Chatbot Welcome Message Examples: 30 Greetings That Get Replies

The greeting is the first thing your chat widget says, and on a lot of websites it is still a placeholder along the lines of "Hi, how can I help you today?" It is polite, and it gives the visitor nothing to work with. They cannot tell whether the bot can check an order, explain a price or book a call, so many close the window without typing.

This post is for whoever sets up the widget: a founder, a marketer, a support lead or an agency. It explains what makes a greeting work, then gives 30 welcome message examples grouped by business type and page, each with suggested questions you can copy, followed by the common mistakes and a simple way to test a new greeting against the old one. The settings named are PepoChat's, but the wording works in any chat tool.

What is a chatbot welcome message?

A chatbot welcome message is the first message a chat widget shows a visitor, before they have typed anything; live chat tools often call it a greeting message. Being friendly is the minimum, not the job. The job is to tell the visitor what this chat is for, quickly enough that they decide to ask.

Suggested questions are tappable buttons shown with the greeting, also called conversation starters or quick replies. Each one becomes the visitor's first message with one tap. Together, the greeting and the suggestions decide how many conversations start at all.

In PepoChat the opening screen is built from five settings on the Widget Customization page, described in the widget customization docs:

The greeting is not an AI reply, so it never counts toward your monthly reply allowance.

What makes a chatbot greeting get replies?

Four things, and a good greeting manages all of them in about two sentences.

It says what the assistant can do. Nielsen Norman Group's study The User Experience of Chatbots made this a guideline: "Clearly tell people what tasks the bot can do. Make sure you don't create false expectations." A visitor who reads "I can check orders, explain returns and book a fitting" knows at once whether their question belongs here. "How can I help?" makes them guess.

It invites a specific question. End with a question that points somewhere: "What are you setting up?" or "Which product are you looking at?" A specific prompt is easier to answer, and the answer gives the agent something concrete to search for.

It sets expectations about people. Say whether a person can join and roughly when. If nobody watches the chat live and you reply by email, say that. A greeting that promises "our team is here to help" at 3 a.m. becomes a broken promise ten minutes later.

It says it is an AI. The same study advises being "upfront about using a bot and not a human", and found participants "were pleased when the business was transparent about using a bot." In the EU it is also a legal duty: Article 50 of the AI Act requires that people be told they are interacting with an AI system "at the latest at the time of the first interaction or exposure", a duty that has applied since 2 August 2026. The guide to chatbot disclosure laws covers the US state rules too.

How long should a chatbot welcome message be?

One or two sentences, short enough to read at a glance on a phone. If the greeting needs a third sentence, the third idea usually belongs in a suggested question.

Space is the reason. The PepoChat chat window is 400 by 600 pixels and shrinks to fit small screens, and the greeting shares it with the header, the suggestions and the composer. A greeting that wraps onto six lines pushes the suggestions toward the bottom edge, and the visitor has to scroll before they can tap anything.

Keep lists out of the greeting. Three tasks is about the most a visitor will take in; a seventh capability buried in a paragraph is never read.

What tone should a chatbot greeting use?

The tone of your best front-desk person, in the same register as the rest of your site, written in the first person as the assistant.

Write as the agent. The greeting is the assistant's first message, so "I can check your order" reads more naturally than "We are here to help with all your needs".

Match the register of the site. A law firm, a physiotherapy clinic and a skate shop should not sound alike. If your site is formal, a jokey greeting reads like someone else's widget.

Leave out exclamation marks and stacked emoji. One emoji in the headline is plenty. Enthusiasm reads as a sales pitch; calm reads as competence.

Keep the greeting and the replies consistent. The greeting is fixed text, but every message after it comes from the agent, shaped by its persona instructions. The guide to writing chatbot instructions has persona examples that pair with the greetings below.

30 chatbot welcome message examples by page and business type

Each table gives three greetings with two or three suggested questions each, separated by a middle dot. The brand names are made up. Mention only tasks your agent can really do: booking needs a connected calendar, order lookups need a store integration, and everything else must exist in your knowledge base.

