answer website chat from slack

Your team already lives in Slack, so that’s where website chats should land. This guide connects a Spookat site to a Slack channel, shows what each chat looks like there, and covers everything you can do from the thread: reply, take, close, keep notes and control the name visitors see.

why answer from slack

A chat is only as fast as the person who sees it. When chats land in a separate dashboard, someone has to keep that tab open, and the tab loses to everything else on the screen by lunchtime. When chats land in a Slack channel, they show up where the team already reads and types all day.

The rest follows from that. Anyone in the channel can answer, so there is no rota for who watches the inbox. Every visitor gets their own thread, so two chats never mix. And because the thread is a normal Slack thread, the tools you already use (mentions, reactions, search) work on it too.

Spookat has no seats. Everyone in the channel can reply, and the price is per site, $4.99 a month on broke af.

before you start

You need three things:

• A Spookat site with the snippet installed. If you haven’t done that yet, the pillar guide walks through it and shows how to check it in DevTools.
• A Slack workspace where you can add apps, or someone who can. Not an admin? That’s covered below.
• A channel for the chats. A new #support or #website-chat works well, so the chats don’t drown in general talk. Private channels work too.

connect slack

1. start from the dashboard

Open your site in the dashboard and go to channels. Pick Slack. You approve the connection in Slack itself, on Slack’s own page, not in our app, so you can see exactly what it asks for.

What it asks for, and why: posting messages and threads, under a custom name so each one shows who wrote it (the visitor, a teammate) instead of the bot, the /spookat command, joining the channel you pick, listing channels so you can pick one, reading a teammate’s first name from their Slack profile so the visitor sees who answered, and reading the messages and reactions in the threads it started, so your replies reach the visitor.

2. pick the channel

After you approve, the dashboard lists the workspace’s channels. Pick one. For a public channel, Spookat joins it by itself. For a private channel, invite the Spookat app to it first; the list shows private channels once the app is in them.

Spookat posts a short welcome in the channel with a “Send a test chat” button. Press it: a chat from a made-up test visitor lands in the channel, so you know delivery works and see how a card looks (a real one also shows the page, browser and country). The test visitor has no widget to read your reply. To try the whole loop, open your site, send a message from the widget, and reply to that one in its thread.

3. not the admin there

If adding apps to the workspace is someone else’s job, the dashboard gives you a link for them. It works once, stays valid for 7 days, and they don’t need a Spookat account. They approve Slack’s page, pick the channel, done.

There is also a code for the command line fans: the dashboard shows a connect code, and /spookat connect CODE in the channel binds the site to it.

what a chat looks like in slack

When a visitor sends their first message, Spookat posts a card to the channel:

• The headline: new convo · SP-0001, with an @here so the people in the channel see it. SP-0001 is the chat’s reference, the same one the inbox and the API use.
• Where it came from: the page the visitor was on, their browser and their country. If your app passes the logged-in user (on cool guy), the card also says logged in as with their id.
• Status and assignee: open or closed, and who has taken it, or “nobody yet”.
• Three buttons: Reply, Take and Close.

Every message from the visitor lands as a reply in the card’s thread. The card itself updates when the status or the assignee changes, so the channel stays readable at a glance.

replying

Reply in the thread. Anything you write in the thread goes to the visitor’s widget. That’s it. No command, no prefix.

Or press Reply on the card. It opens a small form, handy when the thread is long or you’re on your phone.

Internal notes. Start a message with // and it stays internal: the team sees it in the thread, the visitor never does. Use it to ask a teammate something, or to leave context for whoever picks the chat up next.

Take it. Press Take, or react with :raised_hand: on a message in the thread. The chat is assigned to you, and the card shows your name. Nobody else is blocked from replying; it only says who owns it.

Close it. Press Close, or react with :white_check_mark:. A new message from the visitor opens it again.

Edit or delete. Edit your reply in Slack and the widget shows the new text, marked edited. Delete it and it’s gone for the visitor too. If a reply email already went out, that one stays out.

when the visitor has left

Visitors close tabs. When they left an email in the chat and you’re on cool guy or above, your reply reaches them by email about 2 minutes after you send it, several replies in one email, in the widget’s language. The email links back to the chat. On broke af, the reply waits in the widget until they come back.

History stays for 30 days on broke af, 90 on cool guy and 365 on vc money.

how visitors see you

Visitors see a name next to your reply: your Slack first name, picked up on your first reply. You can change how you appear, per site, with /spookat me:

• /spookat me shows the name visitors see.
• /spookat me name Marta changes it.
• /spookat me hide answers as the site’s name instead of yours. /spookat me show undoes it.
• /spookat me link gives you a one-time link, valid 15 minutes, that ties your Slack account to your dashboard login. Then the inbox’s “mine” filter and your Slack replies are the same person. It grants no access by itself.

One thing Slack doesn’t do: it never tells anyone that you’re typing. So the visitor doesn’t see “Marta is typing…” while you write in Slack. They see the reply when you send it.

the commands

command	does
/spookat connect CODE	binds a site to this channel
/spookat close SP-0001	closes a chat
/spookat block SP-0001	blocks that chat’s visitor
/spookat me	shows or changes how visitors see you

A visitor who spams can also be blocked with the “Block visitor” message shortcut, or from the inbox. Their chat then says it isn’t taking messages, and nothing they send reaches you.

a few habits that help

• One channel per site, unless the sites share a team. On vc money, one site can also route chats to several channels by language, page or country.
• Put the channel in your sidebar’s starred section, and let the @here do its job. Mute it and you’ve built a second dashboard nobody opens.
• Use :raised_hand: generously. Taking a chat costs nothing and saves two people writing the same answer.
• Write notes for the next person. A // asked about bulk pricing, waiting for a quote from Ola saves the next teammate a scroll.

what spookat does with your slack

Spookat posts the card and the visitor’s messages, and picks up replies, reactions and button presses in the threads it started. It never reads your channel’s history to rebuild anything: every chat is stored on our side first, and Slack gets a copy. Remove the app from the workspace and the chats stay in the dashboard’s inbox.

a chat, start to finish

Here’s what one chat looks like from the team’s side, so you know what to expect before the first real one.

A visitor on /pricing asks whether the yearly plan can be paid by invoice. The card lands in #support with @here: new convo · SP-0014, /pricing · safari ios · DE, status open, nobody yet. Ola sees it first, reacts :raised_hand:, and the card now says she has it.

She isn’t sure about invoices, so she writes // @Kuba do we do invoices on yearly? in the thread. The visitor sees nothing. Kuba answers in the thread with another // note. Ola replies to the visitor without the slashes: yes, the invoice comes with the payment, in the company’s name. The visitor sees “Ola” next to the answer, says thanks and closes the tab.

Ola reacts :white_check_mark:. The card flips to closed. Two days later the same visitor comes back with a follow-up question in the same browser; the chat reopens, the card updates, and the whole history, notes included, is right there in the thread.

Nobody opened a dashboard. The only new habit was two emoji and two slashes.

checklist

• The snippet is on the site and you’ve checked it in DevTools.
• Slack is connected and the channel is picked.
• The test chat showed up, and a message sent from the widget on your site got your reply back.
• Everyone who answers is in the channel and knows about //, :raised_hand: and :white_check_mark:.
• You set your name with /spookat me, or hid it.

That’s the whole setup. The next visitor who asks something gets an answer from a thread you already have open.