Overview

Improve your support team’s efficiency by automating how inactive conversations are handled. Using purpose-built triggers and actions, you can send automated follow-ups, set expectations, or close/snooze conversations after a chosen period of inactivity.

If customer has been unresponsive

This trigger is ideal for automatically managing conversations where the customer hasn’t replied for a set amount of time.

1. Go to Automations → Workflows

2. Click + New Workflow and choose Create from scratch.

3. Select the trigger Customer unresponsive under the During conversation tab.

4. Set the inactivity timer to control how long to wait for a customer response before triggering the workflow. The duration must be longer than 30 seconds and shorter than 14 days.

Example

You can choose to build this workflow in a number of ways. Here’s an example:

1. Set the trigger timer to 10 minutes - meaning the workflow activates after 10 minutes of no customer response. You can also configure trigger channels, audience, and scheduling.
   

   

2. Add a message - “Just checking if you’re still there? Let us know if you need any help.”

3. Add a Wait action - Delay the next step for a chosen amount of time and decide whether it can be interrupted by teammate or customer replies.

4. Add a follow-up message: “This conversation will now be closed”

5. Add a Close conversation action

6. Now click Save to preview your new Workflow or set it live!
   

   

If teammate has been unresponsive

This trigger helps set reply expectations for customers when your team is offline or reroute conversations to another inbox.

1. Go to Automations → Workflows

2. Click + New Workflow and choose Create from scratch

3. Select the trigger Teammate unresponsive under the During conversation tab.

4. Set the inactivity timer to control how long a teammate can go without responding before the workflow runs.

   • The duration must be longer than 30 seconds and shorter than 14 days.

   • The timer is based on the customer’s first message, not their last - if they send multiple messages in a row, the timer starts from the first one.

Example

You can choose to build this workflow in a number of ways. Here’s an example:

1. Set the trigger timer to 10 minutes - meaning the workflow activates when no teammate replies within 10 minutes of the customer’s first message.
   

   

2. Configure the trigger - set up the trigger channels, audience, and scheduling. For example, you might want this workflow to trigger only when your team is offline.
   

   

3. Add a message: “Thank you for your patience. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

4. Alternatively, add a Show expected reply time step to display your office hours

   • You can end the workflow here if the teammate should handle the conversation once they’re back online

5. Add an Assign conversation action to reroute it to a inbox or teammate. You can also apply other actions like Mark as priority.

6. Click Save and close to preview or Set live to activate the workflow.