Dealing with confused or abusive visitors

At times, you or your agents will receive chats from people who mistake you for another company or service. On other occasions, you can get chats from online bullies who want to abuse your agents. Read on to see what to do in such situations.

Use campaigns strategically

To cut down on the number of accidental chats, you can increase the time it takes for your campaign to pop up.

When you set it to appear immediately after someone reaches your site, you will get chats with lots of visitors. Including those who reached your site by mistake. They don’t need long to see that they are on the wrong website, so delaying your campaigns by 10 or 15 seconds should reduce spam chats.

Filter out spam chats using the pre-chat form

Another way to filter out your visitors is by using the pre-chat form. It’s a form displayed to visitors before they start the chat. Apart from being a great tool for collecting contact details, the pre-chat form helps sift serious customers from spammers. Visitors who are genuinely interested in your service will take the effort to fill it out while time-wasters are likely to be deterred by it.

LiveChat Pre-chat form

Take advantage of canned responses

You can reduce spam chats to a minimum but you will get one sooner or later. It’s just baked into the cake. It’s important not to lose temper when it happens. You wouldn’t throw a visitor out of your store just because they confused doors, right? Keep calm and let them know they are on the wrong website. It may be a good idea to create a canned response for dealing with confused visitors. It will save your time and goodwill.

Here’s a canned response that works for us when it comes to dealing with confused visitors: ‘I believe you’re confusing us with some other company. I’m afraid I can’t help you with your questions.’

End a chat

When you notice that a visitor is intentionally trying to ruin your day, you have two ways out: either end the chat or ban the visitor. Whichever you choose, make sure that the visitor is not simply confused but tries to be rude or abusive on purpose.

There are two ways to end a chat: from the chat list and the chat feed.

End a chat from the chat list.

Hover over the name of the customer in the chat list. An x should appear in the top right corner

Click on the x.

To finalize, click on Close and archive.

End a chat from the chat feed

Click on the three dots icon “…” in the top right corner.

Choose Stop this chat.

Click on stop this chat

Confirm, by clicking on Stop chat.

Confirm by clicking on stop chat in the LiveChat app

Ban visitors

If closing the chat is not enough and a customer keeps causing trouble, you can ban them. Banning prevents customers from using your chat, but it won’t kick them off your website. Banned customers won’t see your chat, won’t appear in the Traffic section and will be ignored by automatic campaigns.

There are three ways to ban unwanted visitors: via Chats, Archives, and by adding their IP to the banned customers list.

Ban a visitor during a chat

Each agent can block a visitor during an active chat. Here’s how to do it:

1

Select the three dots icon “…” in the top right corner.

2

Click on Ban this customer.

3

Select the number of days the visitor should be banned for.

4

To finalize, select Ban customer.

That’s it. You can see the list of all the banned customers in Settings.

Ban a visitor from the Archives

Even if the chat ended and the customer is no longer on your site, it’s still possible to block them. To ban an unwanted customer after the chat ended, go to the Archives section and follow these steps:

First log in to Livechat. Then go to Archives and follow these steps:

1

Select the three dots icon “…” in the top right corner of the chat feed.

2

Select Ban this customer.

3

Select the number of days the visitor should be banned for.

4

To finalize, select Ban customer.

Add an IP address to the Banned visitors list

Adding an IP address to the Banned customers list won’t block users with dynamic IPs. To block such visitors, you need to ban them during an active conversation, as such action will set an additional ban cookie on their device.

To add an IP address to the Banned customers list, follow the steps below:

1

Log in to LiveChat and go to Settings > Security > Banned customers.

2

Select Ban customer.

3

Enter the IP of the abusive customer and set up the length of the ban.

4

Finally, click on Ban customer.

If you don’t know the IP, go to the archives and look up the chat you had with the spammer. You will find the IP after you click the chat to see its details.

All banned customers will appear on the list below for you to view and manage.

Unban a customer

Any admin or owner can remove banned IPs from the banned customers list. To do it, log in to LiveChat and go to go to Settings > Security > Banned customers . Once there, find the IP address, and select the Unban button.

Unban a visitor in LiveChat

Done! The customer can now chat with you again.