"Website chat: AI customer service, live support and contact options"

What it does

Visitors can reach you on your website in three ways, each with its own switch:

• Website chat window: visitors ask right there and get an answer from the AI or your team.
• WhatsApp: the icon opens WhatsApp in a new tab.
• Official LINE: the icon opens your LINE official account in a new tab.

The channels that are on form one small group of icons at the left or right edge of your website. You choose where it starts (top left, middle left, bottom left, top right, middle right, bottom right) and visitors can press and drag it somewhere else — that position is remembered only in their own browser. With a keyboard, Alt + arrow keys move it.

The settings live in the Support group in the sidebar:

• Contact options: the three switches, your WhatsApp number and LINE link, and where the icons start.
• Chats: every conversation visitors have had.
• AI customer service: how the AI answers, its name and its greeting.
• Live support: the live-support switch and the wait time.
• Knowledge base: what the AI can read.
• Usage: this month's AI messages and conversation counts.

How the chat answers

Under Support → AI customer service, choose:

• AI only: the AI answers. When it can't, the visitor can leave a question and your reply is sent to their Email.
• People only: no AI. Every visitor message goes to you and team members with the Marketing permission. Your saved answers (buttons, FAQs, the price card) still reply automatically and only what they cannot answer comes to you; to stop that, turn off "Answer from my FAQ and quick buttons first" on the same page.
• AI first, then a person: the AI answers first. When the visitor presses "Talk to a person", or the AI can't answer, it goes to your team. Once someone replies, the AI stays out of that conversation. You can also step into any AI conversation yourself (see "Taking over an AI conversation" below).

You can name the AI; leave it empty and it is called "AI customer service". Your choice is always kept: if your plan is downgraded or your subscription lapses the chat window is hidden for now, and it comes back without any setup when you recover.

What the AI answers from

Only what visitors can already see: your school introduction, published and public courses (including chapter and lesson titles), website and course FAQs, published pages and articles, and bundles. Prices are read live every time, so the AI never quotes an old price.

The AI cannot see: lesson content, drafts, unlisted courses, coupon codes, or student and order data.

When you unpublish, archive or delete something, it is removed from the AI's knowledge the next time it updates. The knowledge refreshes automatically when visitors ask (at most once every 10 minutes); to apply a change right away, press "Update now" under Support → Knowledge base.

The AI only answers questions about your school and declines anything off-topic. It will not promise a refund, guarantee or discount unless your refund policy page says so.

What happens to each message, in order

When a visitor sends a message (or taps a button) the chat checks these in order. Once a step has answered it, nothing after it runs:

1. Is the chat available? The switch and your subscription. If a team member has already taken the conversation, neither the AI nor saved answers reply any more.

2. Abuse protection: limits per minute and per hour for each network address; a "are you a person?" check on Teachvix addresses.

3. Refund requests, complaints, legal and medical questions, and the topics you set yourself: the visitor is asked to ask you directly and goes to a person. No FAQ, no AI. Only that one message goes to a person; if the visitor asks something else next, it starts again from the next step. The phrases you list under "Topics that always go to a person" in Customer service → AI customer service are handled at this step too (see below).

4. A bare greeting or thanks (the whole message is just "hello" or "thanks"): one fixed line.

5. What you already wrote: quick buttons, FAQs, the price card (next section).

6. Is there an AI? If you chose "People only", or this month's AI messages are used up, whatever is left over asks the visitor to leave a message or reach a person.

7. The AI's daily limits and the limit per conversation (see "Protection against abuse").

8. The AI answers: every sentence that states a fact needs a source or it is not shown.

What uses your monthly messages:

"Does not use your monthly messages" does not mean it costs nothing, so each time the AI is called still counts toward the daily limits and the 20 per conversation.

Answering from what you already wrote (no AI messages used)

The questions asked most often are ones you have already answered. The chat looks at those first and only then hands over to the AI.

Quick buttons: when a visitor opens the chat, "Courses and prices" and "What courses are there?" sit above the box, together with the FAQs you pinned (up to 3, site-wide FAQs only). One tap shows the answer. Prices and courses are read at that moment, so after you change a price the next visitor sees the new one. For a school with many courses a card lists at most 5 (the one the visitor is looking at comes first) and says "…and N more".

Typed questions are judged like this:

1. The wording is exactly the same as one of your FAQs or its "other ways to ask" (ignoring spaces, full-width letters, capitals and a closing question mark): the chat replies with your answer.

