Prepare Your Live Chat Support for the Extra Holiday Load in 4+1 Steps
Step 1: Use Shortcuts
Typing every live chat answer from scratch takes a lot of effort and is not efficient at all.
One of the biggest advantages of live chat systems is the ability to serve multiple customers simultaneously.
And the best tools for this are “shortcuts”.
All you have to do is take some time to prepare a list of frequently asked questions, and then answer them. A good start is to refer to the FAQ that your website most likely already has. You can also go through your onWebChat chat history and draw some useful conclusions.
After you collect your visitors’ frequently asked questions and prepare the answers to them, remember to add those answers to "Shortcuts", and even better, make them visible to all agents through the "Global" setting.
Step 2: Send Files to Your Visitors
Often, customer support is not a simple process. The instructions you have to give may be more complicated, or you may want to share product catalogs or price lists that are stored in files.
With onWebChat file sharing, you can easily send these files to your website visitors or clients right inside the conversation.
Step 3: Add Triggers
Triggers are very effective if you want to start a conversation on a specific page of your website. “Checkout” and “Price list” are just two of those important pages.
Triggers are also useful when traffic increases. For example, you can tell visitors that shipping is free during the holidays or that certain items ship for free, and give them other information such as the protection measures you are following due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more.
This way you answer common questions before your visitors even ask them, and at the same time you start a conversation with anyone who wants to learn more.
Step 4: Use the onWebChat Mobile Apps
The extra load of the holidays, in combination with the pandemic, creates extra online traffic, so you will probably need to stay online for longer.
Our onWebChat Android and iOS applications offer a solution to this problem.
Download and install the app, then take a few moments to explore its features. You’ll also find all the “Shortcuts” you’ve created on the web platform, ready to use, helping you respond faster and save valuable time.
Bonus Tip: Reduce Live Chat Traffic
Another way to prepare for the extra traffic is to reduce it. How is this done, and why would you want to do it?
Frequently asked questions about the same topic should alert you that users are not easily finding the information they are looking for on your website. Check your chat history and try to find out if this information is properly structured on your page.
Update (October 2026): today the onWebChat AI chatbot can take most of the holiday rush for you. It answers the repetitive questions 24/7 from your own website content, and hands the conversation over to your team when a person is needed. For a step-by-step plan for this season, read Black Friday 2026: Get Your Live Chat and AI Chatbot Ready in 7 Steps.
