Ice breakers and the persistent menu: the two settings people skip

Ice breakers are up to four suggested questions shown before somebody types. A persistent menu sits at the bottom of the conversation permanently. Both are free, both take ten minutes, and both are usually empty.

Ice breakers: pick the four you are tired of

Not the four you wish people asked. Go and read the last hundred first messages and count. It will be some version of: are you open, where are you, do you have X, how much is delivery.

The value is not that the customer avoids typing. It is that the question arrives in a form you can answer automatically, exactly, and instantly - because you wrote the question.

The persistent menu: three items, not ten

• Talk to a person. Always. It is the item that makes the rest safe to have.
• The one self-service thing you have. Track an order, book a slot, see prices.
• Hours and location. If you have a physical place, this is asked more than anything else.

What not to put in either

1. Anything promotional. The ice breaker slot is for their question, not your offer.
2. Questions you cannot answer automatically. Suggesting "what is the status of my order" and then asking them to wait for a person is worse than not suggesting it.
3. A greeting. "Hi!" as an ice breaker wastes one of four slots on nothing.

Reviewing them

Once a quarter, against the same count you used to write them. The questions change when the business does, and an ice breaker offering last season's service is a small, permanent embarrassment sitting at the top of every new conversation.