2. Otherwise meaning is compared: when one FAQ is clearly closest and well ahead of the others, it answers with that too. This is not keyword matching — "Can I pay in instalments?" and "I'd like to pay in parts" find the same FAQ; messages that are too short (under 4 characters) are not compared by meaning.

3. When it is not sure it does not guess; the AI takes the question: two FAQs about equally close, a message that asks two questions (two separate parts each with a question mark), a message in another language than the school's, or a question asked on the home page when only one course has the answer.

4. A question about price (how much, price, fee) that no FAQ matches gets the price card. A sentence that also asks something else (with a comma, "and"), a long one, or one complaining about price or asking about discounts or refunds goes to the AI.

When the visitor wants more, or says it is not what they meant: typing the same sentence again, or saying "I don't understand", "say it more clearly", "that's not what I meant", "you didn't answer", "not helpful", hands it to the AI. The AI sees what that answer says now, so a follow-up like "so what?" makes sense to it.

Under an AI answer that stands on something, and under your saved answers (FAQs, price card, course list), there is "Was this answer helpful?" with a Yes and a No button. A press is only recorded: nothing else happens and you are not notified. A visitor can change their mind, and pressing the same button again takes the rating back. Greetings, "I can't tell" and hand-over messages have no buttons.

You see the ratings on Customer service → Chats → AI couldn't answer, under the Visitor said it didn't help filter. Each entry shows the visitor's question and, below it, the answer they were shown (a price card or course list is saved as it was then, not as today's prices). Each kind has its own next step: an AI answer can be saved as a FAQ draft, a FAQ links to that FAQ so you can edit it, and a price card or course list points to your courses. Above the list is a count of "helped" and "didn't help" for the last 30 days.

To make it more accurate:

1. Open FAQ, edit a question and add "Other ways to ask" — different wordings a visitor might use (one per line, up to 5). A course's own FAQs can have them too, but they only reply while the visitor is looking at that course.

2. One FAQ, one thing. Two FAQs cannot be asked in exactly the same words — saving warns you to reword one, because otherwise the chat cannot tell which to answer with.

3. To put a question above the box as a button, tick "Pin as a quick button in the site chat" (up to 3 across the site).

4. Under Support → AI customer service, use Test a sentence to type something a visitor might ask and see which FAQ would be answered directly, or whether it goes to the AI (no AI call, no messages used).

5. The "Answer from my FAQ and quick buttons first" switch on that page turns all of this off.

The matching is cautious: it would rather hand a question to the AI than answer wrongly. At the start, use Test a sentence a lot, and look in Support → Chats at the replies labelled "Saved answer". Saved answers do not call the AI but each is still stored in the conversation; each visitor gets at most 150 a day.

Topics that always go to a person

Some things you do not want the AI or your FAQs to answer, such as "invoice with company tax ID" or "corporate training package". Under Customer service → AI customer service, "Topics that always go to a person", write one phrase per line (2–30 characters each, up to 10). If a visitor's typed question contains one of them, they get one line, "The teacher will answer this one personally", and are asked to contact you. No AI, no FAQ, nothing from the month's messages, and only that one message is handed over; if they ask something else next, the chat answers as usual.

• Refunds, complaints, legal and medical questions already go to you. Those four cannot be switched off and do not need to be listed. If a message matches both, the four built-in rules come first.
• The rule is plain: if the sentence contains the phrase, it is handed over, whether the visitor is asking, denying or complaining. With "corporate package" listed, "I don't need a corporate package" is handed to you too.
• Write specific phrases of three to six words, not common words like "enrol" or "partner", or ordinary questions will be handed over as well.
• If any line is too short or too long, or there are more than 10, the whole save is stopped and you are told. Nothing is dropped quietly, and what you typed stays in the box.

Answer style

Under Customer service → AI customer service, "Answer style" changes how the AI sounds:

• Tone: friendly, professional, concise, or not set.
• Answer length: normal (around 120 words at most) or short (around 60 words at most).
• Note: up to 200 characters describing how it should speak, for example "call visitors by their first name". A note cannot contain a web address or tell the AI to ignore its rules or play another role; you are told when you save.

This only changes tone and length. It does not let the AI say what the school material does not support. Promising a refund or a discount, or guaranteeing results or exam success, has no effect even if you write it: every statement of fact still needs a source to be shown, and the refund and hand-over rules do not change because of a note. The answers you wrote for your FAQs are shown as written and are not affected by style.

