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Solution home Ticketing Channels Create Web Chat Widget

Configure Prechat Forms

Modified on: Mon, 1 Dec, 2025 at 10:12 AM

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The Pre-chat Form allows you to collect essential customer information before starting a chat with an AI Agent or a human agent on your Web Chat widget. With this information, your support team or AI Agent can resolve issues faster and deliver more personalized assistance. For detailed information on Web Chat Topics, see Create Web Chat Topics.


User requirement:

Ensure that you have admin permissions to configure Web Chat Topics.


About pre-chat forms

The pre-chat form appears before a conversation begins in the Web Chat widget. Each form is powered by a ticket form configured in your account and can be configured at the Web Chat Topic level. This ensures that the collected information is routed correctly to the AI Agent or support agent for faster resolution.

You can customize the pre-chat form for different support topics to capture the right information before a chat begins.

Example topic: “Return or Refund Request” 

When a customer selects this topic in the Web Chat widget, the pre-chat form can collect details, such as order number, product name, reason for return, and a description. Capturing these details in advance enables your team to immediately check the status, issue refunds, or track shipments without needing additional information.


How does the pre-chat form work?

  1. When a customer initiates a chat, the pre-chat form is displayed before connecting to an AI Agent or support agent.
    Note: If you set up the AI Agent to collect user information, it will be displayed to the customer after the pre-chat form is submitted.
  2. Once a customer submits the form, a Web Chat ticket is created with the collected details.
  3. The Description field in the ticket form:
    • Appears as the first message from the customer (after the topic’s welcome message) in the Web Chat widget.
    • Is stored as the ticket description in the ticket details page.
  4. The agent can continue the conversation with the customer after getting the complete context from the pre-chat form.

Customer experience
Agent experience

Configure pre-chat form

Prerequisites:

Before configuring pre-chat forms, ensure that you have created and configured ticket forms in your account. 


To configure the pre-chat form:

  1. Log in as admin and go to Admin > Channels > Web Chat > Web Chat Topics.
  2. Click Configure next to the topic for which you want to enable the Pre-chat form.
  3. Click Pre-chat form to enable.
  4. In the Form initiation button label, enter the label for the button that triggers the form.
    Example: “Start Chat” or “Describe the issue”
  5. Select a ticket form you want to use as your Pre-chat Form.
  6. Set visibility for pre-filled information in the web chat:
    1. Editable: Customers can view and edit prefilled information.
    2. Read only: Customers can view the pre-filled information but cannot make changes.
    3. Hidden: Details are pre-filled and sent to the agent, but not visible to the customer
      Note: If all fields are hidden and prefilled, the pre-chat form will be skipped, and the user will directly move to the chat screen.
  7. Click Publish.

Tip: Click Preview to see the Pre-chat Form as it appears to customers.

Pre-chat form behavior across scenarios

  1. Threading interval 
    • The pre-chat form only appears when creating a new ticket and will not appear for existing tickets within the specified threading interval.
      For example, if a customer’s ticket is still open or within the threading window, they’ll continue in the same chat without seeing the pre-chat form again. 
    • If the threading interval is breached while on the chat screen, the Pre-chat Form appears below the last conversation history, and the reply editor is hidden until the form is completed.
  2. Away experience and pre-chat form
    If both the Pre-chat form and Away experience (via Email route) are enabled, the Away experience takes precedence during off-hours. Customers will see the away flow instead of the pre-chat form when reaching out after hours. However, for Away Experience (via Web Chat route), the pre-chat form will take precedence and create a web chat ticket which agents can respond to when they log back in the next business day.

Learn more