Answer chats in the inbox

The inbox at a glance

Inbox shows every chat from the site you've picked (switch sites at the top of the sidebar). The list is on the left, the chat in the middle, and the visitor's details on the right. New chats and messages appear by themselves, with no refreshing.

• All or Mine: everyone's chats, or only those assigned to you.
• Open, Pending and Closed: filter the list by status.
• Unread only: chats nobody on your team has opened since the last message.
• Live updates: turn it off to keep the list still while you work.
• Folders: All, Trash and Spam.

Reply to a chat

• Type in the reply box and send. The visitor sees that you're typing, then your answer at once.
• Files: send pictures and documents up to 10 MB with the paperclip.
• Saved replies: type / and a shortcut. See Saved replies.
• Internal notes: switch the reply box to Internal note to leave a message only your team sees, like “Offered a 10% discount”. Notes never reach the visitor or their emailed copy.

Who you're talking to

The panel beside the chat shows whether the visitor is on your site now, the page they're on, where they came from, how many pages they've seen this visit, their device, their country and local time, and their past conversations. Name and email show when they gave them, or when your site identified them.

Statuses

• Open: waiting for your team.
• Pending: waiting on the customer. It goes back to Open by itself when they reply.
• Closed: done. The customer can't reply to it any more; if they write again, a new chat starts. Sending a message yourself opens it again. Quiet chats can close by themselves (see Quiet chats).

Assign a chat

• Assign to me makes a chat yours. It shows under Mine.
• Assign gives it to a teammate, who's told at once.
• Unassign releases it so anyone can take it.

New chats can also be shared out automatically. See Assigning chats.

Keep it tidy

• Mark as read or unread for your whole team.
• Trash moves a chat out of the way. Restore it from the Trash folder.
• Mark as spam moves it to Spam, and new messages from it stay there.
• Delete forever removes a chat and all its messages. It can't be undone.
• Ban stops a visitor from chatting with this site. See Banned visitors.

Choose Select conversations above the list to do any of these to several chats at once.

How long chats are kept

Free keeps the last 15 days of chats; older ones are deleted for good. Premium keeps your full history. See Plans and billing.