This document will highlight the steps you need to pass custom variables into your web chat sessions. This only applies to live (web) chat, not SMS or Facebook Messenger interactions.
If you need further assistance, help or support, please contact support@alive5.com.
Why Would You Need This?
When a chat starts, the Agents will be able to easily identify who is chatting in.
This creates a customize web chat experience by automatically including Visitor data (first name, last name, email, phone number) into every chat session. For example, if your web site has a member portal and if you have access to their session information (usually stored in your database), you can pass that information into Alive5 to creating a personalized experience without prompting the Visitor to manually enter their name and other details.
Before you can pass in a Visitor’s name, email, phone, etc, you will need to be able to pull that information from YOUR system. For example, if you store that information in a cookie, you will need to expose it and embed it into our chat code.
This may require help from your web developer, or just let us know and we can help.
How Is It Done?
If you’d like to pass in your own custom variables into chat, such as first name, last name, emails, and other account specific information, this can be done with some minor code additions to the existing web widget or short link.
There are 2 ways to pass variables into Alive5 web chats - through the Widget and through a Short Link.
Passing Variables into a Short Link (integration with web link)
An example of a short link:
There are 5 variables currently available that can be passed into each request:
An embed your custom variables, include additional parameters to the URL with your variables:
https://alive5.com/UiwIgpU?firstname=joe&lastname=smith&email=joe@gmail.com¬es=this%20is%20a%20paying%20client&phone=+18329995555
Passing Variables into a Widget (integration with web pages)
There are 19 variables currently available that can be passed into each request:
To embed your custom variables, modify your existing Widget code which looks something like this:
Insert the variables in red as needed:
Where Do the Custom Variables Go?
For both Widget and Short link integration, when the Visitor visits your web chat, you will be able to see the custom variables pre-populated in the Contacts pane in the console:
After the live chat session is complete, you can then go to Reporting section, and download the Conversations report .CSV file, and see all the captured Visitor variables:
If you have any questions, please contact us at: support@alive5.com.