Manychat Live Chat is your go-to tool for communicating with customers across multiple platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and SMS, within a single interface. Whether you're answering questions, sending payment links, or managing contact data, Live Chat has you covered. This guide will help you get the most out of Manychat Live Chat with easy-to-follow steps and tips.

Managing Live Chat seats

A Live Chat seat is required to take part in conversations. The number of seats available in your account depends on your subscription plan. You can learn more about plan options here.

⚠️ The account owner automatically occupies one Live Chat seat, which cannot be transferred to another team member.

Assigning a Live Chat seat

Assigning a Live Chat seat allows team members to access the Live Chat feature and communicate directly with contacts. Only Account Admins can manage and assign these seats to users. To do so:

1. Go to the Settings tab.
2. Switch to the Team Members section.
3. Click the Edit button near the name of the chosen team member.
4. Enable the Live Chat seat toggle.

If you see the message, "You have insufficient rights to chat with the contact," this means you don’t have a Live Chat seat. To fix that, ask the account owner to grant you access.

Managing and organizing conversations

Managing the high volume of incoming conversations can be challenging. To help you keep focus on what matters most, we created a system of Folders and Labels. It offers a quick-to-use and flexible high-level organization of threads. You can find both in the leftmost sidebar.

Folders

Folders organize conversations based on who they’re assigned to, making it easier for teams to manage chats together. The Inbox folder is visible by default, while additional folders become available when more than one team member has a Live Chat seat.

Conversations are organized into four default folders:

• Inbox - main folder with all the incoming conversations.
• Unassigned - includes chats that haven’t been assigned to anyone yet.
• Assigned to me - shows conversations assigned to you.
• Team folders - show conversations assigned to a specific team or individual team members.
   

Labels

Labels allow you to segment conversations more flexibly than folders, as they aren’t tied to the assignment. In fact, you can set your own conditions for filtering or add a thread to a label manually, which makes them useful for both teams and solo users.

There are two types of labels available: preset labels are created automatically by Manychat, and custom labels that you can create yourself.

You can assign a label to the conversation by clicking the Manage Labels button in the chat window or simply dragging the thread into the label in the sidebar.

It’s also possible to assign a label automatically by setting the conditions during the label creation. 

Creating custom labels

You can create up to five custom labels to organize threads based on your specific needs.

Label creation is not available on mobile: you can only view labels that were created in the desktop version of Manychat.

1. Press the + button to the right of the labels section.
2. Select the icon or leave a randomly assigned one.
3. Type the name of the label.
4. You can create an automatic label by setting up the conditions. Contacts matching the set condition will be automatically assigned a new label.
5. Once you are happy with the label, press the Create Label button.

Threads Manager

The column to the left of the chat is dedicated to thread management. It displays all conversations within the selected folder or label, giving you an overview of both ongoing and past interactions.

At the top of the thread manager, you’ll find a set of filters that help you manage conversations more efficiently.

If your account has more than one channel, you can view conversations by channel using the corresponding drop-down menu.

You can switch between Open, Closed, or All tabs at the top to filter and view only the conversations that are relevant to you.

It’s also possible to filter out conversations based on various conditions. For example, you can only view conversations with contacts having a specific custom field filled in a certain way. To do so, click on the funnel icon at the top right corner of the threads manager and select the right field.

By default, threads are sorted by the time of the contact’s last message, with the most recent conversations shown at the top. You can change the sorting order by clicking the blue arrow icon in the top-right corner of the threads manager.

Timestamps show the time when the contact last sent a manual message.

If the contact hasn’t sent a manual message (for example, they only interacted by clicking buttons in an automation), no timestamp will appear, and the conversation will be listed below those with manual activity.

Working in the chat

In the center of the Inbox tab, you’ll see the selected conversation displayed as a chat. This is where you actively engage with contacts: you can reply to messages, assign the chat to a team member, add notes, or perform actions such as reopening closed conversations.

💡 Messages sent through automations are marked with an automation icon, allowing you to easily distinguish them from messages sent manually by a team member.

The rightmost sidebar is dedicated to contact management. It provides detailed information about the contact, including their profile, conversation history across all connected channels, and tools for managing tags, sequences, and custom fields.

Assign conversation

To manually assign a conversation to yourself or another team member:

1. Click on the conversation.
2. In the upper-left corner of the chat section, click the Unassigned tag or the current assignee’s name.
3. Select the new assignee from the dropdown list.

💡 You can also enable Auto-Assignment in the Settings to automatically assign incoming conversations to available team members.

