Someone lands on your website, sees the "Get in touch" form and fills it in: name, email, a couple of lines about what they need. They hit send, and unless you happen to have your inbox open right then, that message waits. You see it the next morning, first thing, alongside a dozen other emails. By then, the person who asked "do you have space Friday?" or "how much would this cost for my case?" has already asked another business the same question — and probably already has an answer from them.
It's not that you're slow on purpose. It's that a contact form isn't built to reply: it's built to hold a message until someone reads it.
The difference isn't in the design, it's in the timing. A classic contact form is a mailbox: the visitor writes, the message sits waiting, and the reply arrives whenever you get round to checking it — which is almost never the same minute. A chat on your website works the other way round: the assistant reads the question and answers right away, with your business's real information — hours, prices, services, whatever you've loaded into the dashboard — the same way you would if you happened to be at your computer when the message came in.
Installing it means pasting a small snippet before the closing tag of your page, or adding a button with your link if your website builder doesn't accept pasted code (Canva, for instance). The full step-by-step, with instructions per platform, is in Installing the widget on your website.
The chat doesn't replace the form — it puts it inside the conversation, at the moment it's actually needed. Inside ChatME you can create forms that the assistant triggers only when it detects certain keywords — "quote", "booking for a group", "I'd like the job" — partway through the chat, instead of showing them from the start. There are ready-made templates for the most common cases (group bookings, requesting an appointment, contact or quote requests, events and catering, job applications), or you can build one from scratch with whichever fields you want: text, email with automatic validation, phone, number, date, a dropdown list or a long text area.
The assistant announces it before showing it — something like "let me ask you a couple of quick questions" — so it doesn't feel like a form dropped awkwardly into the middle of the chat, and it only asks once per conversation. You can have up to 5 active forms at a time, each with its own keywords. All of this is explained in detail in Forms.
Every submission arrives two ways: by email, to the address you set under Forms → Notification emails (you can add several), carrying the data the customer filled in; and saved in the dashboard, under Forms → Submissions, where you can review it or export it to CSV on the Pro plan. What you get by email is that structured data: name, phone, whatever was requested. The full chat never travels by email: you read that in Conversations, inside the dashboard, with the whole context of what the customer discussed with the assistant before leaving their details.
And here's the honest caveat: whatever the customer submits is always a request, never a confirmed booking or order. If they ask for a slot on Friday, the assistant collects the day and time they'd prefer and leaves it ready for you to confirm — unless you have Google Calendar connected and that slot is genuinely free, in which case it's confirmed straight into your calendar. The assistant doesn't promise what it can't deliver: it would rather say "we'll confirm shortly" than invent availability that doesn't exist.
Some questions the assistant can't and shouldn't answer on its own: a specific case, a complaint, something that needs a look at your systems or simply a word with someone on your team. In those cases it says so plainly — it's an assistant, it never pretends to be a person — and, if you have a form set up with the right keywords ("speak to someone", "I want a person", "complaint"), it collects the details there so your team can pick up the case. There's no live "hand off to a human agent" button mid-chat: what happens instead is that the request gets logged, you get an email about it, and nobody goes unanswered just because the assistant couldn't resolve it alone.
Some builders — Canva is the typical case — don't let you insert the chat's code inside the page. In that case, instead of installing the widget, add a button or a line of text with your direct link: the same assistant, on its own screen, one click away for the visitor. It works just as well as a button on the website, a link in your Instagram bio, or a QR code on your shop window or menu — and it answers the same questions it would if it were embedded in the page.
The chat on your website is included on every plan, with no limit on conversations. How many form submissions you can receive a month does vary: 10 on the Free plan, 200 on Basic, and unlimited on Pro and E-commerce. As you get close to the limit we let you know, and submissions keep being saved until you go over 120% of your quota; the assistant keeps chatting normally even past that point. Full detail is in Pricing.
If you also connect WhatsApp or Instagram (available on the Pro and E-commerce plans), it's the same assistant and the same knowledge answering there, with nothing to set up twice.
Does the chat's form replace the contact form I already have on my website? It can, if you'd rather: the assistant collects the same data inside the conversation, at the moment the visitor actually needs to give it, instead of in a separate mailbox. You can also keep both running.
Does the assistant confirm the booking or order right away? Only if you have Google Calendar connected and the time the customer asks for is genuinely free on your calendar. Otherwise it collects the request and you confirm it afterwards.
What happens if I go over my plan's submission limit? You keep receiving requests up to 120% of your monthly quota; past that they stop being saved, but the chat keeps answering questions normally. You can upgrade your plan at any time from Pricing.
Can I have several different forms active at once? Yes, up to 5 per assistant, each with its own keywords and fields. The assistant only shows the one that matches what the customer is actually asking about at that moment.
If you're not sure which form template suits you, or what keywords to use, email us at info@chatme.es and we'll look at it with you.
*Availability may vary by country.*
Try it on your real website. If you’re not convinced, cancel without writing a single email.
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