Proactive messages

Proactive messages start the conversation before a visitor asks. Your chat widget shows a short greeting based on what the visitor is doing on your site. When the visitor clicks it, your AI agent follows up and the conversation begins.

You set up proactive messages for each agent in that agent's Chat settings. For the other chat widget settings, see the Chat settings article.

Where to find them

Open your agent and go to its Chat settings.
Scroll to the Proactive messages section, which sits below Deploy.

The section has three parts:

Messages: the list of this agent's proactive messages.
Start from a template: ready-made messages you can edit.
Frequency: a delay that applies to every proactive message on the agent.

How proactive messages are shown

Only one proactive message shows per visit.
If the chat is already open, a proactive message never shows.
If a visitor opened the chat in the last 24 hours, a proactive message never shows.
If a visitor closes a proactive message, no other proactive message shows for the rest of that visit.
When several messages match, the one highest in the list wins. Drag the handle on a row to reorder the list.
An agent can have up to 20 proactive messages. At 20, the New proactive message button and the templates are disabled, and a tooltip explains the limit.

Create a proactive message

Select New proactive message, or pick a template under Start from a template. Either one opens the editor. Fill it in and select Save. Select Cancel to close it. If you have unsaved changes, you're asked to confirm discarding them.

Name

A label for your team. Visitors never see it. It can be up to 100 characters.

Trigger

Choose when the message should appear:

Visitor is on a page: the visitor is on a page that matches your URL rules. Add at least one rule. Each rule matches a page URL by contains, is exactly, starts with, or matches wildcard. You can add up to 10 URL rules with Add URL. You can also set how many seconds the visitor must be on the page first, from 0 to 600.
Returning visitor: the visitor has been here before. You can optionally require a minimum number of days since their last visit (0 to 365) and limit the message to specific pages.
Idle on page: the visitor has had no activity for a set number of seconds, from 15 to 600. The default is 45. You can optionally limit it to specific pages.
Frustration (rage clicks): the visitor clicks the same spot 3 or more times within a second. You can optionally limit it to specific pages.
Custom event: your own site code triggers the message by calling WeavWidget.trigger('your_event_name'). Enter the event name in the editor. Use 1 to 64 letters, numbers, periods, underscores, colons, or hyphens.

Opening message

The text shown in the bubble and as the first chat message. It can be up to 500 characters.

Mobile text is an optional shorter version for small screens, up to 60 characters. If you leave it empty, it defaults to the opening message cut to 60 characters.

Instructions

Extra guidance for the AI agent. It's added on top of the agent's own instructions for the rest of that chat. It can be up to 5000 characters.

Select Use this agent's sales instructions to also apply the agent's sales instructions.

AI follow-up when clicked

When this is on, the AI asks a short, personalized question after the visitor clicks, to get the conversation going. It's on by default.

Display

The Display settings control how and how often the message appears:

Desktop: choose whether the message shows as a bubble or opens the chat directly.
Mobile: choose whether the message shows as Bubble or Don't show.
Keep showing until: choose when the message stops showing: Seen, They interact, or They reply.
Show at most: limit how often a visitor sees the message: Once per visit, Once every 24 hours, Once every 7 days, or Once ever.

Preview

The editor has a live preview with Desktop, Mobile, and Chat tabs. Use Hide preview or Show preview to collapse it.

Templates

Under Start from a template you can start from a pre-filled trigger, opening message and instructions, then edit anything before saving:

Pricing page help
Capture a lead
Frustrated visitor
Returning visitor
Idle on a form
Custom event

Manage your messages

Each row in the list shows the message name and a summary of its trigger. From the row you can:

Turn the message on or off with the switch.
Open the ⋯ menu to choose Edit, Reporting, Duplicate, or Delete. Deleting asks you to confirm and can't be undone.
Drag the row to change its priority.

Reporting

Reporting shows results for the last 30 days: Shown, Opened, Dismissed, Replied, Leads, and Resolved. It also shows open and reply rates. Select View conversations → to see the conversations that message started in your inbox.

To see every conversation started by a proactive message, select View all proactive conversations → below the list.

In your inbox

Conversations started by a proactive message show Started by: in the conversation details.

The inbox also has a Proactive message filter with Any proactive message or one specific message.

Frequency (minimum delay)

Under Frequency, set Wait at least a number of seconds after page load before any proactive message appears. It applies to every proactive message on this agent. You can set 0 to 120 seconds, and the default shown is 5.

Good to know

Changes to the list, such as creating, editing, reordering, or turning a message on or off, show a confirmation message at the top of the screen.
Only active messages are shown to visitors. An agent with no active proactive messages shows none.
Proactive messages appear in your embedded chat widget, so the widget must already be installed on your site (see Installation in Chat settings).