Run an existing automation for a contact from chat

Send an existing automation to a contact directly from the chat.

1. Open the conversation.
2. Click the automation icon at the bottom of the chat window.
3. In the pop-up, select an active automation from the list.
4. Click Pick This Automation to apply it to the current contact.

⚠️ If Pause Automation is active for the contact, it will be automatically deactivated once you send the automation.

Pause automation

Pause all automation messages while chatting with a contact. This ensures your manual messages aren’t interrupted by automated sequences. The keywords will also not trigger during this period.

When you start replying to a contact in the chat, a 30-minute pause is automatically applied, temporarily stopping any automation messages to that contact.

💡 You'll know the pause is active when you see a pause icon near the conversation in a thread manager.

If the contact is already in an active automation, all automated messages will continue to send until the end of the flow or the nearest breakpoint (such as a Delay or Smart Delay). If a delay is triggered before or during the pause, those delayed messages will be delivered only after the pause ends.

You can adjust the duration of this pause in the Live Chat Behavior section of the Settings.

Canned responses

Save time with pre-written replies for frequently asked questions. Simply type / to search and select the canned response, or click on the Canned responses icon at the bottom of the chat and select one from the list.

Once selected, the canned response is added to the chat window so you can send it to the contact. 

To create a new canned response: 

1. Click the New button in the upper-right corner of the canned responses panel.
2. In the pop-up window that opens, type a name for the canned response under Shortcut.
3. Next, type the response itself in the Full Message box.
4. If you want this response to be available to your teammates as well, check the box next to Share with other users.
5. Click Create.

To edit or delete a canned response, click Manage, which will open the Settings window. You can also manage your canned responses in the Live Chat Behavior section of the Settings tab.

Click the pencil icon to edit the canned response. Click the trash icon to delete it.

Scheduled Messages

You can schedule messages on Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp by clicking the Schedule message for later button. Note that the button is only active after you've typed your message in the chat dialogue. 

When you click the button, a pop-up window opens where you can edit the message and select the date and time for it to be sent. Once you’re done, click the Schedule Message button.

Still, the following conditions should be met:

• The last interaction with the contact was less than 24 hours ago.
• The scheduled time falls within the 7-day window for Messenger and Instagram. For WhatsApp, you can only schedule a message within 24 hours of the last interaction.
• The conversation is assigned to you in Live Chat.

Notes

Add notes to conversations to keep track of important details or reminders. 

Switch to the Note tab at the bottom of the chat, type your note, and click Add Note to post it. Use @ to mention a team member or yourself if you're the sole admin to get notified.

All notes added to a conversation are displayed in the contact’s panel. To view a note in context, simply click on it, and it will take you to the exact point in the conversation where it was added.

Product catalog

Send product links directly in the chat for a seamless shopping experience. Learn more about selling products via Live Chat in this article. 

💡 Note: It requires a Manychat Pro plan with Stripe or PayPal integration.

Closing and reopening the conversation

Every conversation in your Inbox can be either Open or Closed. This is a quick and easy way to distinguish between chats where all work is already done and those that require a reply.

You can close the thread manually by clicking the Mark as Closed icon at the top of the open conversation chat window.

To reopen a closed conversation, click the Reopen button at the top of the chat window.

Live Chat behavior

Admins and Editors can select how Live Chat handles new conversations:

1. Go to the Settings tab.
2. Open the Live Chat Behavior section.
3. Choose between:
   • Any message starts a conversation: New messages automatically appear in the Unassigned folder.
   • Conversation should be opened explicitly: New messages remain in the Closed folder until they’re manually marked as Open.

Personas

Enable Personas to display the agent’s name and profile picture during Messenger chats, creating a more personalized customer experience. You can turn this feature on in the Messenger section of Settings by checking the box next to Show team member name and profile picture. 

💡 Your profile picture and name always appear in the Live Chat interface. This feature helps Manychat Admins distinguish between automated messages and those sent by real Live Chat agents. Only Admins can see this inside Manychat; your contacts will still see all messages as coming from your public Facebook Page.

Live Chat automation actions

In addition to marking conversations as Open or Closed, you can use special Live Chat actions within your automations to manage how conversations are handled.

To get notified about new messages, add a Notify Assignees action to your automation.

If you want to automatically assign a chat to a specific team member, use the Assign Conversation action.

Live Chat in the mobile app

The Manychat mobile app gives you full access to Live Chat on the go. You can chat with contacts, assign conversations, add notes, and manage contact details, including Tags, Sequences, and Custom Fields, all from your mobile device.