The BusinessChat Inbox serves as the central command center for all live, human-to-human interactions. It is logically structured into distinct views to help teams quickly find, manage, and collaborate on customer queries escalated from the chatbot.
1. Navigating the Inbox Interface
Before managing conversations, users must understand the workspace layout and the tools available within the inbox interface.
Primary Inbox Categories and Views
My Conversations: This is an agent's personal workspace that displays only the conversations explicitly assigned to them.
Chatbot Conversations: This view provides a complete log of all interactions currently handled by the automated chatbot. This includes:
Inbound customer conversations not yet escalated to human support.
Bulk campaign messages.
Automation messages.
Unassigned: This is a critical queue holding all conversations that have been escalated by the chatbot but are awaiting assignment to a human agent.
Teams: These are shared inboxes accessible to all members of a specific team, such as "Sales" or "Support".
Admins and Supervisors: This view is ideal for monitoring overall team activity.
Standard Users: Standard users should avoid replying directly from this view to prevent confusion regarding conversation ownership.
Environment Differences: In a single-user account, the "Team" and "My Conversations" views are identical. In multi-user environments, "Team" shows the aggregate of all team conversations, while "My Conversations" is limited to an individual agent's assignments.
Conversations by Topic: A filtered view showing conversations tagged with specific topics like "Returns" or "Billing Inquiry". If not enabled by default, users can access this by clicking the three dots next to the Topics View and selecting the desired topic.
Automations Views: This view divides automation messages by type, though they are also visible within the general Chatbot view.
Conversation Status Tabs
Within each view, agents can toggle between two primary states to track progress:
Open: Active conversations that currently require agent attention.
Closed: Resolved historical conversations.
Inbox Tools and features
The inbox interface is comprised mainly of a reply box and a customer profile. It includes the following tools and features that would help a support agent interact with customers efficiently:
Reply Box: Supports free-form text and Saved Replies for consistent answers to frequent questions within the open 24-hour WhatsApp window. You can select an icon from the reply box to send a file, an image, a voice note, or a location.
Internal Notes: Yellow-highlighted messages visible only to your team for collaboration. These are added by clicking the "Notes" button in the reply box.
Replying to specific message: You can respond to a specific point in the conversation by hovering over the customer's message and clicking the reply arrow. This links your answer to their specific message, providing better context for the customer.
Customer Profile Panel: Located on the right-hand side, this displays key customer information, specifically the name and phone number, and, if connected to an e-commerce, a history of previous orders. From here, you can manually unsubscribe or block the user if needed.
Keyword Search Functions:
Top Search Bar: Searches internal notes across all conversations (requires 4+ characters).
Right Panel Search: Searches keywords within the specific history of the currently selected conversation.
Limitation: The platform does not send automatic alerts when a user is mentioned in a note.
Note on downloading media files from a conversation: You cannot download any audio messages from your customers conversations. You can only download videos or files. You should see a download button or icon next to the file or if you click the three dots on the message.
How to create assets to use in conversations?
Users can use Saved replies to handle frequently asked questions in the conversations, and template to reach out to customers outside the closed 34 hours Meta window. However, remember that only Owners, or Admins can create these assets.
How to create a Saved Reply and use it in the conversation
To create a saved reply:
Navigate to Account Settings
Click Inbox Settings > Saved Replies
Click "Add New," enter a name (e.g., /refund), and type the full standard response.
Note: you can insert custom fields into the saved reply to customize messages for each customer (e.g., inserting the customer's name automatically). you simply add the custom field when creating the Saved reply, and when sending it from the inbox, click the custom field and write what you need.
To send a Save Reply in a conversation, you just need to click the Saved Reply icon from within the typing box and choose the right Reply and click Send.
Saved replies can be deleted at any time, however they will not be removed from historical conversation where it was already sent.
How to create a customer service template
To use a Utility Template for the agent to re-open a closed 24-hour conversation, an Admin must create a template upfront. To create a Utility template, follow these steps:
Go to: Account Settings > WhatsApp Templates.
Create New: Select category "Agent Response”, which is the equivalent of customer service.
Draft Message: Write a clear re-engagement message (e.g., "Hello {{1}}, we have an update regarding your ticket. Please reply to continue."). Or better yet, choose from the Agent response template samples to ensure it gets approved as Utility.
Submit for Approval: Meta must approve the template (usually takes a few minutes to 24 hours).
Note on Meta template categorization: Meta is strict in categorizing templates, and most likely even the template intended for customer service will be categorized as Marketing. While it can still be used in the inbox, as long as the local usage is set to Agent response, it might fail to send due to the "Maintaining a healthy ecosystem" error specific to Marketing templates. If this happens, we suggest that you create a template with the exact body message of the available Agent response templatesamples on the platform to be approved as Utility. Once that’s sent and the customer replies, you can write whatever message you want.
2. Conversation Assignment and Routing
Conversations are routed to users based on established assignment conditions and general system rules.
Escalation is triggered in two primary ways: either through an explicit customer request (e.g., clicking a "Talk to an Agent" button) or automatically via the "Idle customer" rule in the Chatbot Operator.
Once escalated, the conversation begins its journey to an agent. It is first routed to the correct team. If no employee of the assigned team is available, the conversation will appear in the Unassigned view, which acts as a central holding queue. Once an agent is available, the system's assignment logic automatically moves the conversation to that agent's inbox.
After assignment, the conversation becomes visible in two places: the agent's personal My Conversations view and the broader Team's view. This pathway is governed by a detailed logic that ensures fairness and efficiency.
