Getting started with the Crisp Overlay (AI Search)

Learn how to enable and customize Crisp Search Chatbox AI from your Crisp Chatbox.

Crisp Search Chatbox AI adds an AI-powered search layer before visitors reach your team. It helps customers find quick answers from your AI data sources, while still giving them a way to contact support when they cannot find what they need.

What Crisp Search Chatbox AI does

Crisp Search Chatbox AI is a self-service search widget that runs from the Crisp Chatbox. Instead of opening a conversation right away, visitors can search for an answer first and review AI-curated results from the resources you have made available to Crisp.

If the visitor finds the right answer, no new conversation is created. If they still need help, they can continue and contact your team through the regular chat flow.

Search Chatbox AI displayed before chat contact

Search Chatbox AI is useful when many visitors ask simple, repeated questions and your team wants to reduce avoidable conversations without blocking access to human support.

How Search Chatbox AI works

When a visitor submits a search, Crisp looks through the AI data sources connected to your workspace, ranks the most relevant results, and displays them in the Search Chatbox AI interface. A short AI-generated answer is also shown to summarize the most useful results.

AI-curated search results in Search Chatbox AI

Good data sources make Search Chatbox AI more reliable:

Knowledge base articles → public help content that customers can read directly
Website content → pages you crawl and make available as AI resources
Q&A snippets or files → internal resources that help answer repeated questions

If you also use Hugo, keep your training resources clean and focused. You can learn more in How to train Hugo AI Agent on your data.

Enable Search Chatbox AI

Crisp Search Chatbox AI is available to paid Crisp Plus workspaces.

To enable the feature, open Crisp, then go to Settings → Chatbox Settings → Search Chatbox AI. Search Chatbox AI is opt-in, so your chatbox will keep its regular behavior until you enable it.

Search Chatbox AI activation setting

Before testing, make sure your AI data sources are ready. Without useful data, the search widget will not have enough context to return helpful answers.

Require visitors to search before contacting support

You can also enable Require users to search with Crisp Search Chatbox AI before reaching out. When this option is enabled, visitors must submit at least one search before they can start a regular chat with your team.

Use this setting carefully. It can reduce repetitive conversations, but it should not make support feel inaccessible for visitors who genuinely need help.

Open Search Chatbox AI from your website

There are two ways to open Search Chatbox AI. You can let visitors access it from the Crisp Chatbox UI, or open it programmatically with the Web Chat SDK.

To open Search Chatbox AI from a custom button or search bar, run:

$crisp.push(["do", "overlay:open"])

Search Chatbox AI can still be opened if your Crisp Chatbox is invisible. Make sure the Crisp Chatbox script is loaded on every page where you want to open the search overlay.

Customize Search Chatbox AI

Search Chatbox AI can be adapted to your website theme, customer languages, and common support topics.

Use dark mode

If your website or web app uses a dark theme, you can switch the chatbox color mode to dark with the Web Chat SDK:

$crisp.push(["config", "color:mode", ["dark"]]);

You can switch back to the default light mode with:

$crisp.push(["config", "color:mode", ["light"]]);

Add frequent searches and categories

Frequent searches and categories help visitors start with common topics instead of guessing what to type. You can configure them from the Search Chatbox AI settings in your Crisp workspace.

You can localize these suggestions for different languages. The Default language is used as a fallback when Crisp cannot determine a more specific visitor language.

Localized Search Chatbox AI suggestions

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions which were not covered in this article? Here is a collection of the most frequently asked questions on this topic.

Can visitors still contact my team?

Yes, visitors can still contact support when they do not find the right answer. Search Chatbox AI is designed to answer simple questions first, not to permanently block access to your team.

If you enable Require users to search with Crisp Search Chatbox AI before reaching out, visitors must submit at least one search before opening a regular chat.

Can I open Search Chatbox AI from a custom button?

Yes, you can open it with the Web Chat SDK. Use $crisp.push(["do", "overlay:open"]) from your own button, header search bar, or custom website element.

Make sure the Crisp Chatbox script is already loaded on the page before calling the SDK method.

Updated on: 03/05/2026

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