How do I use the Spam Checker in Chat?

Spam visitors waste rep time and clutter your pipeline. Spam Checker scores the email a visitor provides during a chat conversation and lets you route spam down a separate path – before the visitor ever reaches scheduling or your reps.

Spam Checker in Chat uses the same checks, scoring, and settings as the Form Submission Spam Checker. This article covers how to use it inside a Chat Journey.

Table of Contents

• How the Spam Checker works in Chat
• How to add the Spam Checker node
• Building the Spam path
• Writing the score to a data field
• Spam Checker settings
• Spam Checker logs
• Limitations

How the Spam Checker works in Chat

When a conversation reaches the Spam Checker node, the visitor's email is scored against your configured checks (MX record, blocklists, role-based email, disposable email, free email, and gibberish detection). The result splits the conversation:

• Not Spam – the visitor continues along your main path (qualification, enrichment, scheduling);
• Spam – the visitor follows the alternative path you build for spam.

The node needs an email to check, so place it after the step in your Journey that collects the visitor's email.

How to add the Spam Checker node

1. Open your Chat Journey;
2. Find the point in the flow directly after the visitor's email is collected;
3. Select the + on the connector and choose Spam Checker under Evaluation;

4. The node exposes two exits – Not Spam continues the main flow, Spam starts the spam path;
5. The node lists the checks that will run. To adjust which checks run and how they are scored, select Open Settings – this opens the shared Spam Checker settings in your Workspace Settings. The checks, weights, and thresholds are documented in the Form Submission Spam Checker article.

Note: Spam Checker settings are shared across Chili Piper. Changes made from a Chat Journey also apply to Spam Checker nodes in your Concierge routers.

Building the Spam path

The Spam exit is a normal branch of your Journey – you decide what a flagged visitor experiences. Common patterns:

• End the conversation with a neutral message;
• Continue the conversation without offering scheduling, so flagged visitors are not alerted that they were caught;
• Skip CRM record creation for flagged visitors by ending the spam path with an Update or Create Record node set to Do not create Record.

Writing the score to a data field

Spam Checker can write the visitor's spam score to the Spam Score data field, which can be mapped to your CRM. This data field is pre-created by Chili Piper.

1. In the Spam Checker node, enable Write Spam Score in Data Field;
2. To map the field to your CRM, go to Data Fields, search Spam Score, open the field, and map it to your CRM.

For more detail on the Spam Score field, see the Writing to Data Fields section of the Form Submission Spam Checker article.

Spam Checker settings

Checks, weights, thresholds, blocklists, and the test tool are documented in the Form Submission Spam Checker article. The same settings apply to Chat.

Spam Checker logs

Spam checks from Chat conversations appear in the Spam Report in the Workspace under Reporting, alongside checks from other sources. The Source column shows which checks came from Chat.

Chat logs

Within Chat Logs, selecting the Spam Checker node on a conversation shows the result of that check and which exit the visitor took.

Limitations

• The Spam Checker node requires the visitor's email, so it must sit after an email collection step in the Journey;
• Links that contain an email as a smart parameter are not flagged as spam;
• Spam Checker settings are shared with Concierge – they cannot be configured per Journey.