Working chats

Assign chats, add tags, search and save frequently-used responses.

A shared inbox only works if it is obvious who is handling what. These four features are what turn a list of messages into a way of working. All of them are optional — you can ignore every one of them and still just reply.

Assignment

Assign a conversation to a person, and it is clear that they own the reply. Everyone can still see and open the chat; assignment says who is answering, not who is allowed to.

Use it when more than one person answers the same number. If you are on your own, skip it.

Tags

Tags are free-form labels you put on a conversation. You create your own, so they can mean whatever is useful to you.

Most teams use them for one of two things:

• Stages — where a deal or an order has got to: New lead, Quote sent, Awaiting payment, Delivered

• Segments — what kind of customer this is: VIP, Wholesale, Repeat

Stages are the more useful of the two, because they let you filter the inbox down to the conversations that need something from you today. Run a sales pipeline with tags walks through setting that up.

Search

Search runs across your message history, not just the chats currently on screen. Useful for finding the address someone sent three weeks ago, or checking what was promised on a price.

Quick replies

Quick replies are reusable snippets of text you can drop into a reply: opening hours, delivery terms, payment details, the answer to the question you get five times a day.

They are plain text you insert and can edit before sending, so they are not templates — templates are the approved messages WhatsApp requires to open a closed conversation, and those are covered in Starting and reopening conversations.

Resolving a conversation

Marking a chat resolved takes it out of your active list without deleting anything. If the customer writes again, it comes back.