Work from the Inbox
Triage conversations, understand handoff state, use customer and product context, and leave clear ownership.
Inbox is where operators review shopper conversations, coordinate human support, and connect a thread to customer, product, tag, note, and ticket context. It is also where a customer-facing reply can change responsibility from AI to a human.
This guide provides a daily workflow from queue review to closure or hand-back. It emphasizes state and visibility so operators do not accidentally send internal context to a shopper or leave a conversation with unclear ownership.
How this fits into Humind
Inbox is the operational record of customer conversations. It combines message history, shopper and product context, internal collaboration, human-handoff state, tags, and tickets. Customer replies and internal notes have deliberately different visibility.
A consistent team routine matters more than any individual filter. Agree when to take over, when to leave an internal note, when to create a ticket, and when to return a conversation to the AI so ownership remains clear to every operator.
Before you start
Access: Inbox read access is required to view threads. Inbox write allows replies and notes. Inbox handoff write allows accept, step-in, and resolve actions.
- Know the team's queue coverage, response priority, and ticketing conventions.
- Review your own operator profile and availability when live handoff is enabled.
- Confirm the active company and Inbox segment before taking work.
Step-by-step workflow
Start with the right conversation segment
Open Inbox and review queued conversations first when your team provides live human support. Queued means a visitor has requested a human and no operator has taken over. Human-active means an operator currently owns the live exchange. AI-active means the Agent handles future customer messages unless policy permits step-in.
Use list timing, unread state, tags, filters, and search to prioritize, but open the thread before acting. Visitor presence and a recent timestamp help with context but do not replace the actual message history.
Read the operational context
Review the full timeline, latest customer question, Agent answers, support information collected before handoff, product cards or references, order or appointment cards when present, internal notes, mentions, tags, visitor details, and the primary ticket.
Check whether another operator is viewing or owns the live takeover. Avoid duplicate replies by using notes or mentions to coordinate before responding.
Choose reply or internal note
Reply sends content to the shopper. If the thread is queued or AI-active, a successful reply can switch it to human-active. Note creates an internal item that never reaches the widget and can include teammate mentions.
Use canned responses only in reply mode and review inserted text before sending. Remove or update placeholders and confirm the saved response still matches current policy.
Use tags and tickets for follow-up
Apply tags for shared classification and operational filtering. Create or update a ticket when the issue needs a lifecycle beyond the live conversation, such as investigation, another team, or tracked resolution.
A tag describes; a ticket tracks work. Do not rely on a tag alone when status, assignee, type, or resolution state is required.
Complete the thread deliberately
When the live exchange is complete, use the hand-back action and confirm it so future messages return to AI-active. The reply send menu can also combine a message with hand-back or ticket-state changes according to the current thread context.
Before leaving, check the final customer reply, internal note, tags, ticket state, and ownership. The next teammate should not have to infer what remains to be done.
Permissions and important caveats
- Customer replies and internal notes have different visibility and takeover effects.
- Operator step-in from AI-active can be disabled in Escalation.
- Notes can trigger teammate mentions and email notifications; mention only relevant people.
- Presence is live context, not proof of identity or guaranteed immediate response.
Verify the result
Use this checklist before considering the work complete:
- The operator opened the correct company, segment, and thread.
- The composer mode matched the intended customer or internal audience.
- Tags and ticket state reflect the next operational action.
- Completed human work is handed back to AI or intentionally left human-active with an owner.
Troubleshooting
The reply composer will not send
Check the live connection, Inbox write access, thread state, and operator step-in policy. If the UI reverted a takeover, read the surfaced error instead of retrying repeatedly.
A teammate did not see internal context
Confirm you used Note rather than Reply, saved the note, and selected a valid mention when notification was needed. Refresh the timeline after the realtime event.
The conversation returns to the queue
Review new shopper messages, handoff criteria, operator availability, and whether the prior operator explicitly handed back to AI. Use the current state and timeline rather than an older list snapshot.