You answer customers from the composer at the bottom of an open conversation. The same box also writes private notes for your team, so check which mode you're in before you send.

Send a reply

Write your reply, or switch to a private note only your team sees.

1. 1Reply or note
2. 2Attach
3. 3Voice note
4. 4Variables
5. 5Send

1. Open Inbox and select a conversation from the list.

2. Make sure the composer is on Reply, not Private note. Press Alt + L to switch to Reply.

3. Type your message. Use the Emoji button for emoji, or the buttons beside it to attach media and record a voice note.

4. Select Send, or press Ctrl + Enter (⌘ + Enter on a Mac).

Your message appears in the conversation straight away, marked as sending, and ticks show when it is delivered or read on channels that report it. If it fails you see Failed beside it and a Retry link.

Text you haven't sent is kept as a draft for that conversation, so you can switch to another conversation and come back. Drafts are removed when you sign out.

Formatting

Select some text in the composer and a small toolbar appears next to the selection: Bold, Italic, Code, Strikethrough, Bulleted list, Numbered list and Link. What the customer sees depends on the channel, and anything a channel can't show is removed before sending:

Channel	Formatting that arrives
Web Chat, Email	Full formatting.
WhatsApp, Telegram	Basic formatting; lists are flattened.
Messenger, Instagram	Plain text only.

Quote an earlier message

Hover a message and select Reply to this message. The composer shows the quoted message above your text; select Cancel reply to drop it. Quoting is available on Web Chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and Instagram, not on Email.

Fill in the customer's details

Type {{ to open a list of variables, or use the Insert a variable button. Choose a variable from the groups Contact, Agent, Ticket or Conversation and the composer fills in this customer's value. If the customer has no value, the placeholder stays in the text and Send stays disabled until you fill or remove it, so a raw {{…}} never reaches a customer.

Type {{ in a reply to pick a detail about the customer or yourself.

1. 1Variables

To insert a saved reply, type / and its shortcut. See Canned responses.

When the composer is locked

On a resolved conversation the composer is replaced by a notice and a Reopen button.

1. 1Why it is locked
2. 2Reopen

• Resolved or closed. You see "This conversation is resolved. Reopen it to reply." Select Reopen to make it Open again. See Ticket statuses.
• A colleague owns it. A banner reads "Assigned to {name}. Replies will go out under your name." You can still reply. If your queue is set so that only the assignee can reply, the banner says so, Reply is locked and you can still write a private note. Select Take over if you're allowed to route work. See Assign a conversation.
• WhatsApp's 24-hour window has closed. Only an approved template can be sent. See Reply outside WhatsApp's 24-hour window.
• The conversation isn't in your workspace. Replying is disabled.

If someone else sent the same reply a moment before you, or you lost the right to reply while typing, your message isn't sent and your text comes back into the editor, so nothing you wrote is lost.

You can see who else is here

The conversation tells you when colleagues are typing ("{name} is typing…"), and Also viewing names who else has it open. When the customer is typing you see "The customer is typing…".

Your signature

If you've written a signature in Settings → Personal, a Signature button appears in the composer for replies. Turning it on adds your signature to the end of the message. It's remembered per channel type. See Set your reply signature.

Next steps

Internal notesLeave context for colleagues the customer never sees.Attachments and voice notesSend files, photos and recordings.Keyboard shortcutsMove through the Inbox without the mouse.