Chat With Clients on Your Booking Site
Let signed-in clients message you from your booking site and your branded app, with photos and files, and answer them from the Inbox.
Web chat is the chat on your booking site. A client who is signed in and has booked with you before opens My Messages from their profile menu and writes to you. Clients of your branded app have the same chat under Messages. What they send lands in the same thread as their texts and emails in your Inbox, and your AI receptionist answers it there when you turned it on for web chat.
Web chat needs two-way messaging. A visitor who is not signed in, or who has never booked with you, is not offered the chat: their account is not linked to a client of yours yet.
Turn web chat on or offCopy a link to this section
- Open Business Settings → Features Configuration → Website Settings.
- Switch Offer Web Chat on Website. It is on by default.
When it is off, the booking site and the app tell clients that chat is not available and offer to call, text or book instead. A message sent from a page that was already open is refused.
Let clients send photos and filesCopy a link to this section
Under Offer Web Chat on Website sits Allow Client Attachments, also on by default. With it on, clients can send photos and files along with their words, or on their own:
- Up to 5 per message, each up to 25 MB.
- Photos in any common format (iPhone HEIC photos included), PDFs, Word documents and text files. Anything else is turned away before it uploads, and the client is told why.
On the booking site, the client clicks the paperclip beside the message box, pastes a screenshot or photo straight into the box, or drags files onto the chat. Each file shows above the box with a thumbnail and a button to remove it, and the Send button shows the upload's progress.
In the branded app, the + button beside the message box offers Photo Library, Take Photo, Files and Paste Image (a picture copied from another app).
Turn Allow Client Attachments off and the paperclip and + button disappear. A message that still carries files (from a page opened before you switched it off) is refused with a message asking the client to send it without them.
What happens to a photo a client sendsCopy a link to this section
Every photo is checked for a payment card or an ID before anyone sees it, the same check a photo texted to your number gets. A card or ID photo is deleted, never shown to your team, a push or the assistant, and the message says a photo was removed. A photo the check could not read yet is held off the message and checked again; it appears once it is cleared.
Everything else appears in the thread in your Inbox: photos as thumbnails you can open, files by their name. The assistant sees the photos too, so a client can send the look they want and get an answer about it.
Clients see their own photos and files in the chat, and the ones you send them, as thumbnails that open full size and files they can download. They can only ever open files of their own chat.
StorageCopy a link to this section
Each file counts toward your business's storage, like a form attachment or a note picture. You find them under Storage, marked Sent on web chat, and deleting one there frees its space. A client can only add files while you have room left; when storage is full, their upload is refused with the reason.
Location groupsCopy a link to this section
In a location group, Offer Web Chat on Website and Allow Client Attachments belong to the booking settings the group can share, so every location can follow one policy.