Offline Form

An offline form replaces the live chat window outside business hours with a structured contact form. Incoming messages land directly in the team's unified inbox for seamless follow-up the next working day.

What is an offline form?

An offline form is the bedside table lamp of live chat: when a business is not reachable outside its service hours, the chat widget hides the real-time window and instead shows a compact contact form. Typically it asks for a name, email address, and message – optionally supplemented by a data protection consent checkbox.

From the customer's perspective this means: no disappointing “nobody is online” banner, but a clear invitation to leave an enquiry. From the business's perspective it means: no enquiry is ever lost, even if the team does not reply until the next morning.

The form is not an isolated email tool – in a fully integrated solution such as SendSeven every offline message lands directly as a new conversation in the shared inbox, with all contact details pre-filled. The team sees the enquiry in exactly the same way as an incoming live chat message and can continue working on it seamlessly.

How to configure an effective offline form

A well-configured offline form has three components:

  1. Availability rule: When is the team offline? Fixed business hours can be set per day of the week and time zone. Bank holidays are managed manually or through calendar integrations.
  2. Form fields: Name and email address are required. An optional phone number or topic selection (dropdown: Support / Sales / General) speeds up subsequent handling.
  3. Confirmation message: After submitting, visitors see a brief confirmation with a realistic waiting time – for example “We will get back to you by tomorrow midday.”

First Response Time naturally rises during offline periods. Teams that consistently use offline forms and prioritise incoming messages in the inbox nevertheless bring average response time down noticeably – because no enquiry sinks into an email inbox and is forgotten.

Setting up an offline form with SendSeven

The SendSeven live chat widget activates the offline form automatically according to a configurable schedule. All incoming offline messages appear immediately as new conversations in the unified inbox – GDPR-compliant, with a consent checkbox and an optional pre-chat field. Setup takes a few minutes with no coding required.