Live chat campaigns

A live chat campaign is a message the live chat widget shows a visitor by itself. You pick a page, say how long someone has to be on it, and write what appears. Nobody sends it; the widget decides, in the visitor's browser.

It is the only campaign type in Lynomia Chat that is reactive — it waits for behaviour rather than going out to a list. WhatsApp campaigns and SMS campaigns are the opposite: you choose the recipients and the time.

Find it at Campaigns → Live chat.

When to use it

When a page has a predictable question. Someone on the checkout page for ninety seconds has hit a problem; someone on the shipping-policy page for two minutes did not find their answer. A proactive line at that moment is worth ten replies afterwards.

When not to use it

To reach a list of customers. It cannot. A live chat campaign has no audience and no recipients — it reaches whoever happens to be on the page. For a chosen group, use WhatsApp campaigns and shared audiences.
To reach existing customers in conversation. A visitor who already has a conversation in that inbox will never be shown one. See the conditions below.
On WhatsApp. It only works on a website inbox, because the widget is the thing that shows it.
To follow up after something happened. That is an automation rule or a flow — see campaigns or automation?.

What you need first

An administrator account. Every page under Campaigns is administrator-only.
A website inbox with the widget installed on the pages you want to target — see set up an inbox.
Campaigns enabled for your account. Without it the Campaigns section is absent.
If you want business-hours gating, business hours configured on that inbox. With no business hours set, the gate has nothing to consult.

Steps

Go to Campaigns → Live chat and choose Create campaign.
Title — for you, in the campaign list. The visitor never sees it.
Message — what the visitor sees. This is the whole campaign.
Select Inbox — a website inbox.
Sent by — an agent from that inbox, or Bot. This is the name and avatar on the message.
URL — the page or pages it applies to. It must be a full http:// or https:// address.
Time on page (Seconds) — how long the visitor must have been there. The default is 10.
Other preferences — Enable campaign, and optionally Trigger only during business hours.
Create.

A campaign is live the moment it is enabled. There is no scheduling, no start date and no end date: it is on until you disable or delete it.

Every condition that has to be true

A live chat campaign is the most conditional thing in the product, and almost every "it did not fire" is one of these:

Condition	Why
The campaign is enabled	a disabled campaign is not sent to the widget at all
Campaigns are enabled for the account	the widget is told there are none otherwise
The current page matches the URL	pattern-matched, see below
It is within business hours, if that box is ticked	checked in the visitor's browser against the inbox's hours
The visitor has been on the page for the full time on page	the timer restarts whenever the page changes
The widget is closed	a campaign never interrupts an open widget
The visitor has no messages yet in this widget session	somebody mid-conversation is left alone
The visitor has not dismissed a campaign in the last hour	dismissing writes a one-hour cookie that silences every campaign for that browser
The contact has no existing conversation in that inbox	checked on the server, at the moment the conversation would be created

That last one is the one that surprises people most: a returning customer who has ever talked to you through that widget will not be shown a live chat campaign. It is a tool for strangers.

How the URL is matched

The URL is a pattern, not a literal string, so one campaign can cover a section of your site. A pattern ending in a slash is treated as "this page and anything below it", including query strings and fragments.

Two practical consequences:

https://example.com/checkout/ covers /checkout/payment and /checkout?step=2.
https://example.com/checkout covers that one page.

Query strings and fragments are part of the address the pattern is tested against, so a campaign scoped to a clean path still fires for a visitor who arrived with tracking parameters, provided the pattern allows for them.

What happens when it fires

The message appears in the widget as an unread message from the sender you chose. Nothing exists on your side yet — no contact, no conversation, no record.

If the visitor engages, the conversation is created at that moment: the campaign's message becomes its first message, from your chosen sender, and the conversation records which campaign started it.

If the visitor ignores or dismisses it, nothing is created and nothing is counted. A dismissal silences every campaign in that browser for an hour, via a cookie — so clearing cookies resets it, and so does testing in a fresh private window.

Timing, and the hour that confuses people

The widget fetches the campaign list once and caches it in the visitor's browser for an hour. An edit you make now reaches a visitor who loaded your page five minutes ago only after that cache expires.

So when you change a message and it does not change in your own browser, you are usually looking at your own cache, not a bug. Test in a fresh private window.

A worked example

A Kuwait retailer finds that visitors abandon the delivery-options page. An administrator creates a live chat campaign on the website inbox: URL https://shop.example.com/delivery/, time on page 45 seconds, sent by Bot, message "Delivery questions? We answer in a minute — just ask.", business hours on.

During opening hours, a visitor who lingers 45 seconds on any delivery page sees the line. Most ignore it. The ones who reply become conversations in the website inbox, each carrying the campaign that started it. Outside opening hours nothing appears, because nobody is there to answer.

Who can do this

Administrators only. The custom role permission list has no entry for campaigns, so this cannot be delegated — see roles and permissions.

Limits

Website inboxes only. The inbox picker offers no other type.
No audience, no segmentation, no personalisation. One message, the same for everybody who matches.
No schedule. Enabled or disabled; that is the whole lifecycle.
One message. A campaign is not a sequence, and there is no follow-up.
Never shown to a visitor who already has a conversation in that inbox.
No per-visitor frequency control beyond the one-hour dismissal cookie, which the visitor controls, not you.
Business-hours gating depends on the inbox having business hours. Without them the condition has nothing to check.
No delivery report. There is no count of how many visitors were shown a campaign — only the conversations that resulted, each carrying its campaign.
A failure is silent. If the conversation cannot be created, the visitor sees nothing more and nothing is reported to you.
The list is cached in the visitor's browser for an hour after it is fetched.

If it does not work

Nothing appears on the page. Walk the condition table above in order. The three most common are: the campaign is not enabled, the widget is open in your test window, or you already have a conversation in that inbox from an earlier test. Use a fresh private window with no prior conversation.

It fired yesterday and not today. Business-hours gating is on and you are testing outside hours.

My edit has not taken effect. The visitor's browser is holding the old list for up to an hour. Test in a fresh private window.

The URL does not match what I expected. It is a pattern. A trailing slash widens it to everything below; no trailing slash limits it to that one page.

It appeared but no conversation was created. The visitor did not engage, or dismissed it. Nothing is recorded in either case.

Campaigns is not in the sidebar. Campaigns are not enabled for your account, or you are not an administrator.