Email, chat and forms

Customers reach you by email, through the chat widget on your site and through request forms. This page covers the settings that decide where their messages go and how they look. See also Email settings, Set up the chat widget and Chats with visitors.

The channel matrix

Settings → Channels → Channel matrix has one row per channel account. Channel accounts (incoming mailboxes and messaging channels) come with Cliedesk Pro; without them the matrix is empty. For each row choose the Product, Queue, Type and CSAT (the product setting, on or off). You need Manage channels (Cliedesk Admins and Owners).

Each save is a new version. Select History to see what changed, and Restore to go back to an earlier version. The first version holds the starting values. The AI column is available with Cliedesk Pro.

Email in Free

Cliedesk Free sends email: replies, notices and system emails. Customers answer in the portal, through the link View and reply in the portal in each email. Agents can start an email conversation, add Cc and Bcc, and Forward a conversation from the composer. See Email settings.

Incoming mailboxes, support addresses (forwarded addresses and wildcards), answers by email, Show quoted text and View original are available with Cliedesk Pro.

Delivery problems

When the mail server refuses a reply (for example “550 user unknown”), the reply is marked failed with the reason in plain words and goes to Needs attention. Resend sends it once more.

Chat widget appearance

Settings → Chat widget sets the colour, logo, theme (light, dark or the visitor’s device), launcher style, position and the distance from the screen edges. The preview on the right updates as you type. Switch it between Desktop and Mobile, and between A guest visitor and A signed-in customer.

Turn on Show visitors “Seen” when the team has read their message to show a read marker in the chat. When it is off, visitors see no read state.

Where the chat shows

Besides pages, post types, guests or signed-in users and devices, you can limit the widget to Roles of signed-in visitors and Customer segments. On pages where the widget is hidden, nothing of it loads.

Settings → Developer → Setup Health shows whether the widget loaded in the last 7 days, names a plugin that may delay it (such as a JavaScript optimizer), and shows its measured size.

Earlier chats for guests

A guest who chatted from another device can choose Chatted with us before? Confirm your email in the widget. Cliedesk emails a 6-digit code; after the code, the earlier conversations show there too. On the chat page, an email from the link stays unconfirmed until the customer confirms it the same way.

An email address typed into the chat is only a claim until it is confirmed with a code. Until then the guest sees only their chats, not email or form requests from that address, and the address never opens orders in the portal. A guest contact keeps at most one typed address, and a typed address is never added to a signed-in customer. When someone confirms an address for the first time, other open chat windows that only typed it are signed out and start a new chat session.

Shop details in chats

With WooCommerce, a chat message sent from a product page shows the product, and the cart with its total, under the message. Cliedesk never stores the visitor’s IP address.

Rich replies

Replies sent through the API can carry buttons, link cards, order cards (only the customer’s own orders) and a short form. The chat shows them as they are; email gets numbered options and a list of the details to send back.

Request form page

example.com/support/request/ shows a request form on a page of its own. Other websites can show it in an iframe only when you list them under Other websites that may show the request form in an iframe.

Forms from other plugins

Turning submissions of Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Fluent Forms and Formidable into conversations is part of Cliedesk Pro. Without Pro, Settings → Forms shows it with a PRO badge; the Cliedesk request form above works in every edition.

Phone calls

Cliedesk Free does not place calls, but you can log them.

1. In a conversation, select Log call…. To start a new conversation from a call, choose Log a phone call; nothing is sent in the new conversation form.
2. Choose They called or We called, and enter the Phone number, Minutes and Notes.
3. Select Log call.

The call is saved as a message that only agents see. Nothing is sent to the customer. A new conversation started this way has the phone channel. An AI summary of the call is available with Cliedesk Pro.