Convert chat to ticket — Live Chat

Sometimes a chat needs more time than a real-time conversation allows — maybe you have to talk to engineering, wait on a refund, or follow up next week. Convert it to a ticket and you keep one paper trail without losing context.

When to convert

The visitor's question requires a back-and-forth that won't fit in one chat session. They might leave the page, come back later, want email updates.
You need to hand off to a specialist who isn't online. Tickets sit in queues; chats expire.
The conversation generated artifacts (a refund decision, a config change request) that you want findable later by reference number.

The convert panel

In the chat sidebar, open the Convert to ticket panel:

Visitor email — required. If the chat session already captured an email, this is pre-filled.
Subject — defaults to either the conversation's subject or "Chat with <visitor name>". Edit it to something a ticket queue would understand at a glance.

Click Create ticket from chat.

What happens

We create a Requester record matching the visitor's email (or find an existing one).
We copy the full plain-text transcript into the ticket's description, with timestamps and speaker names. Internal notes are excluded — they're agent-only.
The new ticket starts in In progress state and is auto-assigned to you.
first_response_at carries over from the chat, so SLA timers don't reset.
A system message logs the conversion in the chat thread.
The chat is closed.

After conversion

The chat sidebar replaces the convert panel with a View ticket TK-… → link, and the ticket page shows an "Originated from chat" backlink to the conversation. You can read the original transcript on either side.

What gets lost

Nothing critical. The conversation rating prompt still shows to the visitor (a closed chat is a closed chat). AI summary at close still runs if enabled.

Reopening the chat

You can reopen the conversation from the chat side — closing on conversion doesn't lock it. The ticket relationship stays in place.