Lead capture and Contacts
Ask visitors for their name and email at the right moment, and find everyone who shared contact details on the Contacts page.
Chats start anonymous. Lead capture asks visitors for their contact details at a moment you choose, and the Contacts page lists everyone who ever shared an email in the chat, whichever way it arrived: a form, the agent, email verification or a booking.
Turn on lead capture
Open Widget Customization and scroll to the Lead Capture card. Switch on Collect contact details and choose:
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| When to ask | Before the first message: a small form on the chat home screen, before the visitor's first message. When the agent needs a follow-up: the agent asks once, politely, before answering questions that need someone to get back to the visitor (order status, account issues, quotes); simple questions are answered without asking. Before handing off to the team: the agent asks right before it escalates a conversation. |
| Fields to ask for | Email is always collected, because it is how contacts are matched. Tick Name, Phone and Company as needed. The pre-chat form shows email plus the first extra field; the agent asks for all of them. |
| Consent text | Optional, up to 300 characters, shown under the pre-chat form. For example "We use your details only to follow up on this conversation." |
Click Save Settings. The setting applies to new sessions immediately.
What the visitor sees
Before the first message. The chat home screen shows a Before we start card with an email field (required) and at most one more field, with your consent text under the composer. Tapping a suggested question or sending a message without a valid email shows "Please enter a valid email address"; with one, the conversation starts with their message as usual. The form does not come back in that session. While the form is owed, Home uses the chat-first layout even if you have published Help Center articles; the Help tab stays one tap away.
When the agent asks. It asks in one short, friendly sentence, never as a form, and only for details the visitor types themselves. If the visitor declines or ignores the request, the agent carries on helping and does not ask again. Before a handoff it escalates either way.
Details given this way appear on the conversation's visitor panel in the inbox, so a teammate who takes over knows who they are talking to.
Get told about new leads
When a new lead arrives, the card right under Lead Capture, can email the team, post a card to your Slack channel and call a signed webhook the first time a contact is captured, whichever way it arrived. See New lead notifications.
The Contacts page
Open Contacts in the sidebar, under Support right after Conversations. Each row shows Name, Email, Phone, Company, Source, Last seen and Conversations; the conversation count opens the contact's most recent conversation. Rows are ordered by last seen and load as you scroll.
| Source badge | How the contact was created |
|---|---|
| Pre-chat form | The Before we start form. Such a contact starts with 0 conversations, because the form runs before the first message; later chats add to the count. |
| Chat | The agent collected the details during a conversation. |
| Verified email | The visitor verified an email with a code. |
| Booking | The visitor gave a name and email while booking a meeting. |
Contacts are matched by email within your workspace. A returning visitor with the same email updates the existing row: Last seen moves, an empty name, phone or company is filled in, and the new conversation is added. The source badge keeps showing how the contact was first created.
- Search matches name, email or company, looking through your 1,000 most recent contacts.
- Export CSV downloads
contacts-YYYY-MM-DD.csvwith the columns Name, Email, Phone, Company, Source, First seen, Last seen and Conversations. It covers the rows currently listed: the search results when you have searched, otherwise the contacts loaded so far. - Chats from the Test the agent drawer never create contacts, even when you fill in the form or give the agent an email.
Privacy
A contact stores the email, and the name, phone and company when given, plus the source, first and last seen times and the conversations it was part of. The consent text is the place to tell visitors what you do with their details, and your own privacy policy should mention that the chat may ask for them; see Privacy and GDPR notes. There is no delete button on the Contacts page yet; contact support to have a contact removed.
Something missing or wrong on this page? Tell us and we will fix it.