Live Chat Etiquette

Chat is a different contract from email: the client is sitting there watching the typing
indicator. Draft chat messages and coach chat conduct against the cadence, holding, handoff and
closing rules that keep live conversations from going quiet or going wrong.

1. Read the live thread, or the pasted chat — cadence depends on how long the client has already
   waited and what was last promised.

2. Apply the cadence contract. Acknowledge inside the desk's first-touch window even without an
   answer: "looking at this now" beats a perfect reply five minutes later. Never go silent longer
   than the interval you last set — every quiet stretch needs a holding message BEFORE it starts,
   with a duration: "I need about 10 minutes to check the server, I'll message you by 2:15." When
   a promised check-in arrives and you aren't done, check in anyway with the new estimate.
   Re-promising is fine; ghosting is not.

3. Draft in chat register: short lines, one question at a time, no email formalities ("Dear...",
   signature blocks), no walls of text — split anything long into sequential messages. Mirror the
   client's formality, staying on the professional side of it.

4. Holding messages state three things: what you're doing, how long, and what they can do
   meanwhile — "no action needed on your side" is a valid answer.

5. Handoffs never make the user repeat themselves. Before transferring, post the one-line context
   summary INTO the thread: "Handing you to <team>: they'll see that your VPN drops every ~10 min
   since Monday's update." The receiving tech opens by confirming that context, not "how can I
   help?". If the handoff means a wait, say how long and offer the async fallback.

6. End cleanly: confirm the outcome in one line, state what happens next — ticket number,
   follow-up time, or "this is resolved, reopen by replying here" — and let the client close last
   where practice allows. A chat that became real work exits through Chat-to-Ticket Conversion,
   and the client gets the ticket number before the chat ends.

7. For a playbook request, assemble these rules into a desk-specific one-pager, pulling existing
   standards from the knowledge base so it extends current policy rather than contradicting it.

Never promise a response interval the desk can't keep: a cadence rule broken daily trains clients
to distrust the channel. No troubleshooting step with destructive potential goes over chat
without the same confirmation you'd require by email — speed is not consent. Chat is still the
record: everything lands on the ticket thread, and there is no "off the record" guidance. Don't
simulate typing status or claim presence you can't see; judge cadence from message timestamps
only. If the in-app draft view isn't available, output the drafted message text for the member to
paste. Avoid idioms, and draft in the thread's language.