How to set up an away form

In this article:


What is an away form? 

When someone lands on your website and wants to chat, what happens if you’re offline or assisting other customers? The answer: An away form.

The away form is built into your Chat. Depending on your Chat Launcher settings and when you’ve set the Chat button to show to visitors, the away form will automatically display to visitors who click on the Chat button if you’re offline or unable to respond to a Chat request within 45 seconds. 


Will the away form show... Chat button shows Always Chat button shows  When Available Chat button shows During office hours
If the team is offline?  Yes No Yes
If a team member can’t answer a chat within 45 seconds? Yes Yes Yes
If a team member is available? No No No

In general, a good way to think of the away form is as an extension of Chat. If your team isn’t available to Chat, the away form will automatically display to visitors. 


How to customize your away form

Note: Account Owners and Admins can adjust away form settings.

  1. Navigate to Communicate from the left navigation
  2. Select Chat Settings 
  3. Click on Appearance
  4. Scroll down the page. Near the bottom of the page, you’ll see the setting for the away form.
  5. Edit as needed:
    1. Message: This is the introduction text that visitors will see when the away form displays. We recommended including the average turnaround time for responses to make sure visitors know when to expect a response. For example, “Typically responds within a few hours.” 
    2. Display office hours: This highlights your set office hours. By default, this will be set to show to visitors. To change this setting, click the checked box by Display Office Hours.
    3. Edit form labels: Click the gray Edit Form Layers button to expand customization options for name, email address and question/comments fields as well as the submit button. 
    4. Thank you: This is the message visitors are shown after they’ve completed the away form. 
  6. Click the purple Save Update button when finished

Where can I find away form submissions?

 By default, away form submissions are emailed to the Account Owner. Account Owners or Admins can add more email addresses to receive away form submissions: :

  1. From the away form setting, click on “View Delivery Settings.” Alternatively, you can click on Behavior under Chat Settings. 
  2. Enter the email addresses that also should receive away form submissions, separated by commas
  3. Click the purple Save Updates button when finished to save your changes

These email addresses don’t need to be connected to a Lucky Orange account to receive and read the away form submissions. To investigate more about the visitor, such as watching Session Recordings or updating a Visitor’s Profile, a Lucky Orange account will be required. 

Away form submissions aren’t logged currently in-app. In our experience working with hundreds of thousands of websites, away form submissions provided the most value when sent directly to the Account Owner and other key personnel or email accounts.