Inbox: Answer Customer Messages in One Place

Overview

Customers → Inbox collects the messages customers send you, so you can answer them from one screen. A conversation opens with the customer's profile beside it: their orders, what they have spent, their last order and their loyalty points.

The Inbox is on the Growth plan and above.

What lands in the Inbox

• Messages sent from the contact form on your storefront.
• Mail to your store's support@ address, once your own email domain is set up. See Custom domains and branded email.
• Text messages to your store's phone number, and calls the call assistant answered.
• Data requests shoppers make from their account.
• WhatsApp chats, if you have connected a number under Settings → WhatsApp (rolling out).

The Inbox shows the last 30 days.

Step 1: Find the message

Filter by All, Open, Tickets, WhatsApp or Resolved, or search. Each open message shows how long it has waited: amber after 4 hours and red after 24, so the oldest get answered first.

Step 2: Reply

Select a message, type your reply and click Send reply.

• A reply to an email or contact-form conversation is sent by email from your store's own address, so your own email domain must be set up first. Until it is, the reply is saved on the conversation and the Inbox tells you it could not be sent.
• A reply to a WhatsApp chat is sent on WhatsApp from the number you connected.
• A reply to a text message, or to a call, is sent as a text from your store's number. A customer who texted STOP is not sent it, and the Inbox says so.
• If the customer left no email address or phone number, there is nowhere to send a reply, and the Inbox says so.

A conversation moves to awaiting the customer only when your reply was actually sent.

• Canned responses keeps the answers you give often. Create one with a title and the text, then click Use to put it in your reply.
• Internal note adds a note your team can see and the customer cannot.
• Draft reply writes a suggested answer for you to read and edit. Nothing is sent until you send it.

Step 3: Resolve and ask for feedback

Click Resolve when the conversation is done. On a resolved conversation, Send CSAT asks the customer to rate how it went. Customers → Care metrics shows your resolution rate and how long conversations take to resolve.