What the AI does when it has nothing to go on

• Every sentence in which the AI states a fact has to point at material it was given (the school's introduction, courses, FAQ, prices). An answer with nothing behind it is never shown: the window shows one fixed sentence, "I couldn't find a sure answer to that. Would you like to be connected with a person?" (or "…leave a message for the school?" when nobody can be reached live), with Yes and No buttons. A person is connected, or a message form opened, only if the visitor taps Yes.
• Refund requests, complaints, legal threats and medical advice are never left to the AI: the window asks the visitor to ask the teacher directly and hands that message over. Only that one message goes to a person: if the visitor asks something else next, the chat answers as usual, and the AI is not shown anything from before. A plain "is there a refund guarantee?" or "what is the refund policy?" is not blocked; it is answered from your FAQ or refund policy page. "I want a refund" or "I want to complain" are the ones that go to a person. A few phrasings (such as "can I get one back?") may slip through; the AI then only answers from the refund policy page and cannot agree to a refund.
• Questions that have nothing to do with the school, and small talk (weather, coding, other companies…): the window gives one fixed polite refusal saying it can answer about courses, prices and how classes work. It offers no "talk to a person", and it does not use your monthly messages.
• Customer service → Chats has an AI couldn't answer tab showing the questions where the AI showed no answer, sorted into three reasons, each with a different job: Not in your material (your FAQ or course description doesn't cover it — add it and the AI can answer next time), AI failed its check (the material may cover it, but the AI didn't cite a source, so its answer wasn't shown — check whether the material is clear enough) and Sent to a person (refund requests, complaints and the like — yours to answer; we don't suggest turning them into public FAQs). The owner can press "Save as FAQ draft" on a "Not in your material" question: the draft is always unpublished, and if you replied to the visitor in that same conversation, your reply is filled in as the answer (the AI's words never become the answer); otherwise the answer is left empty for you to write. There is also a Visitor said it didn't help filter, listing the answers a visitor pressed "No" on (see "Answering from what you already wrote" above).
• This is a check that the AI answers only with something to cite, not a line-by-line fact check: the system confirms the AI named the piece of material it used and that the piece exists, but does not re-read the piece to see that it supports the sentence. So refresh the knowledge base after you change content, and look through conversations now and then.

Protection against abuse, and the limit per conversation

• There are daily limits: per visitor (by network address), per school and for the whole platform. A school's daily limit is about a fifth of its monthly allowance (at least 15): at most 20 a day on Basic, 200 on Growth, 400 on Pro, so one day of abuse cannot use up the month. Past a limit, visitors are sent to live support and never see the word "allowance". Your saved answers are not held back by these AI limits (each visitor gets at most 150 of them a day).
• At most 20 AI answers per conversation: this counts how many times the AI was called, including the times it said "I can't find it"; saved answers and greetings do not count. After that the window asks the visitor to leave their contact details and you reply. Closing and reopening the window is still the same conversation and the count carries on; only clearing browser data or 24 hours of silence starts a new one, which is why the daily limits above are there too.
• Check that it's a person: while your site is served on a Teachvix address (xxx.teachvix.com), the chat window uses Cloudflare Turnstile to tell people from scripts; most visitors see nothing, and only a visitor who looks automated is asked to tick a box. On your own domain there is no such check — only the limits above, with a lower daily limit per visitor.

Taking over an AI conversation

If the AI is not answering well, or a visitor clearly wants to sign up, you don't have to wait for them to press "Talk to a person". Go to Support → Chats → the AI chats tab, open the conversation, and the reply box is right under it.

• Sending your first reply is what takes it over. Just opening a conversation does nothing to the AI. Once you send, the AI stops answering that visitor and the conversation moves to "In progress"; an answer the AI was still writing is never shown to the visitor.
• In the list, a conversation whose visitor has the window open right now shows a green dot and "Online" before the name. If the visitor has left and left no Email, a note above the reply box tells you they will only see your reply when they are back on the site.
• The visitor's window shows "(your name) joined the conversation" and your reply within a few seconds. Only one teammate takes a conversation: if two reply at once, the second is told that someone has already taken it (the owner excepted).
• Any chat mode can be taken over, including "AI only".

Hand back to the AI: when you have answered, press Hand back to the AI under the reply box. The same conversation goes back to the AI and the visitor's next question is answered by it, with no new conversation. Their window shows "(AI name) will keep answering". You can take it over again as often as you like. A left message (the visitor left a question and you answer by Email) has no such button.

You don't have to keep opening AI chats to find the ones worth taking over. In Support → Chats → the AI chats tab, the conversations that need a look come first: the AI could not answer, passed the visitor to you (a refund, a complaint, or a topic you set), or the visitor pressed "No" on an answer. Open the conversation and the mark goes away; the next such thing lights it again. After those come the conversations whose visitor has the window open right now (a green dot before the name), then the rest by latest message; "online first" applies only within the page currently loaded. The number next to Chats in the sidebar is these plus visitors waiting for your reply. These are a mark and a number only. No notification is sent.

