Description
HelpVox answers the phone and the website chat for your shop. It knows your catalogue, your prices and your stock, takes orders, checks where a delivery is and books appointments — in the language the customer speaks, at three in the morning and on Sunday.
This plugin connects your shop to HelpVox and puts the chat on your storefront.
You paste one short code, and that is all. The plugin creates its own WooCommerce API key and its own webhooks — there is no API key to copy, no ID to type and nothing to paste into your theme.
What it does
- Adds the HelpVox chat to every page of the shop.
- Lets HelpVox read your products, variations, prices and stock.
- Sends new and changed orders to HelpVox as they happen.
- Lets HelpVox place an order it took on the phone straight into WooCommerce.
- Checks your shop for the three things that usually break REST integrations — plain permalinks, a stripped Authorization header and a security plugin in front of /wp-json — and tells you which one it is.
External service
This plugin is a client for HelpVox, a third-party service at https://www.helpvox.ai/. The plugin does nothing on its own: the assistant, the phone line and the chat all run on HelpVox’s servers, and a HelpVox account is required. The service is paid.
Nothing leaves your site until you press Connect this shop. From then on:
- The plugin sends your shop’s address and a WooCommerce REST API key it creates for HelpVox, so HelpVox can read your catalogue and your orders.
- With that key HelpVox registers WooCommerce webhooks pointing at
https://www.helpvox.ai/api/v1/hooks/woocommerce/, so new and changed orders reach it as they happen. An order carries what an order carries: products, amounts, and the customer’s name, phone, email and delivery address. - The storefront loads the chat script from
https://www.helpvox.ai/, so visitors’ browsers contact HelpVox while the chat is open, and what a visitor types there is processed by HelpVox. - The admin screen asks
https://www.helpvox.ai/whether the shop is connected and whether the chat is live.
Disconnecting from the plugin’s screen or deleting the plugin removes the API key it created. Deactivating only removes the chat and tells HelpVox the shop is disconnected — the key stays until you delete the plugin.
Terms of service: https://www.helpvox.ai/en/terms
Privacy policy: https://www.helpvox.ai/en/privacy
Installation
- Create your HelpVox account at https://www.helpvox.ai/signup
- In WordPress go to Plugins Add New, search for “HelpVox”, install and activate it.
- In HelpVox, open Integrations, choose WooCommerce and press Show my connection code.
- In WordPress, open WooCommerce HelpVox, paste the code and press Connect this shop.
Your shop must be served over HTTPS and your permalinks must not be set to “Plain” — WooCommerce’s own REST API needs both.
FAQ
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Do I have to touch my theme?
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No. The chat is added by the plugin and removed when you disconnect.
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Where does the chat get its answers?
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From your catalogue and from the knowledge you set up in the HelpVox dashboard. You decide what it may say and what it may do.
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Can I turn the chat off but keep the sync?
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Yes. Add
add_filter( 'helpvox_show_widget', '__return_false' );in your theme or a small plugin. -
What happens if I deactivate the plugin?
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The chat disappears and HelpVox is told the shop is disconnected. Your conversations and orders stay in your HelpVox account. To use it again, activate it and press Connect on its screen. Deleting the plugin also removes the API key it created.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“HelpVox for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “HelpVox for WooCommerce” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.1.2
- An error message that contained a per-cent sign came out mangled on the settings screen.
- Housekeeping for the plugin directory’s code checks: a safer redirect, a documented reason for the two direct database calls WooCommerce leaves no function for, and a prefixed variable on uninstall.
1.1.1
- Housekeeping: the plugin link and the author link now point at different pages, as the plugin directory requires.
1.1.0
- Updates now come from WordPress.org like every other plugin. The plugin used to fetch them from helpvox.ai, which the plugin directory does not allow.
1.0.4
- Fixing something in HelpVox now shows up here straight away. The screen used to remember “no chat yet” for five minutes after you had created one, and told you to create it again.
1.0.3
- “Check again” on the Updates screen now really checks, instead of answering from a cache that could be half a day old.
1.0.2
- The screen no longer claims the chat is live when it is not. It now asks HelpVox what the real state is — no plan, no chat created, or switched off — and says which, with a button that goes straight there.
1.0.1
- The screen no longer says “Connected” before HelpVox has confirmed it. Handing over the key is not the same as being accepted, and when the two disagreed there was no way to tell which screen was right.
- A shop waiting for confirmation now says so, and offers to try again.
1.0.0
- First release: one-click connect, storefront chat, catalogue and order sync, environment health check.