Chat flows

Greet visitors with a menu of buttons, ask follow-up questions, and hand over to your team or the AI.

A chat flow is a short menu a visitor sees as soon as they open the chat, before they type anything. Each button leads to another question, saves an answer, or hands the conversation to your team or the AI.

Chat flows are included on Basic (up to 3 flows) and Pro and above (unlimited). They work with or without the AI assistant.

What a visitor sees

They open the chat and see your first question with buttons, for example What would you like help with?
They tap a button. Their tap appears as their message, and the conversation starts.
The next question appears with its own buttons, until a button hands over.
At any point they can type instead of tapping. The flow steps aside and the AI or your team answers that message.

Opening the chat does not start a conversation, so it does not count against your monthly conversation limit. The conversation begins when the visitor taps a button.

The three kinds of step

Step	What it does
Buttons	Shows a message and up to 8 buttons. Each button goes to another step, or ends the flow.
Typed answer	Asks a question and saves what the visitor types on their contact (for example `email` or `order_number`), then goes on to another step or ends.
Ending	Shows a closing message, then hands over.

A button or ending can hand the conversation to:

Your team. The conversation is flagged as needing an agent and your agents are notified. Outside your office hours the visitor is told when you will reply.
The AI. The visitor is invited to ask their question and the AI answers from your knowledge base.
Nobody. The flow just ends.

The first step must have buttons, because a visitor joins the flow by tapping one.

Build a flow

Go to Automations → Chat flows.
Choose Templates for a ready-made menu, or New flow.
Write each step's message and add its buttons. For each button choose where it leads: another step, your team, the AI, or the end.
Use the preview on the right to click through the flow as a visitor would.
Save. The flow is on straight away; switch it off from the list at any time.

The editor lists anything that stops a flow from running (a button that leads nowhere, an empty message) and will not save until it is fixed.

When a flow shows

Every flow has a When to show setting in the editor:

Greet visitors (the default). The flow opens the chat with its question and buttons. Name the pages it should appear on, one per line: /pricing for one page, or /docs/* for a whole section. Leave the pages empty to show it on every page. A flow named for the page the visitor is on is used instead of the general one.
Start on a keyword. The flow does not greet. It starts when a visitor's message contains one of its words or phrases (for example refund or money back), as whole words, ignoring case. It starts at most once per conversation. You can still limit it to some pages.

Keywords match whole words, so car does not match cart.

Limits

Up to 30 steps per flow, 8 buttons per step, 40 characters per button and 500 characters per message.
Basic allows 3 flows, Pro and above unlimited. If you downgrade, your flows are kept but stop showing until you upgrade again.
When more than one greeting flow matches a page, visitors are greeted with the oldest. Up to 10 pages and 10 keywords per flow.

Where answers go

A typed answer is saved on the contact as a custom attribute with the name you chose, so your agents see it in the contact's details and it is available to automations.

Chat flows and the AI

A visitor who taps a button that hands over to the AI, or who types instead of tapping, is answered by the AI as usual, including its escalation rules. Once a conversation has been handed to your team, the flow and the AI both stay quiet so they do not talk over an agent.