Hi team,
I’m using the Retell web chat widget embedded on a WordPress/Elementor site.
The issue is that when a user clicks the chatbot launcher icon, the chat window does not open immediately. There is a noticeable delay of around 4–5 seconds, which makes users think the widget is broken or unresponsive.
From Chrome DevTools Network tab, I can see that after clicking the launcher, the widget triggers requests such as:
- create-chat
- create-chat-completion
The slowest one is usually create-chat-completion. In some tests it takes around 3s, and in others around 4.6s.
The main problem is not only that the backend request is slow, but that the widget UI seems to wait for create-chat / create-chat-completion before opening or becoming usable. This creates a bad UX because the first click appears to do nothing.
I have tried:
- preloading retell-widget.js with ``
- using `dns-prefetch` and `preconnect`
- loading reCAPTCHA async/defer
- trying `data-auto-open=“true”`
- hiding the widget and showing it later
- attempting to simulate a click/warmup after page load
None of these reliably solve the issue, because the chat session/completion still appears to be initialized only when the widget is interacted with, or the preloaded session is not reused when the user clicks.
What I need is a supported way to initialize or warm up the web chat widget in the background after page load, without visually opening it, so that when the user clicks the launcher, the chat opens instantly.
Questions:
- Is there any official `preload`, `init`, `ready`, `warmup`, or similar method for the Retell web chat widget?
- Is there a recommended solution to avoid this delay on first click?
