Options – Connect Widget

BNTouch Connect adds a live chat box to your website so you can directly communicate with your clients and partners. Whether your borrowers have questions about the mortgage process or your loan participants need support, BNTouch Connect lets you provide direct assistance and a personal touch.

This article focuses only on the settings and preferences available for the Connect module in the Options Tab of your CRM. To learn more about enabling or using this feature, please watch our “BNTouch Connect” training video.

You can configure settings for your live chat widgets in the Options Tab of your CRM. In the “Tools” column, click “Connect Widget”. Here, you’ll see three sub-tabs at the top of the page that allow you to manage the chat functionality for this module. To begin, click the “Setup Chat Widgets” sub-tab.

Here, any live chat widgets that you have enabled will be listed with details about their use. Any that already appear on this list may come from other modules you have activated, like the Live Chat feature for the 1003 Application Form of a client’s Borrower Portal. To create a new chat source, just click the “Add New” button below the list.

You can now enter a title for the chat widget (for your own reference) and welcome text that clients and partners who open the widget will see. Next, you can set a custom source and record owner for any leads that are generated via the chat widget. The text entered here will appear in the new record’s “Source” field, which will be helpful when determining where new leads are being generated for your business.

Below, enter the full website address of the site that this chat widget will appear on. If you want the widget to only appear on specific pages of your site, list them in the box below; otherwise, leave it blank to have the widget available on all of your site’s sub-pages.

You can then customize where the chat window will appear and what color the message prompt will be. “Collect Contact Info” lets you determine how the chat widget requests contact information from the user. Next, choose how much time should elapse before the widget maximizes. When a user loads the page, the chat box will be very small; after a set amount of time, it will grow larger to catch the user’s attention.

If you wish, you can set a “Time Range” during which the chat feature is enabled for the site. Outside the hours set here, the chat widget will not display for your site’s visitors. You can also choose which CRM user will be connected to chat with each visitor. You can choose to have each visitor talk with yourself, with a specified user account, or with a user selected via round robin between all users who are currently active at the time. Lastly, you can set the widget to ‘Active’ or ‘Inactive’ by toggling the status indicator below. When finished, just click “Save” to create your new chat widget and return to the list.

You will now see the new entry in the widget list with the chat feature you just created. You can edit the settings you configured at any time by clicking the “Edit” icon to the right. A new field that will appear when editing saved widgets is the widget code box. You can select all of the HTML text in this box, copy it, and paste it into any website editor you use for your website to enable the widget. If you have another person that managers your web presence, this script is what you will need to send to them to add the feature to your website.

Lastly, you can delete widgets you no longer need using the “Trash” icon.

To see any messages you are receiving through this widget, open the “Connect Widget” section of the Options Tab again, but this time look for the “Chats” sub-tab.

You’ll see a list of any visitors that have started communication with you to the right. Here, you’ll see the name they gave the widget, when they sent each message, and what page they are using to communicate with you. You can search through this list using the text box at the top, and you can click any of these panels to open chat with that user to the left.

Here, anything you type will be sent to the visitor, and anything they respond with will appear instantly. The visitor’s name and contact information will appear above if they entered it via the widget.

If you wish to be able to carry on conversations with visitors and clients no matter where you are in your BNTouch CRM, check the “Enable Chat Widget on All Pages” box at the top of the page. This will open a floating chat message box for you throughout your CRM when visitors message you via a chat widget. You can hide or show the widget using the caret icon, and you can close the widget for this session using the “X” icon. Just like the “Chat” sub-tab in the Options area, you can navigate between visitor chats using the names to the right, and you can type directly to these visitors using the field to the left.

You can also see a summary report of all chat activity for your account back in the “Connect Widget” section of the Options tab. In the “Statistics” sub-tab, you’ll see a comparative summary of chats, SMS messages, and leads generated via this widget below. These comparisons let you see how many chats your CRM users have engaged in today, yesterday, and in the last week and month.

You can narrow results for these statistics by specific website widgets or by a specific timeframe using the fields in the upper-right corner of the page. You can also print or download any of these charts using the icon to the right of any image.