What happens when a visitor leaves mid-chat

This is the normal ending for a chat, not the unusual one. Most conversations do not finish, they trail off.

What you will see

Under your most recent reply there is a line telling you how far it got:

• Sent. It has left us.
• Delivered. Their browser has it, so the message is on their machine whether or not they are looking.
• Read. They were looking at the chat window when it arrived.
• Emailed, alongside one of the above, when it also went out by email because they had wandered off.

The difference between delivered and read is real and worth trusting. Read only appears when the chat is open and the window has focus. A receipt that fired for a minimised tab would have you concluding you are being ignored, and either badgering somebody or giving up, on our say-so.

What Talkfront does

It emails them your reply. If the visitor has gone and you answer anyway, the answer follows them by email rather than sitting in a window they have left. There is a cooldown, so three quick replies do not become three emails.

It keeps the conversation. They have a token in their browser, so if they come back to your site the chat is still there, with everything that was said.

It may close it eventually. If you have an idle timeout set, a chat with nothing said for that long closes itself, and writing again reopens it.

What you should do

Answer anyway. The strongest argument for finishing a reply to somebody who has gone is that they will get it by email. An unanswered question is still unanswered whether or not anyone is watching.

Do not assume they were rude. Tabs get closed, phones lock, meetings start. The absence of a reply is not the absence of interest.

Close it when you are done. If you have answered fully and there is nothing waiting on you, close it. If they come back, it reopens with the history intact and nobody has lost anything.

If they never gave you an email address

Then there is nowhere to follow up, and the conversation simply ends. If that is happening often and costing you, asking for an email on the pre-chat form is the fix. It gets you fewer conversations and more resolvable ones, which is a trade worth making deliberately rather than by default.

Last updated 22 September 2026.