Finding conversations
Each conversation shows who’s answering it:
- Assistant — the front desk is handling it.
- Waiting for a person — it has asked for someone from your team.
- A person is on it — someone on your team has taken over.
- Nobody picked up — it waited and nobody took it.
When the front desk hands over
It hands a conversation to your team when a customer asks for a person, when it reaches a subject you’ve told it always goes to a person, or when it can’t help. The customer is told someone will pick it up. Who gets told1
The conversation's owner
If the conversation has an owner, they’re told first.
2
Your front desk team
If there’s no owner, or the owner doesn’t pick it up in time, everyone with the Front desk role is told as well. If nobody has that role, your workspace owner is.
- After 5 minutes, the customer is told nobody’s free this minute, more people are alerted, and a task is created — “Reply to [customer] — they asked for a person” — for the owner, or your workspace owner. The task closes itself when someone takes the conversation or resolves it.
- After 3 hours holding a conversation without finishing it, the person holding it gets a nudge.
- After 12 hours, the conversation goes back to the front desk.
Taking over
Open the conversation and click Take over — or just start typing: sending a message takes it over, and the front desk stops immediately. If a colleague already has it, you’re asked to confirm first. The customer is told: “One of the team has joined and is reading this now — they’ll take it from here.” Taking a conversation over makes you its owner. You can also set the owner from the Owner picker at the top. If you’ve switched on Draft a reply while you’re handling it yourself (on the Handover tab), a Suggested reply appears for you to Send, Edit or Discard. Only you see it until you send it. On WhatsApp, if more than 24 hours have passed since the customer last wrote, you’ll need Send follow-up instead — see Replying after 24 hours.Handing back and finishing
- Give back to assistant — the front desk picks the conversation up again, and tells the customer: “I’m back with you — what else can I help with?”
- Resolve — mark the conversation done.
Analytics
Front desk → Analytics shows how your front desk did over the last 30 days:
Why it passed things over breaks handovers down by reason — the customer asked for a person, you took over, it was beyond what it can do, it was going round in circles, the customer sounded unhappy, your rules said so, it was outside your hours, it hadn’t been told, or something broke. The last few are the ones to fix: teach it what it was missing on the Knowledge page.
Handled on its own only counts conversations someone marked Resolved without a handover. Resolve the ones it handled well, and the number will reflect it.
What’s next
- Set when it hands over
- Team and roles — give people the Front desk role
- What your front desk knows