Channels and messenger updates

The Customerly Messenger and your connected channels have received a round of improvements: identity verification with email_hash, better UTM attribution, a smoother WhatsApp and Facebook experience, and several fixes.

This article covers:

• Identity verification with email_hash

• Better UTM attribution

• WhatsApp and Facebook improvements

• The "Messenger installed" status and fixes

Identity verification with email_hash

Identity verification makes sure the person chatting in your Messenger is really the user who is logged in on your site or app, so nobody can impersonate a customer in live chat.

It works with an HMAC of each user's email, generated on your server with your secret key. Customerly checks it before treating the visitor as that user.

How to set it up

1. Get your verification secret key. At the moment you need to contact support via chat to receive it.

2. On your server, generate an HMAC (SHA-256) of the logged-in user's email, using your secret key. In PHP, for example: hash_hmac("sha256", $email, $secret);

3. Pass the result as email_hash in your customerly.load() call:

customerly.load({
  app_id: "YOUR_APP_ID",
  user_id: "USER_ID",
  name: "USER_NAME",
  email: "USER_EMAIL",
  email_hash: "HMAC_OF_THE_EMAIL"
});

Important: Always generate the hash on your server and never expose your secret key in front-end code. Once identity verification is enabled, users who are logged in without a valid email_hash can no longer authenticate in the chat, so deploy the code change before you ask us to turn it on.

For the full walkthrough, including mobile, see Setting Up Identity Verification for Web and Mobile on Customerly.

Better UTM attribution

Campaign UTMs are now kept even when a visitor changes page before opening a chat. Before, a visitor who landed from a campaign link and browsed to another page could lose their UTM data by the time they started a conversation. Now the original campaign source stays attached, so you can see which campaigns actually bring people to talk to you.

WhatsApp and Facebook improvements

• Faster connection. The WhatsApp and Facebook connect cards now show the platform icon and start the connection right on the page.

• Template messages display correctly. WhatsApp template messages now appear as they were sent.

• Cleaner Aura replies. Aura's replies on WhatsApp no longer come with excessive line breaks.

Accurate "Messenger installed" status

The "Messenger installed" status is now more reliable: only activity from your own website or mobile app counts. Visits from other places no longer mark the Messenger as installed.

Fixes

• The Messenger no longer shows a blank page on iPad.

• Starting a new conversation from the conversation list works again.

• Select menus now scroll correctly.

Frequently asked questions

What does identity verification protect against? It stops someone from impersonating one of your customers in live chat, because only users with a valid email_hash generated by your server are verified.

Where do I generate the email_hash? On your server, never in the browser. The secret key must stay private.

What happens if I enable it before updating my code? Logged-in users without a valid email_hash can no longer authenticate in the chat. Deploy the code first.

Do I need to change anything for the UTM improvement? No. Campaign UTMs are now kept automatically.

Do I need to reconnect WhatsApp or Facebook? No. The changes apply to new connections and to how messages display.