FrontDesk Chat

Description

FrontDesk Chat is an AI front desk that answers visitor questions and books appointments. This plugin puts your FrontDesk booking page on your WordPress site:

• Inline booking page. Place it anywhere with the [frontdeskchat] shortcode or the “FrontDesk Chat” block.
• Text link or button. The booking page opens in an overlay when a visitor clicks.
• Floating booking button. An optional button on every page. It is off by default.
• Chat. You can show your chat page the same way, or choose the chat bubble as the floating button.

An account is required. You create your desk at frontdeskchat.com. The plugin itself is free.

Nothing loads until the visitor consents. The plugin only prints empty placeholders and a small script. It contacts FrontDesk Chat after your consent manager tells it the visitor agreed. Until then there are no requests to FrontDesk Chat, no FrontDesk Chat scripts and no FrontDesk Chat browser storage. See “Visitor consent” below.

Visitor consent

Add this line where your cookie or consent manager runs after a visitor accepts:

window.fdchatConsentGranted = true; document.dispatchEvent( new Event( 'fdchat_consent_granted' ) );

If the flag is already set when the page loads (a returning visitor), everything loads straight away.

Usage

Turn on quick booking for your desk in the FrontDesk Chat dashboard first. Then add a shortcode to any page or post.

Inline booking page:

[frontdeskchat]

Text link that opens the booking page:

[frontdeskchat display="text" text="Book a call"]

Button (text and colors are optional):

[frontdeskchat display="button" text="Book now" color="#16a34a" text_color="#ffffff"]

These use the desk id from Settings. To use another desk, add desk="...".

Chat page: copy the page link from Share > Link in your dashboard.

[frontdeskchat view="chat" url="https://frontdeskchat.com/handle/slug"]

display works for the chat page too ("inline", "text" or "button"). The same options are in the block editor: add the "FrontDesk Chat" block.<h3>External services</h3>

This plugin connects your visitors’ browsers to the FrontDesk Chat service (https://frontdeskchat.com). Your WordPress server never contacts the service: the plugin’s PHP makes no requests.

What it loads, and when. Only after the visitor consents:

• https://cdn.frontdeskchat.com serves two scripts. embed.js draws the booking and chat pages, the text link, the button and the floating booking button; it loads when a shortcode or block is on the page, or when the floating booking button is on. widget.js is the chat bubble; it loads only when Floating button is set to Chat bubble.
• https://frontdeskchat.com serves the booking page (/book/<desk id>) and the chat page (/<handle>/<slug>), shown in iframes.
• https://app.frontdeskchat.com serves the chat window (/embed/chat), shown in an iframe, only when the chat bubble is on.

What is sent to the service. Standard request data (IP address, browser details, referrer) and the desk id. The booking page submits what the visitor enters: name, email, answers to your questions, the chosen date and time and their time zone, plus a Cloudflare Turnstile check token. The chat sends the visitor’s messages and time zone. The chat bubble also sends the address and host of the page the visitor is on, when the page changes. The service stores a hash of the IP address with a chat conversation.

What is stored in the visitor’s browser.

• embed.js stores nothing and sets no cookies.
• On your site, the chat bubble script stores localStorage keys fdc:open:<desk id> (whether the chat is open), fdc:teaser:<desk id> (whether the greeting was dismissed) and fdc:session:<desk id> (the conversation session token). It sets no cookies.
• FrontDesk’s own app runs inside the iframes, on its own origins (frontdeskchat.com and app.frontdeskchat.com). There it stores a localStorage key fdc-auth (an empty sign-in state for visitors). The chat window also stores fd_visitor:<desk id> (a random visitor id created on the first chat and sent to the service when a chat starts) and fd_csat_<desk id> (whether the satisfaction survey was answered).

Other services used inside FrontDesk Chat pages. An anti-abuse check from Cloudflare Turnstile (challenges.cloudflare.com) runs in the chat and booking pages. FrontDesk Chat pages also send a Cloudflare web analytics beacon (a request to /cdn-cgi/rum) and may send error reports; see the privacy policy.

Terms of service: https://frontdeskchat.com/policy/terms/
Privacy policy: https://frontdeskchat.com/policy/privacy/