Can I hide the department field on the pre-chat form

Yes, though not with a setting: it takes one line of code. And it is usually right, because the choice asks a visitor to know your organisation.

Yes, though not with a setting: it takes one line of code. And it is usually right, because the choice asks a visitor to know your organisation.

Live chat goes away on 31 January 2028. What is below works until then.

Can I hide the department field on the pre-chat form?

Yes, but not from the settings, which is the first surprise. If departments exist in Chat, the field appears on the pre-chat form automatically. You add this after your widget script:

window.zESettings = { webWidget: { chat: { departments: { enabled: [] } } } };

An empty array means no visitor sees the department dropdown, and so none of them can select one.

Your departments keep working

Worth being clear about, because it is the reason hiding the field is safe. It does not remove department functionality from chat: you can still assign a department to a chat request on the back end, with a trigger or the departments.select function. You are not choosing between departments and a simple form, you are moving the choice from the visitor to your own rules.

Should you hide it?

Usually. A visitor who does not know which department handles their question guesses, and a wrong guess means a transfer, a repeated explanation, and a worse conversation than if you had routed it. Departments named after your internal structure make it worse: "Tier 2" means nothing to somebody outside your company.

When to keep it

When the choice is genuinely obvious to the customer and materially changes who should answer. Sales or support is usually obvious. Anything finer rarely is.

If you keep it, name them as problems

"Something is broken" and "Question about a bill" work. "Operations" and "Tier 2" do not, however accurate they are internally.

See also

• Setting up the pre-chat form
• Departments, triggers and operating hours in live chat