When do chats time out?

Question

What is the expected behavior for chat sessions to time out? When do idle conversations time out? Why can't I end a chat in messaging?

Answer

Live chat and messaging are different experiences in Zendesk. Live chat uses a real-time chat session that can end or time out, for example when a visitor leaves the website. Messaging is asynchronous and does not use a customer-facing session that the end user can end.

A conversation ends differently based on whether your account uses live chat or messaging. Click the tiles below to learn how to end chat or messaging conversations in different setups.

End a live chat session as an end user

In live chat, the visitor controls the chat session. The session remains active until the visitor ends it in one of these ways:

The visitor closes their browser window and the conversation times out

The visitor minimizes their chat with an agent and the conversation times out

The visitor remains idle on the website and the conversation times out

The visitor ends the chat by clicking the options menu icon and selecting End chat

In Chat Mobile SDKs, the chat conversation ends after any of these conditions:

No activity on the chat for one hour

The visitor is disconnected for one hour

The agent ends the chat, which resets the session disconnect timeout to five minutes

The visitor ends the chat, which immediately terminates the session

If push notifications are disabled, the session times out 30 minutes after the user backgrounds the app

For idle status details, see these notes:

If the visitor closes the browser with no windows open that contain the chat widget, the session times out within 20 seconds to two minutes

If a visitor using a mobile browser minimizes, switches tabs, or closes the browser containing the chat, the session times out within 20 seconds to two minutes

If the visitor idles on a website with the widget, the session stays open for 20 minutes before it ends automatically. An idle status means no mouse or keyboard input on the website for 10 minutes. The user does not need to interact with the widget, but must be actively working on the page where the widget loads. A variance of up to five minutes can occur depending on their connection to Chat.

Leave a live chat session as an agent

An agent can leave a live chat, but not end the session. The widget remains open for the end user until the end user ends the session. However, an agent can leave the chat without the session ending.

To leave a live chat session:

Click the X button in the chat window

Click End chat in the confirmation dialog

If an agent leaves a chat session, the end user can reopen the chat. In this situation, the agent will experience the following:

The chat returns to the agent's queue after an end user sends another chat message

The previous chat history is present for the agent because it is still the same chat conversation

Any subsequent messages are added to the chat transcript

After the live chat ends, all additional messages are added to the chat transcript history as a single entry

Remember: If an agent never joined the chat, that is a missed chat, and the conversation is moved into a ticket. A missed chat ticket is not created until the visitor ends the session.

For more information, see these articles:

Why can my customers still chat after all agents have gone offline?

Why do missed chats have different ticket timestamps?

End a chat session in Agent Workspace

In Agent Workspace, end users can still end chats in all the ways listed above. The only difference in Agent Workspace is that the agent can end a chat in Agent Workspace with an end user with these steps:

In Agent Workspace, click End chat

In the confirmation dialog, click End chat

The chat shows the visitor that the agent left the chat session

End a conversation in messaging

Unlike live chat, in messaging a session is not a customer-facing concept. The visitor cannot end a session. Instead, conversations move between active and inactive states.

A messaging conversation is Active when the end user has sent a message recently

A messaging conversation becomes Inactive after a specified time with no activity by the end user, or when the ticket status (or status category) changes to On-hold, Pending, or Solved. By default, Zendesk defines a message as inactive after 10 minutes with no response from the end user. Admins can modify the inactivity period.

The ticket's activity state, as well as the ticket status, affect routing, business rules, and agent capacity. For example, if you use omnichannel routing and have not turned on messaging activity routing, turn on automatic release capacity and set your inactivity period for messaging to help agents manage capacity more efficiently.

Messaging conversations can also end when an agent’s capacity is released. This closes the session automatically and prevents the end user from reopening it. The terminal ticket status can be set to On-hold, Pending, or left unchanged for flexible workflows.

Note: Omnichannel routing is enabled as the default routing experience for Zendesk Suite accounts created after December 5, 2024.