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Why we don’t offer telephone support

Updated

We offer 24/7 online support via in-app chat messaging or by email at info@format.com

We are a small support team of eight, who all work remotely from countries and locations around the world (Toronto, Montreal, Romania, and New Zealand) and across different time zones, which makes it very difficult to provide telephone support.

We only provide online support as this allows us to quickly locate your Format account, website/s, billing information, and some operating system details (browser last used and device operating system).

There are times when we may have only one or two support team members available to assist you, so we try to provide the tools and a large range of help articles to resolve your issues quickly, this includes Frankie, our bot who can present you with replies to simple questions as shown here.

We may ask you to send us screenshots or videos and it is easiest to keep all this information in one central, searchable location. It also helps if we need to escalate issues, and to reduce the chance of important information being misinterpreted, while also allowing transparency for all our team to see what is happening.

We may not always know the answer, but we will do our best to find out and to reply back to you, or escalate to another team member for assistance. Again, due to locations and time zones, this may not be possible immediately but we will provide you with realistic expectations of when you can expect to hear back from us.

In-app Chat Messaging

Our in-app chat messaging is available when logged in to your Format account (located in the lower-right corner of your screen).

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  1. Activate in-app chat support by tapping this icon

How our in-app chat support works

When you first use our in-app chat support you will see the following options:

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  1. Search the Help Centre. We have a large range of help articles, many including video guides that you may find helpful

  2. View Format product tours. These tutorials will walk you through the site builder and its features

  3. Send us a message

  4. View the Format status page, for real-time updates on our services

  5. Close the messaging window

Searching for help

You can search through our complete Help Centre library from within the messaging app.

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  1. Add a word to the search area

  2. This generates a list of results to select from below

Help Article display

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  1. Return to Help Centre search results

  2. Open the help article in a new, full-sized browser tab

  3. Scroll down to read the help article within the messaging app

Screenshots and text instructions

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Screenshots and numbered instructions are also included in most help articles.

Starting a new conversation

If you need more help, or if your questions aren't answered by our help articles, you can send a message to our team.

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  1. When you select 'Contact Support', you'll be greeted by our bot, Frankie

  2. You can send us a message

First related replies

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  1. Message sent

  2. Frankie will suggest related help articles

Talk to the team instead

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  1. You can ask to talk to the team at any time

  2. Frankie will collect some basic intake information, including your name, email, and reason for contact

A human replies!

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  1. Reply from one of our human team members

  2. Your option to reply and continue the conversation

If you are not online when we reply, the message will be sent to the email address you submitted with your chat intake form.

Reviewing previous conversations

Previous conversations will be stored as part of a single chat thread, rather than each conversation having its own separate space. Conversations are stored locally within your browser. If you clear your browser's cache, use a different browser, or use a different device, you will not have access to your previous conversations.

However, you will receive an email transcript of each conversation, at the end of that conversation. This way, you can access old conversations indefinitely, via these emails in your email inbox.

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  1. A recent message—most recent messages are at the bottom of the messaging app
  2. You can scroll up through the messaging app and
  3. Read through a previous conversation

Email

You can contact us using the email address info@format.com at any time.

Twitter and Facebook

Messaging our team via Facebook is also possible but this does not provide us with immediate information about you or your site, so it may require us to ask you for more information so we can locate and help you further.

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