Tickets

Sometimes the agent cannot help, or a visitor would rather ask a person. With tickets, the visitor hands their question to your team in the chat: they leave their e-mail address and the question, your team answers from the ticket, and the answer reaches them by e-mail. Every ticket is on the Tickets page of the agent. It is part of every paid plan, from Starter up.

Switching it on#

On the agent, under Integrations, the card Tickets holds the settings. Switch on Offer tickets, fill in the fields below it and press Save.

• Your privacy notice: the address of your own privacy notice, starting with https://. Tickets cannot be saved switched on without it. The card in the chat links to it, above its buttons.
• When an answer comes: a sentence of your own, up to 300 characters, such as "We answer within one working day." The card, the chat after sending and the confirmation mail all say it. Left empty, they say "Someone from the team will contact you by e-mail as soon as possible." in the widget's language. A sentence of your own has one version, whatever language the widget speaks.
• Who is e-mailed each ticket: see Who is told.

What the visitor sees#

The link and the card#

Under the conversation, the link Open a ticket is there whenever the visitor wants it, until they have opened one. It opens a card in the conversation:

• a first line saying that the question goes to your team, under your brand: the Brand name from Appearance, or the agent's name without one
• E-mail, required
• Name, optional
• Your question, filled in with the visitor's last question, which they can change, up to 2,000 characters
• above the buttons: your sentence about when an answer comes, a line saying that the question is sent to your brand to answer it, and a link to your privacy notice
• Send ticket, and Not now, which closes the card

Apart from your own sentence, the card is in the widget's language.

After sending#

The chat thanks the visitor, gives the ticket's number and repeats your sentence about when an answer comes. After a reload, it says that the ticket with that number is with the team.

The visitor also gets one mail confirming the ticket: its number, your sentence, and that they can add to their question by replying. Its words are fixed and it carries nothing the visitor typed, since anyone can type anyone's address. Your team hears of the ticket at the same time: see Who is told.

When the card comes by itself#

• When the visitor asks for a person, a colleague or someone from your team, or when your sources do not answer their question, the agent is told to say in one sentence that they can open a ticket. The card then appears under that answer. The agent opens nothing itself: the visitor decides whether to send it.
• After an answer your sources had little for, with a confidence below 50, as for the contact form. See Confidence and grounding. After Not now, a weak answer no longer brings the card until the page is reloaded. The link stays, and the agent still offers a ticket to a visitor who asks for a person.

When the ticket card and the contact form could both follow the same answer, the ticket card does. In a conversation that has a ticket, the contact form is not offered: your team has the visitor's address already.

One ticket per conversation#

A conversation has one ticket. Once it is opened, the card and the link leave that conversation, and the agent is told the ticket's number, so that it offers no second one and can say that the first is with the team. The Restart button in the chat's header begins a new conversation, in which a new ticket can be opened.

A ticket opened before the first message belongs to no conversation. The chat remembers it until the tab is closed or the visitor restarts.

Signed-in visitors#

A signed-in visitor whose token carries an email is asked for no address and no name. The card says which address the answer goes to, and the ticket is answered there: at the address your site vouches for. In the dashboard the ticket carries the badge Signed in on the site. A token without an email gets the card as anyone does.

Who is told#

Each new ticket, each reply from the visitor and each mail held back is e-mailed to you, the workspace's owner, and to the addresses chosen under Who is e-mailed each ticket:

• The addresses that get new leads, the default: the confirmed addresses under Who is e-mailed each lead, in the contact form's settings. See Leads.
• Other addresses: a list for tickets alone, of up to 5 addresses besides yours. Choose it and press Save, then add each address under Add an address. We mail it a link at once, and it receives nothing until it confirms. Until then it shows Waiting for confirmation.

Every mail about a ticket to an address other than yours has a link to stop them. An address from the lead list that stops this way leaves the lead list, and gets no more leads either.

A mail about a new ticket carries the question, the visitor's address and name, the page it was asked on and when. A mail about a reply carries the reply. Only your copy has a button that opens the ticket, since only you can open it. Everyone can answer by replying: see Replies by e-mail. Nothing a visitor typed goes in a subject line.

Only the workspace's owner or an admin may add or remove an address, and only in the dashboard.

Working a ticket#

Tickets, on the agent, lists the tickets with the most recent activity first. It opens on Open: the tickets that wait for an answer. Each status shows how many tickets it has, and All shows every one.

A ticket shows the visitor's question and everything after it, oldest first, with the visitor's address and name, the page the question was asked on, and a link to its Conversation in Activity.

Statuses#

Changing a status mails nobody.

Replying and notes#

Below the thread, Reply writes to the visitor and Note to your team.

• Send mails your reply to the visitor and keeps it in the ticket. Send and mark solved does the same and closes the ticket. The mail carries your words and nothing else from the ticket: not the question, not your notes. It comes from your brand, under the ticket's number, and the visitor can answer it by replying.
• Add note keeps a note that only your team sees. It is never mailed.

A reply or a note is up to 10,000 characters. When the mail cannot be sent, the reply stays in the ticket with the reason, and it is not sent again by itself.

Deleting#

Delete, at the top of the ticket, erases the question, every reply and every note, for good. The conversation stays until you delete it too. Deleting a conversation deletes its ticket, and deleting the agent deletes all of its tickets. Only the workspace's owner or an admin may delete a ticket. A mail that arrives for a deleted ticket goes nowhere.