Automatic Conversations Assignment Hierarchy
The platform routes incoming chats according to the following step-by-step logic:
Team Routing: Chats are sent to the team linked to the specific Chatbot button the customer selected (e.g., a "Complaints" button routes to the Complaints Team).
Availability Check: Only users who are "Online" (logged in) within that team are eligible for assignment.
Watch Mode Exclusion: Users in "Watching Mode" are skipped. (Note: Admins/Owners are in Watching Mode by default and must manually deactivate it to handle chats; standard users have it off by default) .
Assignment Limits: If a user reaches their configured assignment limit, they receive no new chats. If limits are disabled, chats are distributed equally.
Priority: The system assigns the chat to the eligible user with the fewest number of open conversations once they have capacity.
Conversations Assignment special cases
Overflow Handling: If no agents are available or all have reached their limits, the chat remains in the Unassigned inbox. Agents can manually pick these chats by replying to them from the Unassigned view.
Working Hours: This feature allows Admins to define specific operating hours for each team.This protects the business's response time metrics and professionally manages customer expectations. However, If an agent is available as per assignment rules, a new incoming conversation will be assigned to that agent even if the working hours say it’s outside of official working hours.
Manual and Implicit Assignment Triggers
Manual Pickup: Agents can pick chats from the Unassigned inbox by replying to them.
Implicit Assignment: A user becomes the owner if they manually reply to a bot chat, re-open a closed chat, or close a conversation.
Manual Re-assignment: Users can use the assignee dropdown menu to transfer a chat to a specific User (transferred immediately) or a Team (moved to the team queue for auto-assignment to the member with the fewest chats).
Sticky Agent: If enabled from the Operator, this feature automatically reconnects a customer with the same agent who last handled their inquiry if they reply to a same conversation within 24 hours.
Collision Prevention: if two agents attempt to reply simultaneously, the conversation remains assigned to the original assignee.
Tracking Conversation Events
Conversation Event Logcan be used to identify and determine assignment events and events related to the customer journey in the store.
Verification and Debugging: Users can use the event log to verify if the bot is distributing conversations to the team correctly and to check the customer’s journey on the website, as the events log within the conversation will include triggers such as when an order was place, when an automation message was sent and to which automation or campagn was the order attributed, etc.
Time-Stamped Updates: The log provides a clear history of updates, including status changes, assignments, and customer ratings.
Issue Resolution: This tool is essential for identifying and debugging potential routing issues or other system irregularities.
3. The Conversation Lifecycle
Every customer query follows a structured workflow from the first message to final resolution.
Conversation Identification and Prioritization
Unread Indicators: A blue line appears next to conversations with new, unread messages. This is only visible in the "My Conversations" view.
SLA Indicator Circles: Visual cues help manage the 24-hour WhatsApp response deadline:
Yellow: 20–21 hours have passed.
Orange: 21–23 hours have passed.
Red: Final hour (23–24 hours).
Sorting Logic:
Open Conversations: New customer messages move a conversation to the top of the list. If there are no customer messages, conversations are ordered by the last time they were opened.
Closed Conversations: These are sorted by closing date, with the most recent at the top.
Efficiency Filtering: Use the "Show Unread Only" button in the "My Conversations" view to isolate messages that require an immediate response.
Understanding Conversation Closure
There is a strict distinction between the two types of closure:
BusinessChat Closure: An organizational action where an agent clicks the "Close" (tick) icon to signify resolution. This tidies the inbox and allows the bot to re-engage if the customer writes back.
Meta's 24-Hour Window: A WhatsApp rule where a session automatically expires 24 hours after the customer's last message.
4. Advanced Management and Settings
Users have access to specialized tools to maintain inbox health and categorize data.
Categorizing conversations with Topics
Topics are tags used to categorize conversations for reporting.
Usage: While all users can tag conversations using the Topic icon, only Admins can create them.
Creation: Navigate to Account Settings > Inbox Settings > Topics and click "Add New".
Archiving: Topics cannot be deleted; they can only be archived to preserve data. Archived topics are hidden from the inbox but remain in reports.
Note: A conversation is removed from the "Topic View" if it is closed and then reopened.
Re-opening Conversations
The process for re-opening a conversation depends on Meta's 24-hour window:
Within 24 Hours: If closed by BusinessChat but still within Meta's window, an agent can click the "Reopen" icon in the Closed tab to resume free-form messaging.
After 24 Hours: Free-form messages are blocked. An agent must use an approved "Utility" message template to reopen the conversation. This restarts the 24-hour window only if the customer replies.
To reopen a closed 24 hours window, follow these steps:
Click the "Select a Template" button from the reply box
From the popup that will appear, search by name and choose the template you just created or the one already available and click send.
Bulk Close Conversations
Bulk Close Conversation is a feature that lets you close multiple inactive conversations at once using filters (e.g., all chats inactive for >48 hours). This action cannot be undone.
To bulk close a high number of conversations using the bulk close feature, follow these steps:
Click on Settings from the profile avatar, and click on Conversations settings
You will see the Bulk close conversations feature.
Choose your filter, which conversations you want to close, and click close, then confirm by clicking "Close conversations" again from the popup
Closing a massive number of conversations might take a while. You will receive an email once all conversations are closed. Refresh the page after receiving the confirmation email to see the updated results.
NOTE: The bulk close cannot be undone, so pay attention to the filters you're using to close conversations.