The Inbox

The Inbox is where your team handles live chat and voice conversations with visitors on your sites, one screen for reading, replying, calling, and handing work between people and the AI.

How the Inbox is laid out

The Inbox has three columns. On the left is the conversation list. In the middle is the chat thread for the conversation you have open. On the right is a side panel with everything you need to know about the visitor.

• Conversation list: every open chat, grouped into sections so the ones that need you sit at the top.
• Chat thread: the full message history with the visitor, the reply box at the bottom, and action buttons in the header.
• Side panel: a tabbed panel with a Visitor tab and an AI co-pilot tab. Show or hide it with the info button in the thread header.

If you work across several sites, use the site dropdown at the top of the list to focus on one site, or leave it on All sites to see everything.

Live, Idle, and the other list sections

The conversation list sorts chats into sections and labels each one so you can tell at a glance who is waiting and who is just around.

• New visitor: someone just arrived and has not sent a message yet. A good moment to greet them first.
• Live now: the visitor is online and looking at the page right now. These are your most time-sensitive chats.
• Idle: the visitor is online but has the tab in the background, so they may be slower to reply.
• Snoozed: chats you parked for later. They surface again on their own when the timer runs out, or sooner if the visitor writes.
• Messenger: chats coming in from a connected Facebook Page. You can reply to these any time, they are not live sessions.

Rows with unread messages are marked so you do not miss them, and the browser tab title shows a count when messages are waiting.

Picking up and replying to a conversation

Click any row in the list to open it. If nobody has picked the chat up yet, or another teammate is serving it, you open it in view-only mode and see a banner explaining who is on it.

1. Click the conversation in the list to open the thread.
2. If you see the View only banner, click Join chat. The visitor is told an agent has joined, and the reply box unlocks.
3. Type your reply in the box at the bottom and send it. The first agent to send a message becomes the assignee for the chat.

The Serving by line in the header shows which teammates are on the conversation. To transfer or reassign a chat, another teammate simply opens it and clicks Join chat, so more than one person can serve the same visitor when needed.

Sending files, voice notes, and saved replies

The reply box has a small toolbar for more than plain text. Which buttons appear depends on what each site has turned on.

• Saved replies: type / in the reply box to open your canned responses, then pick one with the arrow keys and Enter, or click it. See canned responses to create and manage them.
• Attach a file: click the paperclip to send images and documents, up to five attachments per message.
• Voice note: click the microphone to record, then click again to stop and send. A timer shows while you record.
• AI help: the spark button suggests reply drafts, and the wand button rephrases what you have already typed in a chosen tone.

Starting or taking a voice call

When a site has voice calling turned on, a Call button appears in the thread header. Click it to ring the visitor right inside their chat widget, no phone number needed. An in-call panel floats on screen so you can keep working while you talk.

For a chat that came in through Facebook Messenger, calling works differently. Instead of Call you see Call in Messenger, which opens the thread in Meta's own inbox where the native call lives.

Floating chat windows

You do not have to stay on the Inbox to keep a chat going. Every conversation has a pop out button that lifts it into a floating window. The window stays pinned on screen while you move around the rest of the app, so you can check a lead, open a ticket, or update a sheet without losing the conversation or dropping your place in it.

• Open several at once: pop out as many chats as you need. They tile along the bottom of the screen so you can watch and reply to more than one visitor at the same time.
• Always in sync: a floating window is the same live conversation as the Inbox, marked Sync'd with inbox. Messages, typing, and calls all work from the window just like the main thread.
• Minimize or close: shrink a window to a small bar when you want it out of the way, then bring it back with one click, or close it when the chat is done.

The AI co-pilot and suggestions

Open the side panel and switch to the AI co-pilot tab for help drafting and handing off. It reads the conversation and gives you:

• A rolling brief with a summary, the visitor's sentiment and intent, the topics discussed, and a suggested next step. It refreshes as new messages arrive, and you can force a refresh.
• Suggest reply drafts: proposed replies you can read and drop into the reply box.
• Refine my draft: rewrite what you typed as friendlier, empathetic, formal, or concise.
• Generate hand-off briefing: a short summary you can copy and paste to brief the next agent.

How the AI bot hands off to a human

Each open conversation has an AI on / off toggle in the header. When it is on, the AI answers the visitor for you, following the site's Active Hours schedule unless you override it for this one chat.

• Click the toggle to force the AI on or off for the current conversation only. This override beats the schedule either way.
• While the AI is on, you can guide it without typing the whole reply yourself using Nudge and Steer. See the section below.

When the bot decides it needs a person, it hands off automatically. The conversation jumps to the top of your list, plays a sound, and shows a notice that the AI handed off and the visitor needs a human. Open the chat and reply to take over.

Nudge and Steer the AI

Nudge AI and Steer AI let you drive the conversation without writing the message yourself. The AI does the actual talking, in your brand voice and in the visitor's language; you just point it in the right direction. This is what lets someone who has never done sales or support, or who is not comfortable writing in the visitor's language, still run a sharp, professional conversation.

The Nudge AI button appears in the conversation header only while the AI is on for that chat. If the AI is off, turn it on with the header toggle first.

Nudge: get the AI to follow up now

Click Nudge AI and leave the box empty. The AI reads the whole conversation so far and sends its own follow-up message straight away, in context. Use it when a visitor has gone quiet and you want to re-engage them without waiting for the AI's own timing, or without having to think of what to say.

Steer: tell the AI how to handle the next message

Type a short instruction into the box and the button changes to Steer AI. Now you are directing the AI: it turns your instruction into a professional, on-brand reply that fits the conversation, then sends that to the visitor. You write the intent in plain words; the AI writes the polished message.

Some examples of what you can type:

• Strong buy signal, move to pricing and offer the payment link.
• They sound unsure, reassure them and ask what is holding them back.
• Answer their question, then ask for their email so we can follow up.
• Politely tell them we cannot do that, and suggest the closest option.

You stay in control the whole time. You can Nudge or Steer as many times as you like, take over and type a reply yourself at any point, or turn the AI off for the conversation with the header toggle.

The visitor info side panel

The Visitor tab of the side panel is the visitor's live record while you chat. It shows:

• Contact details: name, email, and phone. You can add these when they are blank. Once set, email and phone lock so only the visitor can change them.
• Reachability: when your workspace has the checks enabled, cards show whether the phone will ring and whether the email will deliver, along with carrier, provider, and quality signals.
• Journey: the page they are on right now and the trail of pages they visited before, plus how they found you.
• Notes: private internal notes, an engagement score, and a link to past chats and the full customer profile.

From here you can also block a visitor's IP address across the workspace, and jump to their full record on the Customers page.

Next, see Visitors for the wider list of everyone on your sites, Canned responses to speed up your replies, and Customers for the full record behind each person you talk to.