Message customers — Call for help & ticket chat

Customer communication adds two independent tools to a live ticket. You can turn on either one, both, or neither — per location.

• Call for help — a one-tap signal. The customer taps a button on their status page (for example to call a server); the ticket is flagged on your board until a team member acknowledges and attends.
• Two-way chat — short back-and-forth messages between the customer and your team, right on the ticket.

Both are great for seated or in-person service — restaurants, salons, waiting rooms, service counters, repair shops — and both are OFF until you turn them on.

Turn it on

First, SiteCheckin enables the feature for your business (it's a platform-level switch). Once that's on, new locations start with Call for help and two-way chat already turned on (so it's there when you set up), and any location can change it in Settings → Customer communication:

• Enable "Call for help" — shows the call button on customers' live ticket pages.
• Enable two-way chat — lets the customer and your staff exchange messages on the ticket.
• Play a sound on the staff board when a new customer message arrives — an optional chime (chat only).
• Messages allowed per conversation — the per-ticket chat cap (default 30, up to 100). Blank uses the default. Raise it if your conversations run long.

To switch either feature off for a location, just untick it in that same Settings section. If you don't see "Customer communication" in Settings at all, the feature isn't enabled for your business yet — contact SiteCheckin.

Configure Call for help

By default the customer sees a single generic "Request help" button. To offer specific choices, fill in Reasons customers can pick (comma-separated, up to 8) — for example a restaurant might use Call server, Water refill, Ready to order, Request the bill. Customers pick from your list; they never type free text, so there's nothing to moderate.

How Call for help works

1. The customer taps a reason on their status page. Their ticket turns red and blinks on your board.
2. Any team member clicks Acknowledge (on the board card or the ticket page). The card turns blue, and the customer's page updates to "A team member has acknowledged your request — we'll attend to it shortly."
3. When you've handled it, click Mark attended to clear it. Advancing the ticket to its next stage also clears it automatically.

Call for help is available at any active stage and turns off once the ticket is closed.

Use two-way chat

Open a ticket (Dashboard → click the customer). The visit page has a "💬 Chat with customer" panel — visually separate from your private Staff notes (which are marked 🔒 Internal and are never shown to the customer).

• Type in the chat box and click Send to customer. The message appears on the customer's page live.
• The first time you send on a ticket you're asked to confirm it goes to the customer (not an internal note). To skip that, tick "Don't ask me to confirm before sending (this device)" — remembered on that device.
• Sent something by mistake? Click the × on your message to retract it — it disappears from the customer's view (a copy is kept for your records).
• Messages are short (up to 200 characters).

Message limits — what happens and how to raise them

Each ticket's chat has a cap on how many messages it can hold (both sides combined) — 30 by default. This is a safety limit; a normal quick-question chat rarely gets near it, and every new check-in starts fresh.

• Approaching the limit: when a conversation is within the last few messages, the note under the chat box shows how many are left (e.g. "3 messages left in this conversation").
• At the limit: the chat box is disabled on both sides.
  • The customer sees "Message limit reached for this visit."
  • Staff see either "Raise it in Settings → Customer communication" (if you're below the maximum) or, if you're already at the maximum of 100, "please reach out to SiteCheckin support."
• To allow more: a location admin raises Messages allowed per conversation in Settings → Customer communication (up to 100). Call for help is never limited — it's a signal, not a counted message, so it always works.

Spot new messages without opening every ticket

When a customer sends a chat message, the ticket card on your board shows a blinking 💬 badge with a count. Click the badge to jump straight to that ticket's chat. Opening the ticket marks the messages read and clears the badge. If you turned on the sound option, the board also chimes.

What the customer sees

On their status page the customer gets a small "💬 Message the team" button in the corner. Tapping it opens a compact chat panel they can open and close; if you reply while it's closed, the button shows an unread dot. If Call for help is on, they also see the call button(s) described above. See Tracking links & customer status.

Privacy & limits

• Staff notes are never sent to customers. Chat and internal notes are separate channels by design.
• Chat is bounded on purpose (short messages, a per-ticket cap) so it can't be misused.
• Message text is removed by the standard data-retention cleanup along with the rest of the ticket's details. See Plans & limits.