Customer Support

Support on one person’s phone is not support

Customer messages go to a number that lives on a manager’s phone. When they are off, nothing is answered. Nobody else can see what was promised, and the same question gets three different answers depending on who picked it up.

Move the number to a shared inbox where every agent sees the conversation, assign each one to a person so nothing is answered twice or not at all, and escalate anything long-running to a ticket. Replies inside the customer’s 24-hour window are free-form and unlimited.

Which kind of message this is

Service-window replies, almost entirely. The customer messaged first, so support conversations happen inside their 24-hour window — no templates, no per-message thinking about categories.

How to set it up

1
Put the number in a shared inbox
Every agent sees the same conversations. Nothing depends on whose phone it is or whether they are working today.
2
Assign conversations to people
An assigned conversation has an owner. Unassigned ones are how a message gets read by three people and answered by none.
3
Let the chatbot take the repeated questions
Opening hours, delivery areas, return policy — written once into a knowledge base and answered without a person, at any hour.
4
Escalate what will not finish today
A ticket for the issue that needs a refund, a part, or somebody else. The conversation stays in WhatsApp; the tracking does not have to.

What goes wrong

— Letting the window close mid-issue. If a case is still open after 24 hours of silence, restarting it needs an approved template — worth having one for exactly that.
— Automating the apology. A chatbot answering an angry customer is worse than a slow human, and the knowledge base should hand those over rather than attempt them.
— No assignment. A shared inbox without owners is a group chat, with all the same confusion.
— Treating every message as a ticket. Most support on WhatsApp is a two-message exchange; ticketing all of it creates work rather than removing it.

Questions

What happens if a customer goes quiet mid-conversation?

Their 24-hour window closes and you need an approved template to reach them again. Keep a simple utility template for exactly this — following up on an open case — rather than discovering the problem when you need it.

Can several agents work the same number?

Yes. That is the main thing a shared inbox changes: several people answering one number, with conversations assigned so nobody collides.

Should the chatbot answer everything?

No. It is good at repeated factual questions and bad at anything requiring judgement or an apology. Set the knowledge base to cover what you get asked constantly and let it hand over the rest.

Try it on your own numbers

Free plan, 100 contacts, no card required.

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