Guides

How a Small Team Can Handle Website Enquiries Without Extra Headcount

Deflect repetitive questions with grounded AI, capture context before handoff, and use a shared inbox for the conversations that need a person.

How to Add Live Chat to Any Website with a Script Snippet

Add website chat with a one-line script snippet. Where the snippet goes, generic steps for common site builders, the live/paused setting, and how to verify it loaded.

Live Chat vs AI Chatbot vs Contact Form: Which Does Your Site Need?

Compare live chat, AI chatbots and static contact forms for handling website enquiries, coverage, response speed and effort, and see how onmsg combines all three.

What Is Website Chat Software?

A plain-English guide to website chat software: what a chat widget does, how live chat, AI answers and guided flows differ, and where it fits for a small business.

Visual Bot Flow Builder

Branching by Page, Availability and Saved Answers

Serve different flows by page (pricing vs homepage), route by availability (online vs offline), and branch by saved answer, practical examples of each.

How to Build a Greeting-to-Handoff Flow, Step by Step

Walk through assembling a real onmsg flow: start with a greeting, branch by enquiry type, collect details with a form, add an AI Agent step, and route to a person.

How to Capture and Qualify Leads with Conversation Forms

Use Form and One-field steps with required fields and validation to gather requirements before handoff, capture after-hours enquiries, and keep context for the team.

The 11 Flow Step Types in onmsg, Explained

Every onmsg flow step type explained: AI Agent, Question, Choices, One field, Form, Message, Image or video, Pause, By answer, By availability and By page.

Visual Flow Builder vs Scripted Chatbot: What's the Difference?

Compare a visual, no-code flow builder with hand-coded and scripted bots, maintenance, speed, and who each suits, and see why non-technical teams prefer a canvas.

What Is a No-Code Chatbot Flow Builder?

A no-code flow builder lets you design a chat conversation on a visual canvas, steps and branches, no coding. What it means, who it's for, and how it differs from hand-coding a bot.

Grounded AI Agent & Knowledge Base

How to Add Your Business Knowledge: Paste, Upload and URL Import

Supply knowledge by pasting text, uploading PDF/DOCX/TXT/Markdown/CSV, or importing one public web page. See processing status, reindex and edit sources.

How to Reduce AI Chatbot Hallucinations with Grounding Controls

Why chatbots invent facts, and how strict retrieval gating, refusal thresholds, handoff and source attribution help reduce it, controls that guide behaviour.

Strict, Balanced and Open Grounding Modes Compared

Compare onmsg's grounding modes: Strict (refuse when no relevant content), Balanced (prefer your knowledge), and Open (general conversation), plus when each fits.

Website Data Privacy: What Visitors' Chat Data Means for GDPR and CCPA

What chat and enquiry data is collected, how retention settings differ by plan, and general GDPR/CCPA considerations for chat intake, guidance, not legal advice.

What Does "Grounded AI" Mean for Website Chat?

Grounded AI answers from your own content instead of general knowledge. What grounding is, why it matters, and how it differs from a general chatbot.

What Happens When the AI Can't Answer: Refusals and Human Handoff

See what happens when onmsg's AI can't answer: a configurable refusal message, handoff after a set number of refusals, turn limits, timeouts, and provider errors.

Website Chat & Widget Customization

How to Customize Your Chat Widget's Colours, Fonts and Placement

Control your widget's placement and offsets, colours for widget, header, messages and inputs, fonts and sizes, launcher icons and teaser images, and framing.

Setting Business Hours, Timezone and After-Hours Behaviour

Set business hours and timezone, choose configurable after-hours behaviour, enable offline message intake, and pair it with By-availability flow branching.

Using Custom CSS to Match the Widget to Your Brand

Use custom CSS for the widget, teaser and messages when the visual controls aren't enough. When to use CSS versus the built-in controls, and keeping it responsive.

Shared Team Inbox

How the Shared Inbox Routes and Assigns Conversations

See how teams coordinate: assign a conversation to a teammate or return it to the queue, resolve and reopen, and search by contact, messages, notes and tags.

Saved Replies and Private Notes for Faster Team Responses

Use personal and shared saved replies with shortcuts (insert then send, not auto-send) and append-only private notes with author and timestamp.

Shared Team Inbox vs a Shared Email Address for Support

Why a shared inbox beats a group email for support: ownership and assignment vs reply-all confusion, drafts and notes, searchable history, and chat handoff.

Multi-Site & API

Managing Multiple Websites and Brands from One Workspace

Run chat across several websites and brands from one workspace, with separate configuration, conversations, knowledge, flows and team per site.

What the onmsg Site API Can Do: Ask, Read, Hand Off, Manage Knowledge

A clear map of the onmsg site API: ask the AI a question, read a conversation, hand a conversation into the human inbox, and manage knowledge sources.

When to Use the Embeddable Widget vs the API

Choose between the drop-in widget for fast standard installs and the API for custom UIs and integrations, and when to combine both.

Response-Time Reporting

Reading First-Response, Coverage and Resolution Timing

How to read onmsg's report rows: first-response times, coverage and unanswered conversations, average/median/90th-percentile timing, and resolution figures.

What the Response-Time Reports Measure (and What They Don't)

Understand onmsg's response-time reporting scope: retained history and elapsed UTC time, with bot messages and notes excluded from first human response.

AI Provider Choice (BYOK)

Decision guide

Included AI vs Bring-Your-Own Provider Key: Which to Choose

Decide between onmsg's included AI allowance and connecting your own provider key: what the allowance covers, when BYOK makes sense, and what BYOK doesn't change.