Conversation inbox

The Inbox brings every customer conversation into one queue — emails to your connected mailboxes, chats from the widget on your website and text messages (SMS). Open it from Inbox → Conversations in the sidebar; the number next to it is how many conversations are unread. The inbox is on every plan. Plans and prices are unchanged.

Finding conversations

The left-hand list has views:

• Mine — conversations assigned to you.
• Unassigned — nobody has picked them up yet.
• All — everything you can see.
• Mentions — conversations where a colleague @mentioned you in a note.
• Teams — the conversations routed to each inbox team.

Filter by status, channel, priority, tag or person, search by name, email, phone or subject, and sort by newest or by longest waiting. Select several conversations to assign, tag, close or reopen them in one go.

A conversation is Open, Waiting on customer, Snoozed or Closed. Snoozing hides it until the time you pick (later today, tomorrow morning, next Monday or a date of your own) and brings it back as open. When a customer writes back, a waiting, snoozed or closed conversation opens again by itself.

Replying

Open a conversation to read the whole history. Your reply goes back on the same channel — an email reply from the mailbox it came in on, a chat message to the visitor on your website, or a text message.

• Internal notes are only seen by your team. Type @ and a name to mention a colleague; they are notified.
• Saved replies — type / and a shortcut, or pick one from the list, to insert a prepared answer.
• Priority and tags help you sort and report on conversations.
• New conversation starts an email or text message to anyone, from the button at the top of the inbox.

Customer context

The right-hand panel shows who you are talking to. Link the conversation to an existing CRM contact and company, or create the contact from it in one click. Their tickets, deals and other conversations are shown alongside. Use Turn into ticket when the conversation needs work tracked in Ticketing — the ticket keeps a link back.

Conversations also appear on the contact page, the company's Customer 360 tab and on linked tickets.

Response targets

Set a first-response target (by default 60 minutes) in Inbox Settings. Conversations that have waited longer than the target are flagged as overdue in the list, so nothing is left unanswered.

Inbox settings (admins)

Open Inbox → Inbox Settings.

• General — the first-response target, closing conversations automatically after a number of quiet days while waiting on the customer, and whether incoming email also creates a ticket straight away (switch it off to triage in the inbox first and turn emails into tickets only when needed).
• Website chat — switch the chat widget on, set its title, colour, greeting and an automatic first reply, and choose whether visitors must give their email address. A live preview shows how it will look. Copy the embed code onto your website.
• SMS — two-way text messages need a Twilio number connected in SMS settings. Switch SMS on and paste the webhook address shown here into your Twilio number's messaging settings. Customers who reply STOP are no longer texted until they reply START.
• Routing — for each channel, choose the team new conversations go to, and whether they are assigned by hand or shared out in turn (round robin) to the team's members.
• Teams — create inbox teams (for example Sales and Support) and add people to them.
• Saved replies — shared replies everyone can use; anyone can also keep their own personal replies.

Analytics

Inbox → Analytics shows conversations over the last 7, 30 or 90 days or 12 months: how many came in on each channel, how many are still open, the median time to the first reply and to closing, the share answered within your target, when customers get in touch during the day, and how many conversations each person handled. Click any figure, person or tag to open those conversations.

Automations

Workflow rules can react to inbox conversations — for example to tag or assign a conversation, or to notify a channel when an urgent one comes in.

Security

Customer names, email addresses and phone numbers on conversations are stored encrypted. Text messages from Twilio are only accepted when Twilio's signature checks out, and the website chat only opens on workspaces that have switched it on.