A pre-chat form is the short questionnaire visitors fill out before they reach an agent. It runs before the AI engages, so you collect identity once and re-use it across the conversation.
Common fields
Email (required for follow-up), name, phone, order ID for ecommerce, account ID for SaaS, urgency level. Add custom fields under Settings > Widget > Pre-chat form.
When to skip
Logged-in visitors (identified through identify() in the JS API) skip the pre-chat form automatically because we already know them.