On any device, when your site passes an identity token for a signed-in customer. The token names the person, so their laptop and their phone share one visitor and one history.
• Never by a browser fingerprint alone. Someone else on the same computer doesn’t get a signed-in customer’s chats.

When someone signs out of your site, have the widget forget them with CustralChat.reset(). See Signing a visitor out.

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Adding visitors to your CRM

A visitor with a name or an email, or one your server identified, is added to your CRM:

1. If they’re already linked to a record, that record is updated.
2. Otherwise, a record in the same object with the same email is linked and updated.
3. Otherwise, a new record is created, named after them.

This happens when they give their details and when they start a chat. A visitor with an identity token is added as soon as the chat loads. Where records go. Settings → Chat Widget → Settings → Visitor Sync → Sync Visitors to Object picks the object. Leave it empty and visitors go to your Contacts object. What a visitor can change. Details a visitor typed only fill empty fields on the record. They never replace a name, email or phone number that’s already there, because anyone can type a customer’s email into a chat. Details from an identity token do replace what’s stored. Only identified visitors. Turn on Only add visitors your server has identified and only visitors with an identity token reach your CRM. Everyone else can still chat. Leave it off unless every page with the widget passes a token. Above the switch, the card says how many recent visitors your server identified. “None of your last 20 visitors were identified by your server” means your site isn’t passing identity tokens.

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What you see about a visit

Every website chat records where the visitor came from, shown on the conversation’s Account tab under This visit: Network names the company that owns the visitor’s internet connection, when that is a company with its own network, such as a large employer or a university. It’s looked up on Custral’s servers and costs nothing. Home and mobile providers (Comcast, Verizon), cloud hosts and VPNs are never shown, because they say nothing about who is behind the connection. Company comes from Identify companies, which is off by default. Turn it on in Settings → Chat Widget → Settings → Features. Each new chat’s connection is looked up with People Data Labs to name the company, its industry and its size, for 10 credits per company found and nothing when none is. It works best for visitors on office networks and VPNs; people browsing from home usually can’t be identified. When the company matches a company record by its domain, the Account tab offers Open; otherwise Create company record adds it. Turn off Visit details in the same place and none of this is collected: the widget stops noting pages and the company is never looked up.

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Using the Visitors screen

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Troubleshooting

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