The examples assume the assistant name in the chat header already says something like "Ledgerly AI assistant", so not every greeting repeats "AI". PepoChat shows one greeting across your whole site, so pick the category that matches where most chats start; the section on page-specific greetings explains the options.

SaaS pricing page

Pricing-page visitors are deciding, and they ask about fit, limits, trials and edge cases. Offer to find the right plan and say a person from sales is available. The answers must come from your pricing page, never from the instructions.

Documentation and help center

Docs visitors are mid-task and often frustrated. Promise speed and a source, and invite them to paste the error message, which is the most searchable thing a visitor can give you.

Ecommerce product page

Product-page questions are about fit, materials, delivery and returns. Name those topics, and do not offer stock or price checks unless your agent really reads live data, because an agent that answers from your pages can only repeat what they say.

Checkout and cart

At checkout, do no harm. The visitor is close to paying, so the widget stays closed until they ask, and the greeting addresses last-minute worries calmly. Saying what the assistant cannot do is reassuring here.

Agency or consultancy

An agency's chat is closer to a sales conversation. Describe the work, offer a discovery call, and give existing clients a separate path so their messages reach the team rather than a pitch. Pricing is bespoke, so tell the agent to explain how quotes work rather than produce a number.

Clinic or local service business

Service businesses hear two questions all day: do you offer this, and when can I come in. Say the assistant can book, name the practical topics, and state the professional limit in the greeting itself.

B2B demo page

Demo-page visitors want to know whether a call is worth their time, so offer both routes: answers now, or a demo booked inside the chat. In PepoChat the agent offers real openings from a connected PepoSmart calendar, shown in the visitor's local time.

Returning verified customer

A greeting is fixed text, so it cannot use a returning customer's name, but it can tell them how to get a more personal conversation. In PepoChat a visitor verifies their email with a six-digit code through the shield icon in the chat header. Bookings then use their details automatically, and if you have switched on meeting memory, which is off by default, the agent can recall what they discussed in past meetings with your team. Only mention it if it is on.

After hours

PepoChat's greeting does not change with the time of day, so write it to be true at any hour and let the business hours setting carry the rest. Outside your hours the status line reads "team offline, back Mon 9:00 AM" in the visitor's timezone, and the agent gives your away message, up to 300 characters, when someone asks for a person.

Multilingual site

Widget texts appear exactly as typed, while the agent replies in the language the visitor writes in. Either write the greeting in your main language and invite any language, or write a short bilingual greeting. A tapped suggestion sets the opening language, so give each main language at most one chip. The multilingual support guide covers the rest.

How do you write suggested questions visitors actually tap?

Write them the way a visitor would type them, make each one a question your content answers well, and let the set cover different jobs. NN/g's article on prompt controls in AI chatbots describes conversation starters as "task examples that aim to teach users what the bot can do", and their chatbot study found that "predetermined links and buttons saved users from typing". A visitor who sees "Where is my order?" learns that order lookups exist even if their own question is different.

• Use the visitor's words. "Where is my order?" rather than "Order tracking". A label makes the agent guess; a question does not.
• Cover different jobs: one common question, one task such as booking, and one route to a person. PepoChat's built-in chips, shown on the chat-first screen when you configure none, follow that pattern: "What can you help me with?", "How do I get started?" and "I'd like to talk to a person".
• Pick from real questions. The Topics card in PepoChat's analytics labels each conversation from its first message and ranks topics over six weeks. The top three are your first draft.
• Test every chip. A suggestion answered with "I don't have specific information about that" is worse than none.
• Update them when content changes. A chip about last season's offer becomes a trap the day it ends.

Can a chatbot show a different greeting on each page?

Some live chat tools let you target greetings by URL; PepoChat does not. The greeting, suggested questions and headline are the same on every page where the widget runs, so the work is choosing well rather than writing thirty variants.

