Conversations & Visitor Memory
How Domainchat remembers visitors across days and channels — resumable conversations, remembered details, and the widget's ⋮ menu.
1. Conversations That Don't Disappear
A returning visitor who chatted with your agent yesterday — or last week — opens the widget and finds their full conversation still there: every question they asked, every answer the agent gave, and any appointment they booked. The agent picks up exactly where the conversation left off, the way modern messaging apps behave.
There is no "session expired" experience anywhere in the product. Visitors never have to retype a message, re-introduce themselves, or start over because a timer ran out.
Example — A visitor returns the next morning
2. How Continuity Works
How long a conversation stays open depends on where it happens — and it's designed to match each platform's natural behavior:
- Website widget: the conversation is tied to the visitor's browser (not the tab). Close the tab, come back tomorrow — same conversation. It stays resumable for 7½ days (180 hours) after the visitor's last message. After that, a fresh conversation begins automatically — silently and gracefully: the visitor is never shown an error, and if they had shared their details, the agent still greets them as a known lead.
- Social channels (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram): the conversation is permanently tied to the customer's account or phone number — the same thread continues for as long as they keep messaging you.
What the Agent Remembers
Beyond the transcript itself, the agent carries forward everything it learned about the visitor:
- Contact details — name, email, and phone captured via the lead form or in conversation.
- Appointments — any upcoming booking, retrievable with "when is my appointment?", and manageable with "reschedule" or "cancel".
- Context — what the visitor was interested in recently, so the agent personalizes its greeting.
Details Are Remembered Across Conversations Too
Starting a new conversation (see below) does not throw away what your business already knows about the visitor. If they gave their name and email in any earlier conversation, the agent recognizes them as an existing lead and never asks for those details again — the lead form is skipped entirely.
Example — New conversation, returning lead
3. The ⋮ Menu — Refresh Session & Export Chat
The top-right corner of the widget header has a small ⋮ (three-dot) menu with two options that stay out of the visitor's way until needed:
- Export Chat — downloads the entire current conversation as a text file. Visitors can keep a copy of product recommendations, quotes, or booking confirmations for reference.
- Refresh Session — starts a brand-new conversation immediately: the thread is cleared and the agent's welcome message appears. Useful for a clean slate — a new topic, a different family member using the same browser, or lifting the daily message limit (Section 4).
Refreshing is deliberately non-destructive: the visitor's identity as a known lead is retained (so they are not re-asked for contact details), and on e-commerce agents the shopping cart is kept — switching conversations never empties a shopper's cart.
4. The Daily Message Limit
To protect your plan quota from runaway loops and bots, each conversation can exchange up to 30 messages per rolling 24-hour window. This is a per-conversation limit — it does not matter how old the conversation is, and a resumed conversation continues to work normally.
When the limit is reached, the input politely locks with a clear message pointing at ⋮ → Refresh Session. Starting a new conversation lifts the limit immediately, and the agent still remembers the visitor's details.
Example — Limit reached
On social channels, where there is no button UI, the agent simply pauses replies for the remainder of the window instead of sending error messages, then resumes automatically.
5. Appointments Survive Conversations
Bookings live in your calendar and DCCRM — not in the chat thread — so they are never lost when a conversation rotates. Returning visitors can manage their appointment in any conversation, on any channel:
- "When is my appointment?" — the agent replies with the date, time, and title.
- "I need to reschedule" — the agent reschedules it on the spot.
- "Cancel my booking" — handled immediately, with confirmation.
Visitors can also hold more than one upcoming appointment at a time when they are different types — for example a consultation with Dr. Smith and a follow-up with the lab — while accidentally re-booking the same appointment type is gently blocked with an offer to reschedule or cancel instead. See the Sales Agent guide for the full multi-appointment behavior.
6. Privacy, Retention and Multi-Device Behavior
Anonymous website visitors are remembered per browser: the on-device memory lives in that browser's local storage and expires 60 days after their last visit. Clearing browser data starts completely fresh — no history, no remembered details.
On our servers, chat transcripts are covered by a clear retention policy: a conversation is automatically and permanently deleted 180 days after its last activity. Active conversations are never touched — only chats that have been silent for half a year are purged. Booking records and captured leads are stored separately and are not affected.
For a visitor's history to follow them across devices (phone → laptop), they need to be signed in to your store — on Shopify and Zoho Commerce agents, Domainchat unifies the logged-in customer's conversations under their customer profile automatically.
7. Common Questions
A visitor says the chat "forgot" them — what happened?
The most common causes: more than 7½ days passed since their last message (a fresh conversation starts automatically), they switched browsers or devices (anonymous memory is per-browser), or they cleared their browser data. In every case the agent starts a friendly new conversation — and if they had left their details, it still recognizes them as an existing lead.
Do old conversations disappear?
Can I control how long conversations stay resumable?
Yes — by default, website conversations resume for 7½ days (180 hours) after the visitor's last message. This window can be configured per agent — shorter for always-fresh contexts, or longer (including unlimited) for support-style continuity. Ask support to adjust this for your agents.