Replies by e-mail#

The mails to the visitor, and the mails to your team about a new ticket or a reply, each carry an address of the ticket's own to reply to. That is how a reply finds its ticket.

The visitor replies#

A reply to the confirmation, or to one of your answers, comes back to the ticket:

• It is added as the visitor's reply when it comes from the ticket's address and the check made on receipt, by DKIM or DMARC, shows that it was sent from that address's domain. The ticket is Open again, and your team is sent the reply.
• Anything else is held back: a mail from another address, or one without that proof. It waits in the ticket as Held back, with the address it came from, until someone chooses Add to the ticket or Discard. Added, it counts as the visitor's reply and the ticket opens again. Discarded, it is deleted. The mail that tells your team of it names only the address it came from, and a reply to that mail does not reach the ticket: open the ticket instead.

Your team answers by e-mail#

Whoever receives the mail about a new ticket or a reply can answer the visitor by replying to it. The answer is mailed to the visitor from your brand, kept in the ticket under the address it came from, and sets the ticket to Waiting on customer. The mail it quotes is cut off, so that the visitor gets only what is new.

Such an answer is taken only from you and from the addresses told of the agent's tickets, and only when it can be shown to have been sent from that address's domain. Anything else is refused without a word: nothing goes to the visitor and nobody is told. So reply from the address the mail came to.

What is kept of a mail#

• Its text, up to 10,000 characters. A mail sent as HTML only is kept as its text. Attachments are not kept.
• The earlier mail it quotes is cut off where it is recognised: at the line a mail program writes above a quote, such as "On ... wrote:", in English, Dutch, French, German and Spanish, and at the block of headers Outlook puts above one. Lines that begin with > are left out. When cutting would leave nothing, the whole text is kept, so that an answer written below the quote is not lost.
• Mail no person wrote is dropped: out-of-office replies, bounces, mail from mailing lists or from no-reply addresses, and mail with no text. Answering it could set two machines answering each other.
• A mail delivered twice is added once.

Language and sender#

Mails to the visitor are in the widget's language when the ticket was opened. They come from our address with your brand in front, as in "Your Brand via ChatterLab", or from tickets@ on your own domain once that is verified, under your brand alone. Their subject names the ticket's number and your brand, never anything the visitor typed.

Mails to your team are in the workspace's Default language and come in its Workspace name, from the same address. See Workspace settings.

Either way, the address to reply to is on our domain, even when the mail comes from yours: that is how a reply finds its ticket.

Limits that protect you#

• One ticket per conversation.
• At most 100 tickets per agent per day. After that, the card is not accepted until the next day.
• At most 3 confirmations to one address per day, whichever agent was asked. A ticket beyond that gets no confirmation, then or later. Your team still sees it, and your answers still go out.
• At most 30 mails taken in per ticket per day, the visitor's and your team's together, of which at most 5 held back. Any more are dropped.
• A limit per visitor on sending the card, counted apart from the chat's messages.
• A question is up to 2,000 characters, a name up to 200, and a reply or a note up to 10,000.

A day runs from midnight to midnight UTC.

How long they are kept#

A solved ticket is kept 2 years from when it was solved, and then deleted by itself, with everything in it. A ticket that is not solved is kept until you delete it, and one that opens again starts its 2 years anew when it is solved again. You delete one sooner with Delete, by deleting its conversation, or by deleting the agent.

A visitor who asks to be forgotten: find their ticket on the Tickets page, then delete the ticket and its conversation. What to say about tickets in your own privacy notice is in Data and privacy.

The audit log records what is done with a ticket, by its number, and never what anybody wrote. A ticket deleted with its conversation or its agent is recorded as that deletion, and one deleted after its 2 years is not recorded.

Over the API and the MCP server#

The API and the MCP server can list an agent's tickets, read one with everything after its question, change its status and add a note. With the agent's other settings, they can switch tickets on or off and set the sentence and the privacy notice. Replying to a visitor, deleting a ticket on its own, held mail and who is e-mailed stay in the dashboard. Deleting a conversation or an agent over the API or the MCP server deletes its tickets too.

What it does not do#

• It is not a live chat. Your team answers by e-mail, and the answer never appears in the chat.
• A ticket is not assigned to one person, and there are no saved replies.
• It takes no files. The card has no place for one, and the attachments of a mail are not kept.
• The Playground shows neither the card nor the link, and the API's chat offers no tickets: only the widget does, with the script tag or the iframe snippet. The Preview under Settings shows the link and the card, but a card sent there goes nowhere. To try tickets, open one on your own site: it is a real ticket, numbered and mailed like any other.
• Activity and the Overview do not show tickets. A ticket links to its conversation, but not the other way round.
• Tickets stay in ChatterLab: they are not sent on to another helpdesk.

Plans#

Every paid plan: Starter, Studio, Agency and Enterprise. After a move to Free, the card and the link stop appearing, and no answer goes out, from the dashboard or by e-mail. The tickets already opened can still be read, noted, marked solved and deleted, and a solved one is still deleted 2 years after it was solved. A visitor's reply by e-mail still reaches its ticket. While an agent is paused it takes no tickets, as it answers no questions.