1. Write for where chats start. Your web analytics shows which pages get the traffic, and the Topics card shows what visitors ask.
2. Name the jobs that cover your main pages. "I can explain plans, help with setup and book a demo" serves a pricing page, a docs page and a demo page at once, with one suggested question per job.
3. Put the page context on the page. A "Questions about sizing? Ask our assistant" button on product pages can call EchoWidget.show() from the widget's JavaScript API, so the visitor opens the chat already knowing why.
4. Split genuinely separate sites. A shop and a booking site with different audiences can run as separate workspaces, each with its own greeting and knowledge base.

What are the most common chatbot greeting mistakes?

The worst one is not a wording problem: it is a chat window that opens by itself. NN/g's review of popup trends says to "never show a popup before users can glean value from your website or application", because early popups "make the site look desperate and the user experience feel frantic." Google's guidance on intrusive interstitials and dialogs adds that such interruptions "may frustrate them and erode their trust in your website." The PepoChat widget never opens itself: the launcher appears after the page's content has loaded, the chat frame preloads in idle time, and the window opens on a click. EchoWidget.show() is for your own "Chat with us" buttons, not for page load.

The second is "How can I help you?" on its own. It hands the whole job to the visitor; NN/g observed that on one health site's bot "there was no way to tell in advance what types of tasks the bot will help with". The line only works when buttons beside it do the scoping.

On the email-first mistake, the guide to chatbot lead generation explains when to ask instead, and why answering first produces better leads.

How do you test a chatbot welcome message?

Change one thing at a time, run each version for the same length of time on similar traffic, and compare how many visits become conversations and how good those conversations are.

Reply rate is the share of visitors who see the greeting and send a message. PepoChat does not report widget opens, so use a proxy: conversations per 1,000 page views, with page views from your web analytics and conversations from the inbox's Export CSV, which takes a From and To date. With one greeting live at a time, this is a before-and-after comparison, not a split test.

1. Try it in the test drawer. Test the agent opens your live widget; test chats are free and hidden from analytics. The greeting applies to the next conversation, so start a new chat after saving, and tap each suggestion.
2. Record a baseline of two full weeks under the current greeting.
3. Change one element, the greeting or the suggestions, not both.
4. Run the new version for the same length, on the same days of the week, avoiding launches, sales and holidays.
5. Compare more than volume: conversations per 1,000 page views, the share that began with a suggested question, the share where the visitor wrote again after the first answer, and escalations and thumbs votes as a quality check.

Decide the test length in advance and do not stop the moment the new version looks better. Evan Miller's essay How Not To Run an A/B Test shows how repeated peeking inflates false positives, and his rule is: "Decide on a sample size in advance and wait until the experiment is over." On a small site, treat the result as a direction, not a proof. The post on AI chatbot metrics that matter covers the other numbers.

How to set the greeting and suggested questions in PepoChat

Everything is on the Widget Customization page, where a live preview shows the Home Screen and Chat views as you type.

1. Assistant name: put "AI" in it, such as "Ledgerly AI assistant", so the label stays in the header after the greeting scrolls away.
2. Welcome headline and subline: the first words a visitor reads on the standard Home screen.
3. Greeting message: written as the agent. When you have no published Help Center articles, it is also the first bubble on the chat-first Home screen.
4. Default suggestions 1 to 3: optional, but rarely worth skipping.
5. Team availability: answers in the chat, during business hours, or by email, so the line about people stays true.
6. Agent instructions: the persona and the "never do this" rules that shape every reply after the greeting.
7. Save Settings, then Test the agent, and start a fresh chat to see the new greeting.

All of these settings are on every plan, including Free.

What to do next

Pick the three examples closest to your business, adapt them to tasks your agent can really do, and try each in a test chat. Keep the one that reads most naturally, record two weeks as a baseline, and change one thing at a time. If the replies after the greeting need work, the chatbot instructions guide is the next step, and the AI disclosure guide has more wording for the AI label. You can create a free workspace and set up the greeting, suggestions and test drawer without a credit card.