---
title: "What is Proactive Chat?"
slug: "what-is-proactive-chat"
description: "Proactive Chat is a feature that uses Sidekick to deliberately invite visitors on your website to engage in a chat or to communicate a message."
updated: 2025-10-02T21:34:31Z
published: 2025-10-02T21:34:31Z
canonical: "help.gladly.com/what-is-proactive-chat"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.gladly.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What is Proactive Chat?

Proactive Chat is a feature that uses [Chat](https://help.gladly.com/docs/what-is-glad-app/) to deliberately invite visitors on your website to engage in a chat or to communicate a message.

![](https://cdn.us.document360.io/7047b671-c4f2-4df0-bb0a-b9b511fd2452/Images/Documentation/PC.gif?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-11-13T01%3A54%3A31Z&se=2026-11-13T02%3A54%3A31Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=cXEgeRz3P%2FmlZqyw95HP529PVWfgoC%2F1kB3xgPucAU8%3D)

Here are some reasons why Proactive Chat is a perfect tool to engage with your website visitors:

- Offer to answer questions about a product, service, or feature and quickly route those questions to your subject matter expert.
- Alert site visitors of existing promotions or upcoming sales.
- The ability to engage with visitors if they need help while browsing a particular page about services you offer.
- Reduce cart abandonment by offering help (or providing a handy discount) to encourage visitors lingering on a checkout page to complete their purchase.
- + more!

When you are ready to use Proactive Chat, you'll create a Proactive Chat Campaign, which includes a set of Triggers and a customizable greeting to strategically target certain visitors and invite them to engage with you. Proactive Chat, using Chat, can open with a message that says something like "Hello! How can we help you?" "Do you have a question we can help answer?" or "Here's a discount as a thank you for visiting our website."

## **Benefits of Using Proactive Chat**

- Trigger personalized messages based on where your visitors are on your website or what they are looking at to increase your chances of closing a sale.
- Route chat visitors to the team best suited to support a Campaign, including your subject matter experts who answer questions or your Sales team to help complete a purchase.
- Track how well your Proactive Chat campaigns are performing so you can make well-informed strategic decisions on managing your Campaigns best.
- Customize the priority of site visitors you want to engage with based on cart value or how long they have been on a page.

## **How it works**

Through [Chat](https://help.gladly.com/docs/proactive-chat-order-and-triggers-overview) and a Proactive Chat Campaign configured with Trigger(s), you can leverage Proactive Chat to invite visitors to chat, show promotions or discounts, and more.

So, what does a Campaign look like? A Campaign's [settings](https://help.gladly.com/docs/create-proactive-chat-campaign) look like this:

![](https://cdn.us.document360.io/7047b671-c4f2-4df0-bb0a-b9b511fd2452/Images/Documentation/Campaign.gif?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-11-13T01%3A54%3A31Z&se=2026-11-13T02%3A54%3A31Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=cXEgeRz3P%2FmlZqyw95HP529PVWfgoC%2F1kB3xgPucAU8%3D)

To your visitor, the Campaign could look like this:

![A cozy sweater, denim jeans, and fresh yellow tulips on a white background.](https://cdn.us.document360.io/7047b671-c4f2-4df0-bb0a-b9b511fd2452/Images/Documentation/Campaign-Sample.png?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-11-13T01%3A54%3A31Z&se=2026-11-13T02%3A54%3A31Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=cXEgeRz3P%2FmlZqyw95HP529PVWfgoC%2F1kB3xgPucAU8%3D)

When a visitor meets the Trigger(s) you set for a Campaign, the Proactive Chat greeting will be shown to them. All they have to do is click on the greeting to start a live chat with an Agent.

## **Requirements**

The Chat code must be present and [embedded](https://help.gladly.com/docs/create-and-configure-glad-app#preview-and-embed-glad-app) on your website for Proactive Chat to work. Once embedded, you can configure how and where (using [Triggers](https://help.gladly.com/docs/proactive-chat-order-and-triggers-overview)) Proactive Chat Campaigns appear in tandem with Chat [Display Rules](https://help.gladly.com/docs/create-proactive-chat-campaign#check-the-sidekick-display-rules).

See [Proactive Chat 'Order' and 'Triggers' Overview](https://help.gladly.com/docs/proactive-chat-order-and-triggers-overview) to learn more about Campaign Triggers.