The AI sees what you said, to understand what the visitor asks next, but it does not treat it as a source: if you promised an offer or a date that is not in the school's content, the AI will not repeat it as true. To let the AI answer it, put it in your FAQ or course description.

When a visitor changes their mind

• A visitor who pressed "Talk to a person" before anyone has picked it up sees Ask the AI instead, and the same conversation goes back to the AI. Once a teammate has taken it, the visitor cannot go back on their own; you hand it back with Hand back to the AI.
• After a question such as a refund request or complaint has been sent to a person by the system, the visitor can simply ask the next question: the chat treats it as a new one, and the AI is not shown the refund message. The Ask about something else (new chat) button opens a completely fresh conversation; the old one stays with you.
• In the dashboard conversation, a visitor going back to the AI leaves one line: "Visitor went back to the AI".

Live support

Once live support is on (Support → Live support), team members switch "I'm online" on in Support → Chats, and visitors can be put through live:

• Someone is online: after a visitor presses "Talk to a person" they are not asked for an Email; they see "Contacting our team" and a countdown. A banner "A visitor is waiting for your reply" appears on every dashboard page with a sound, and — if you allow browser notifications — a notification when the tab is in the background.
• A teammate replies within the wait (90 seconds by default; 30, 60, 90 or 180): the visitor's window shows "(name) joined the conversation" and the conversation is live from there.
• Nobody picks it up in time: the visitor is asked to leave an Email instead; the conversation stays under "Waiting" and your reply is sent to them.
• Nobody is online, or live support is off: the visitor simply leaves an Email and a question.

"I'm online" only holds while your dashboard tab is open: close it or leave the dashboard and you go offline after about 90 seconds. Only one teammate takes a conversation; anyone else (except the owner) is told that someone has already taken it.

The people who can reply are the owner and team members with the Marketing permission.

How a reply reaches the visitor

• The visitor still has the window open: the reply appears in it.
• The visitor has left: the reply is sent to the Email they left, with a link back to the conversation (valid for 30 days). That email counts toward your monthly Email quota, but the reply is still sent when the quota is used up.
• The visitor left no Email (for example after a live chat, or when you took over a conversation they only had with the AI): the reply shows only in their window, they see it when they are back on the site, and you are told so.
• A reply is always stored first; if the Email can't be sent the reply is not lost, and you see "Replied, but the Email has not been sent".
• Press "End conversation", or leave it for 24 hours with no new messages from either side, and the conversation ends; the visitor's next question starts a fresh one.
• When a visitor asks for their conversation to be deleted under your privacy policy, the site owner can press "Delete this conversation" above it. It is deleted permanently with all its messages and cannot be restored (instructors do not see this button). Otherwise use "End conversation".

Monthly messages

AI customer service has a monthly allowance; each AI answer that stands on a source counts as one message, and replies from people and saved answers do not. Basic 100, Growth 1,000, Pro 3,000, reset every month. See your usage under Support → Usage and Settings → Billing; you are notified at 80% and at 100%. The student AI tutor shares this allowance with the website chat.

When the AI cannot answer (no source, or it failed its check), and for questions that have nothing to do with your school and small talk, nothing is counted: only an answer that stands on your material is one message. A bare "hello" or "thanks" never reaches the AI. The usage page also shows how many replies this month came straight from your own answers.

When the messages run out, the chat window shows no AI and never mentions a quota: your saved answers (buttons, FAQs, the price card) still reply, and for anything else visitors see live support, or the form for leaving an Email.

Conversation records and privacy

• Everything a visitor types into the chat window — including conversations with the AI alone — is stored, and you can read it under Support → Chats: Waiting, In progress, AI chats and Ended, with search (Email, name and message text) and a date filter.
• A conversation is deleted automatically 12 months after it ends.
• A visitor's Yes / No on an answer is stored with the conversation and deleted with it.
• A question put to the AI is sent to Google Gemini to produce an answer.
• While your site is served on a Teachvix address, the chat window uses Cloudflare Turnstile to check that the visitor is a person (it receives the visitor's IP address and some browser information); your privacy page gains a matching paragraph automatically.
• Your website's privacy page gains a matching paragraph automatically while the chat is on, and the Email form links to it.

Good to know

• Demo schools do not show the chat window.
• The icons and the chat window are hidden while you edit the site in the page builder; visitors are not affected.