How to pass additional visitor details from your website to the operator console

Many of you may have wondered, “The operator console gives me a lot of details about the users, but I have also some custom information available through my website and I would like to pass that to the operators as well. Is this possible?”

You may want to avoid asking customers the same questions twice, or just be able to better understand their behavior on your website or learn their shopping habits. Whatever your reason is, the answer is “Yes, you can pass any information from your website directly to the chat console”.

How to pass custom details?

We’ll try to explain it in this article very simply.

The main principle is that to the chat script you are using on your website you will have to add a small piece of code with the variables you would like to pass.

It does not matter which of our chat codes you use. Be it Recommended Fully Featured Code, Hidden Code for Visitor Monitoring or Text Chat Link Code, you can pass the details with any of them. You cannot pass only with a No-Script Code, Code for Emails and Facebook Code, which are simple direct links and do not contain any scripting.

Where to add my variables?

An important question, as custom details cannot just go anywhere in the script, or they will mess it up. The correct place for them is in between getTime() and ;setTimeout(” parts in your script, after “&“. You will see examples further down the page.

What exactly to put?

Basically, what you want to pass is the variable name and the actual value. Let’s take for example, that we would like to pass User ID and ZIP Code. Depending on the language you website is built in the final string of the code to be added will look slightly different. Below we are covering 3 most popular programming languages.

PASSING FROM JAVASCRIPT WEBSITE

If you are passing from a javascript site, your formula is:

+"&Variable%20Name1=VariableValue1& Variable%20Name2=VariableValue2"

Use %20 instead whenever you need a space in the Variable Name.

Taking our example with User ID (uid) and ZIP Code (zip) , the final piece of code to be added to your chat script will look like this:

Example (Please do not copy this piece of code as it will not work in combination with your own code due to different IDs):

<script type="text/javascript">
 var seZ3to=document.createElement("script"); seZ3to.type="text/javascript";
 var seZ3tos=(location.protocol.indexOf("https")==0?"https":"http")
 +"://image.providesupport.com/js/your-account-name/safe-standard.js?ps_h=Z3to&ps_t="
 +new Date().getTime()
 +"&User%20ID=uid&ZIP%20Code=zip"
 ;setTimeout("seZ3to.src=seZ3tos;document.getElementById('sdZ3to').appendChild(seZ3to)",1)
 </script>

If you would like to generate Passing Information Code for the chat button uploaded to your account, you are welcome to take advantage of our form for passing variables, which is available on My Account / Setup Instructions / Passing Information Code page. On this form you’d need to fill out your field name and add your variable value. Those details will be added to the code below the form.

PASSING FROM PHP.Net WEBSITE

For those passing from a php-based website, the formula is:

+"&Variable%20Name1=<?php print "$VariableValue1";?>&Variable%20Name2=<?php print "$VariableValue2";?>"

Adding User ID and Zip Code from our example, we’ll get the final string of code looking the following:

Example (Please do not copy this piece of code as it will not work in combination with your own code due to different IDs):

<script type="text/javascript">
 var seZ3to=document.createElement("script"); seZ3to.type="text/javascript";
 var seZ3tos=(location.protocol.indexOf("https")==0?"https":"http")
 +"://image.providesupport.com/js/your-account-name/safe-standard.js?ps_h=Z3to&ps_t="
 +new Date().getTime()
 +"&User%20ID=<?php print "$uid";?>&ZIP%20Code=<?php print "$zip";?>"
 ;setTimeout("seZ3to.src=seZ3tos;document.getElementById('sdZ3to').appendChild(seZ3to)",1)
 </script>

PASSING FROM ASP.Net WEBSITE

ASP.Net website owners, your formula is:

+"&Variable%20Name1=<%Response.write(VariableValue2)%>&Variable%20Name2=<%Response.write(VariableValue2)%>"

The final string of code with our User ID and Zip Code variables will have the following look:

Example (Please do not copy this piece of code as it will not work in combination with your own code due to different IDs):

<script type="text/javascript">
 var seZ3to=document.createElement("script"); seZ3to.type="text/javascript";
 var seZ3tos=(location.protocol.indexOf("https")
 ==0?"https://secure.providesupport.com/image":"https://image.providesupport.com")
 +"/js/your-account-name/safe-standard.js?ps_h=Z3to\u0026ps_t="
 +new Date().getTime()
 +"&User%20ID=<%Response.write(uid)%>&ZIP%20Code=<%Response.write(zip)%>"
 ;setTimeout("seZ3to.src=seZ3tos;document.getElementById('sdZ3to').appendChild(seZ3to)",1)
 </script>

Where to find the passed data?

The details you have passed will appear in the Custom Fields column in the Visitors list of the operator console.  During an active live chat session, they will also be available to the operator under Room Details tab, and when the chat session is finished, you will find them at the bottom of the chat transcript which comes to your email.

We hope that this information will be useful to you and will help you discover new ways you can use our live chat tool and maximize your benefits from it.

If you have any questions, let us know.

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