# Contact channels (https://docs.serviata.ru/en/docs/storefronts/publishing/channels)

Letting a guest message your team from the storefront — messengers and the on-page chat.

Not every guest wants to place an order. Some want to ask whether the massage suits a bad back, or
whether the transfer takes a child seat. **Channels**, at the bottom of the storefront's settings,
puts those conversations one tap away — and lands them in Smart Inbox with your other guest
messages, rather than in somebody's personal messenger.

Four channels can be offered, and they work in two different ways.

## Messengers [#messengers]

![Screenshot: storefronts/settings](https://docs.serviata.ru/screenshots/en/storefronts/settings.png)

1. The four channels, each either pointing at a connection or switched off

**Telegram**, **Instagram** and **MAX** each show the guest a button that opens a conversation in
that app. You don't connect the messenger here — you pick a connection that already exists:

1. Connect the messenger once, in **Settings → Integrations**, where it becomes an inbox other people
   in the workspace can answer from.
2. Come back here and choose it under the channel's name.

If nothing is offered, the field says "No connection of this type is available for this storefront."
with a link straight to Integrations. That is the normal state before step 1, not a fault.

<Callout title="A storefront only sees connections from its own scope">
  A storefront attached to a property offers that property's connections; a workspace-wide storefront
  offers the workspace's. So a hotel's storefront can't accidentally point guests at another hotel's
  inbox — and if a connection you expected isn't listed, check which scope it was set up in.
</Callout>

**Not connected** is what a channel reads when you've chosen nothing, and that's a perfectly good
answer: offer only the messengers your team actually watches.

## Chat on the page [#chat-on-the-page]

**Website chat widget** is different — a plain on/off switch, with nothing to connect. Turn it on and the
storefront grows a chat button, so a guest can write to you without leaving the page or installing
anything. For a guest browsing from a hotel-room QR code, that's usually the shortest path to a
question being answered.

## What guests see, and where the messages land [#what-guests-see-and-where-the-messages-land]

The channels you switch on appear together on the storefront, as the settings note: they're shown to
visitors so they can reach the team. Everything sent through them arrives in Smart Inbox, where it's
answered like any other conversation.

Two practical notes:

* **Offer what you'll answer.** A channel nobody watches is worse than no channel — the guest sent a
  message and heard nothing back.
* **Channels are not orders.** A question in chat doesn't become an order by itself; if the guest
  wants the massage, it still has to be ordered on the page or entered by your team.

Channels save with the rest of the settings — **Save changes** at the bottom of the panel.