Seeing a customer’s history across channels

The same person often reaches you on more than one channel or number: a question on Facebook one day, a follow-up on WhatsApp the next. You don’t have to jump between their conversations to keep up. The conversation you have open shows their messages from their other conversations as well, in the order they were sent, and your flow agent can use what the customer already told you there.

What you see in a conversation

• Messages from the customer’s other conversations appear between dividers. Each divider names the inbox those messages came through and has an Open link to that conversation. The parts that belong to the conversation you have open are marked This conversation.
• Everything is shown in time order across all of the conversations, so a Facebook message sent at 9:02 sits above a WhatsApp message sent at 9:05.
• Scroll up to load older messages. They keep arriving from every conversation, oldest last.
• Messages from another conversation are there to read. To reply in that conversation, use Open on its divider. The reply box always sends to the conversation you have open.
• You see only the conversations in inboxes you belong to. Administrators see them all.

The Previous Conversations list in the contact panel on the right still gives you the same conversations as a list.

What your flow agent does with it

Your flow agent knows the customer is returning and can see the details they gave in earlier conversations, on any channel. On a question step with Confirm a value the customer gave before turned on, it shows that earlier answer for the customer to confirm or correct instead of asking from scratch. When it hands the conversation to your team, its note also lists the other channels the customer has used, for example Also on: WhatsApp ×2, Facebook ×1.

Keep an inbox’s history to itself

Sometimes two of your numbers belong to different projects or brands, and a customer who talks to both should not see one project’s questions mixed into the other. You can keep an inbox apart from the rest.

1. Open Settings → Inboxes and choose the inbox.
2. On the Settings tab, scroll down to Share history across inboxes and turn it off.
3. Click Update.

With the switch off, the inbox is kept apart in both directions:

• Its conversations show only their own messages, and its messages stay out of the customer’s conversations in your other inboxes.
• The flow agent in that inbox doesn’t reuse answers the customer gave in other inboxes, and answers collected there don’t carry over anywhere else. Of the contact’s attributes, it uses only those filled in its own conversation and those your team typed, changed or imported.
• The handoff note’s Also on line leaves that inbox out.

The switch is on for every inbox unless you turn it off.

Share history only within a group of inboxes

When some of your inboxes belong to one brand and others to another, put each brand’s inboxes in a history group. A conversation then shows the customer’s messages only from inboxes in its own group.

1. Open Settings → Inboxes and choose the inbox.
2. On the Settings tab, check that Share history across inboxes is on.
3. Under History group, pick a group, or type a new name and choose Create “…”.
4. Click Update, then do the same for the brand’s other inboxes.

• The conversation, the Previous Conversations list and the flow agent’s reuse of earlier answers, including the handoff note’s Also on line, all keep to the group.
• Inboxes that share history but have no group share with each other only.
• A name typed with different capitals joins the existing group.
• The contact’s details, attributes, labels and notes are one record, so your team sees the same values in every group. The History tab on the contact’s page still lists all of their conversations.
• Your flow agent only uses an attribute that was filled in during a conversation when that conversation is in its own group, so one brand’s bot never quotes another brand’s appointment. Attributes your team typed, changed or imported reach every flow agent.

Keep one conversation’s history to itself

You can do the same for a single conversation, whatever its inbox shares.

1. Open the conversation.
2. Open the ⋮ menu at the top right, next to Resolve, and choose Keep history separate.

The conversation now shows only its own messages, stays out of the customer’s other conversations, and its answers are no longer reused by the flow agent. Your teammates see the change straight away, even if they already have one of the customer’s conversations open.

To undo it, open the same menu and choose Share history again.

Any agent who can open the conversation can switch it either way. In an inbox whose own Share history across inboxes switch is off, the option isn’t offered, because that inbox already keeps everything to itself.

When the same person shows up as two contacts

History is shown per contact. A Facebook profile and a WhatsApp number are two separate contacts until you merge them, so their conversations don’t appear together before that. Open the contact, go to the Merge tab, pick the other contact, and confirm. From then on, both sets of conversations belong to one contact and show together.

Related

• Managing Conversations
• Viewing and editing a contact
• Inboxes and channels
• Replying and adding private notes