Add a pre-chat survey

A pre-chat survey is a short form that appears when a visitor opens the widget, before they can send a message. It’s useful when you need a name, an email, or a custom data point to give the conversation context.

Before you start

• The widget exists in Settings → Web Chat. If not, create one first.
• If you want to ask for anything beyond the built-in fields, define a custom contact field first.

Steps

1. Open Settings → Web Chat and click your widget.
2. Open the General tab.
3. Find the Pre-chat survey section.
4. Add the fields you want. Each field can be:
   Name — visitor’s full name.
   Email — visitor’s email address. Useful when the conversation may continue via email channel switching.
   Phone — visitor’s phone number.
   Textarea — long-form text question, like “What can we help with?”
   Select — multiple-choice dropdown with options you define.
   Custom field — any custom contact field you’ve already created.
   Informational — a label-only block, no input. Useful for legal disclaimers or expectation-setting.
5. For each field, set:
   Label — what the visitor sees above the input.
   Required — whether the visitor must answer before continuing.
6. Save.

Verify it worked

• Open your site, click the launcher. You should see the survey form before the chat input appears.
• Submit the form and start a conversation.
• Back in Atender, open the conversation. The survey answers appear in the Conversation Info panel and on the contact record.

Form mode vs custom mode

Two flavors of survey:

• Form mode (standard) — a clean form with predefined fields. Best for the common case (name + email + a question).
• Custom mode — assemble your own sequence of fields, including custom fields. Best when you have specific data you need before the conversation can be useful.

When to use which fields

Ask for the minimum you actually need. Every additional field is one more barrier to the visitor starting a conversation, and conversion drops with each field.

• Sales widget on a marketing page — name and email are usually enough. The team can ask the rest in conversation.
• Support widget on a logged-in app — often no survey at all. You already know who the user is.
• Pre-sales for a complex product — a short “what stage are you at” select is high-signal and helps route the conversation to the right specialist.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The survey doesn’t appear when you open the widget. Fix: Confirm at least one survey field is configured. An empty survey is skipped entirely. Also check whether you’ve toggled the survey on if your widget has a master toggle for it.

• Symptom: Custom fields don’t show in the field picker. Fix: Custom fields must be defined first in Settings → Custom Fields. Once a field exists there, it appears in the pre-chat survey picker.

• Symptom: The visitor’s answer to a custom field doesn’t appear on the contact record. Fix: Confirm the custom field’s mapTarget is set to the contact (not just the conversation). Conversation-scoped custom fields appear on the conversation; contact-scoped ones appear on the contact record.

See also

• The Web Chat widget
• What are custom fields?