Set up and Manage the Whistle Guest Chat

Whistle Guest Chat is a unified inbox that allows you to effectively communicate with guests using multiple messaging channels, send mass messages, personalize engagement, conduct surveys, campaigns, and keep track of your scheduled messages. Learn in this article how to set up and manage your Whistle Guest Chat settings.

1 - Set up the Guest Chat Folders

The Guest Chat Folders help you organize and categorize your chat conversations. The system's default folders are split by Guests, Managers, and Staff. Admins can set the default folders and manage them by adding or removing them from the platform. 

1.1 Set up Guest Chat Folders for your property

• You can click the next to each chat folder to remove it. 
• Users must have this specific folder permission to access the chat folders created in Whistle.
• The folder permissions need to be added to each user in the system according to the folders their roles should have access to.
• You may add Guest Chats Folders to each user in the Users page.

1.2 Manage Guest Chat Folders in Multi-Properties 

If you have multi-property enabled or an Organization that manages multiple properties, Whistle for Cloudbeds offers the ability to apply filters to the Guest Chat folders to better group and organize conversations for the properties within your organization. 

By default, the chats will be organized by property:

You can also apply different filters to have access to the properties you want.

In the Filters options, you can:

1. Apply the selection to all views
2. Enable the No Folders option to have all chats from all properties listed in one single chat view;
3. Select specific properties in the drop-down menu;
4. Select the tags of the folders you want to view.  

2 - Set up and manage your Team's Guest Chat Availability 

Manage your platform availability to receive messages. On the Guest Chat Availability tab you can schedule your team's hours of availability for guests to expect a response.

On the  Company page,

1. Go to the Guest Chat Availability section
2. Select the availability Status:
   • Always Available
   • Always Away
   • Use Availability Schedule (allows you to schedule your hours of operation).
3. If you selected to Use Availability Schedule, click to Add Hours:
   • Select the days of availability and the schedule 
4. Set up the Autoresponder Cooldown
   • Tthe cooldown specifies how long after the previous autoresponder to wait before another can be sent - 30 min to 6 hours.
5. Set a Welcome Message
   • It will be displayed when a visitor begins a chat session, and your availability or availability schedule is set to 'available'.
6. Set an Away Message