Messaging Conversations
The Conversations inbox gives your team one place to understand what a customer asked, see how the agent responded, step in personally, and decide when automation should continue. Use it for day-to-day customer care and for investigating conversations that need attention.
Navigation: Open Email & Messaging → Messaging Agents, then use an agent’s Conversations or inbox action.
Check who is answering
Before you rely on the agent to pick a thread up, look at the header beside the agent name. It shows the agent’s status, and it warns you when the agent is answering nobody: a draft or disabled agent says so in a line under the name, and an AI Reply off badge appears when replies are switched off agent-wide on the AI Reply tab. In any of those cases every reply in this inbox is yours to write — see Messaging Agents to change the setting.
Find a conversation
Search and filters help an operator quickly reach the customer who needs a reply instead of reading every thread.
Use the conversation list and available filters to narrow by channel, state, ownership, or search text. The selected channel icon and account name show where replies will be sent.
On a phone — held either way — or a tablet held upright, the list fills the screen. Opening a conversation replaces it with the thread and the reply box; the arrow at the top-left of the thread (Back to conversations) returns to the list. A warning that the agent is a draft, disabled, or has AI Reply switched off stays on screen while you read, because it says what a reply from here will do.
If a direct link opens a particular conversation, confirm the agent and channel before replying.
Understand the thread
The message thread distinguishes customer, agent, operator, and system activity. Session separators show when a new conversation period began. System markers can explain that a reply was skipped, failed, paused, or handed over.
Links to CRM records appear when the conversation has been connected successfully.
Message times, the Today and Yesterday separators, and the scheduled follow-up time all follow the timezone in your profile, so a teammate abroad and a teammate at the office read the same conversation identically. Change it on Account Settings → Profile — see Profile and organization.
See how the last session went
Once a session has ended and been reviewed, a badge beside the contact’s name says how it turned out, with a short summary underneath. Click the badge to correct the outcome if it is wrong. It is the same badge the Inbox shows, and what each outcome means is described in what the outcome badge means.
See why the AI handed a conversation to your team
When the AI decides a conversation needs a person — the customer asks for a manager, or sends a photo that only a teammate can judge — it passes the conversation to your team and stops replying. The thread tells you why, so you can pick up where it stopped without rereading the whole exchange.
While the handover keeps the AI paused, the line under the header starts with Escalation and ends with the reason the AI gave, for example Reason: Customer asked for a manager.
Usually the AI tells the customer that a teammate will follow up. For some requests your agent’s instructions tell it to hand over without answering at all; the thread then shows a Silent escalation line with the reason, under the message the AI was answering. The customer has heard nothing yet, so answer them first — including anything they sent after that message, which the AI never saw.
Spot an automatic offline reply
When a channel answers with its Offline message, nobody has actually replied yet — so the inbox says so instead of letting the text pass for a real answer. The message carries an Offline message label under the bubble, and the conversation keeps an Offline reply marker in the list for as long as that automatic text is the newest message. Both disappear once the customer writes again or someone answers, which makes the marker a quick way to find the threads still waiting for a person.
See when a customer removed a message
Customers sometimes take a message back after sending it — a typo, a question they answered themselves, something meant for another chat. The agent may already have replied, so the inbox keeps the message in the thread rather than leaving an answer with nothing above it. The message carries a Deleted by customer label under the bubble, so you know the customer no longer stands by it before you follow up on it.
The label is shown for Instagram conversations and appears the next time you open the conversation. The agent is told the message was removed too, so its later replies do not build on it.
Web chat conversations show no such marker: there the notice is displayed in the chat window and is never sent as a message.
Reply as an operator
Reply as an operator when empathy, judgment, approval, or specialist knowledge is more important than an automated response.
- Open the conversation.
- Confirm the replying channel displayed in the header.
- Read recent context and any escalation reason.
- Write and send the reply.
If human takeover protection is enabled, an operator response pauses automatic replies for that conversation. Confirm the visible automation state after sending.
Pause or resume automation
Pausing keeps the agent from replying while a person owns the conversation; resuming returns routine handling to the agent after the human exchange is complete. On a phone, on most tablets, or in a narrow browser window, AI Active / AI Paused stays on the thread header; Exclude from AI, Ignore auto-pause, New session and Refresh are under the three-dot button at the right of the header (More actions).
Pause automation when a person needs to own the conversation. While paused, new customer messages may wait for an operator and can trigger the configured notification.
An escalation does not always pause the conversation—that depends on the agent’s When the AI escalates setting. Treat the AI Paused / AI Active state in the thread header as the authority: a conversation can carry an escalation reason and still show AI Active while your team is on the way.
Resume only after the human interaction is complete. Review the newest customer message first so the agent does not answer an outdated request.
Start a new session
A new session gives a returning customer a clean conversational context when the previous topic is finished or no longer relevant.
Use New Session when you intentionally want the next interaction to begin without the previous session’s active context. This does not erase the visible history.
Exclude a contact from AI replies
Exclusion keeps selected contacts permanently in a human-only workflow, which is useful for sensitive accounts or customers who request personal service.
Use the exclusion action for contacts who must always receive human service or should not be handled automatically. Add a clear reason when prompted. Excluded contacts remain visible in the inbox, but the agent does not automatically reply.
Manage broader exclusion and routing settings from the Messaging Agent’s CRM or AI Reply tab.
Handle attachments
Supported media appears in the thread. If an attachment cannot be displayed, the thread may show a descriptive placeholder. Open unfamiliar files only according to your organization’s security policy and ask the customer for text details when needed.
Troubleshoot conversations
A reply is not sent
Check the system marker, channel connection, and current account. Refresh the thread once before retrying so you do not create a duplicate response.
The agent replies after a human
Confirm that human takeover protection is enabled and that the human replied through a recognized connected channel or this inbox. Pause the conversation manually while investigating.
A conversation is missing
Clear filters, confirm the selected agent and workspace, and check the original channel. Recently connected channels may need their initial history import to finish.
Messages received while the agent is off
Turning an agent off does not close its channels: customers can still write, and their messages keep arriving in this inbox so nothing is lost. The agent sends no AI replies while it is off — channels whose Offline message is enabled still send that one configured text, once per conversation session. A disabled agent also triggers an alert email linking to the waiting conversation, so your team can answer from here or reactivate the agent. An agent still in draft collects messages quietly, without alerts.
Related guides
- Messaging Agents
- Conversation Quality — the outcomes across a period
- Notification Channels
- Activity and quality