The Talk to a person button is a promise, so Studio only makes it when it can keep it. Three things all have to be true for a visitor to see it:
- Live chat is switched on for that assistant.
- It's inside your hours, if you set any.
- Somebody actually has the Chats screen open — in Studio or on a phone — within the last minute.
Why the third one matters most
The first two describe what you intend. Only the third is evidence that a real person is there right now. A visitor who taps a button and waits for nobody is worse off than one who was simply offered the email form — so when nobody's watching, the button quietly isn't there, and visitors get the form instead.
In practice: open AI → Chats at the start of the day and leave it in a tab. That's all "being online" means here. Close it and you go offline within a minute.
Nobody is around — what happens?
Exactly what happened before live chat existed. The assistant answers, and offers to take a name and email so you can follow up. Nothing is lost.
Common questions
- Our button never appears. Why? Work down the three conditions above — it's almost always the third. Open Chats and reload your website.
- Can I appear available without sitting on the page? No, and that's on purpose. There's no way to promise a person who isn't there.
- Do I have to set hours? No. Leave them blank and availability is decided entirely by whether someone has Chats open — which is often the honest answer for a small team.