Depending on the kind of conversations your customers use your webchat for, clearing data can be essential for privacy. This is particularly true if the customer may need to use the chat on a shared computer. As such, there are three ways to clear chat data, two automatic and one manual.
Conditions for automatically clearing the data
The webchat widget can be set up so that the conversation data is removed automatically when:
- Either the customer or the agent clicks End chat.
- Either the chat times out, or the customer closes or reloads the webpage.
In any of these cases, the automatic clearing of data only happens at the customer side. It does not delete the conversation from the agent side.
Manually clearing data
The webchat widget empowers the customer to choose to delete the conversation. If the customer uses this option, the conversation will be deleted from both their browser and the agent's history.
Clearing data at the end of the conversation
When setting up the webchat widget script, if you want the data to be cleared automatically when the conversation ends, there are two parameters to include:
- data-clear-history-when-visitor-ends-chat
If set to true, will clear the data from the customer's browser when the customer clicks the End chat button. - data-clear-history-when-agent-ends-chat
If set to true, will clear the data from the customer's browser when the agent clicks the End chat button.
This has the advantage of being user-controllable, but does require the customer or agent to deliberately end the chat.
Ending the chat
For the customer to end the chat, they need to:
- Click the three dots in the title bar of the widget.
- Click to select the End chat option.
- They will be prompted to confirm. Click the End chat button in the chat.
For the agent to end the chat, they need to:
- Click the End chat button, before selecting an outcome for this chat.
Clearing data after timeout, or closing or reloading the browser
There are three parameters that you should include in the webchat widget script if you want to automate clearing of data based on timeouts, reloads or the customer closing their browser.
The two parameters which control the whether data is cleared are:
- data-clear-storage
- data-clear-history-on-timeout
Each parameter can be set as true or false. Adjusting the values of the these parameters in the script on your site will determine the behaviour for all customers using the webchat.
The third parameter sets the length of the timeout referenced by data-clear-history-on-timeout. Use the parameter:
- data-timeout
The value for this parameter is the number of seconds before the chat times out.
This table summarises the interaction of these parameters:
Note that if you do not include these parameters in the script, they are assumed to have a value of false, and data will not be removed if the customer reloads their page or closes their browser.
Example
If the script for your webchat widget included the following:
data-clear-storage=false
data-clear-history-on-timeout=true
data-timeout=300
The data would be cleared after the chat had been left idle for five minutes (300 seconds) even if the customer had not reloaded the page or closed the browser.
Manually deleting the conversation
Customers using the LeadDesk webchat widget have the option to delete the conversation history for their current conversation.
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To do so:
This option will delete the conversation from the widget. To remove it from the logs, either refresh or close the web page. Additionally, this option will also delete the conversation from the agent's interface. |
What the agent sees
When a customer chooses to delete a conversation:
- The agent receives no immediate notification.
- The next time the agent refreshes their webpage (or closes it and logs back in), all messages in that conversation will show as removed.