Getting Started With Crisp for Customer Support
In this guide, you'll learn the essential steps to get started with Crisp for customer support. Whether you're setting up a brand new workspace or joining an existing team, this article will help you understand how to use Crisp efficiently from day one.
Crisp for Customer Support
This “Getting Started” guide helps you build solid foundations for your support workflow. Crisp centralizes your conversations, your knowledge, and your teams, so you can offer clear, fast, and scalable customer service.
The guide is divided into two sections:
- Setting up a new workspace (Admin Guide): installing Crisp, connecting your channels, customizing the chatbox, inviting your team, and preparing your support workflow (including AI).
- Joining an existing team (Operator Guide): configuring your profile and learning how to use the Inbox and core support tools properly.
You can follow the entire guide from start to finish, or jump directly to the section that matches your role.
Setting up a new workspace
As an admin, you're responsible for preparing the backbone of your customer support system. Below are the key steps to make Crisp operational and ready for your team.
Watch: How to Set Up Your Crisp Workspace
To get started even faster, you can begin with this video. It guides you through installation, channels, customization, teammates, and Crisp AI ; everything you need to prepare your inbox for multichannel support.
1. Install the Live Chat
Connect with your users in real-time using the Crisp chatbox for logged-in and website visitors. Your users can start conversations with your team or self-serve through a dedicated access to the knowledge base.
To install the widget, you can either add the JavaScript snippet manually or use one of our integrations such as WordPress, Shopify or Prestashop.
You'll need:
- Access to your codebase (to add the JavaScript snippet)
- Your Crisp installation code
- One of our integration such as WordPress, Shopify or Prestashop
Here is a dedicated article to add the website widget to your website
2. Connect your inbox with your social media and your emails
Beyond website visitors, you should also capture conversations coming from social messaging apps and email. Crisp provides integrations for Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp Business Platform, X (Twitter), Line, Viber, SMS (via Twilio), and phone calls (via Aircall or Ringover).
You can also create a shared email inbox inside Crisp so your team can collaborate on incoming emails.
Create your social messaging inbox
Integrate external services to Crisp
Receive phone calls in Crisp with Aircall
Receive phone calls in Crisp with Ringover
3. Customize your chatbox look and feel
Once your channels are connected, you can customize the Crisp chatbox so it matches your brand identity.
You can start with the built-in options available in Settings → Chatbox Settings → Chatbox Appearance, where you can adjust the main color theme, header text, welcome message, and general layout.
If you want to go further, for example using your exact brand colors, rewriting system texts, or changing the widget position, you can activate the Customization plugin for advanced control.
Change the chatbox position to left
4. Invite teammates
Next, invite your team to work with you in the Crisp Inbox. You can assign Inbox seats, manage permissions, and later measure team performance.
For this step:
- Make sure your plan includes Inbox access (it starts from the free plan with an unlimited number of agents, using the Essentials or Plus plans)
- Have your teammates' email addresses ready
5. Set up office hours
Set your personal office hours so customers know when you're available. At Crisp, each agent manages their own availability.
Defining clear hours helps you set expectations and improves the experience for your users.
Set up office hours for your availability
6. Train Crisp AI & set up the chatbot
Once your workspace is ready, you can make your support much more efficient with Crisp AI.
Crisp AI learns from your website, your Knowledge Base, your snippets, and your past conversations. All this content is gathered in the AI Hub, which helps our AI model generate fast and reliable answers.
Before creating a bot, make sure your main sources are ready:
- Your website URL is added
- Your core help articles are up to date
- Your Snippets use clear replies
When Crisp AI is trained, you can activate the AI Chatbot to automate part of your support. The bot can answer frequent questions, route conversations to the right team, qualify leads, and reply across multiple channels.
To set it up, open the Chatbot section, create a scenario, add your steps, and connect the bot to Crisp AI so it can use your content to answer automatically.
For more advanced guides, check:
Understanding the Crisp AI chatbot
11 AI chatbot best practices for always-on customer service
Nail 80% AI-resolved conversations through human-grade support with AI
6. Create assignment rules
Assignment rules help you route conversations automatically to the right team or agent. They can use message content, user data, or any information you track in Crisp to send each request where it belongs.
For example, you can forward billing questions to your finance team, send technical issues to support, or assign sales inquiries to a dedicated sales inbox.
If you’re using Crisp AI, your routing becomes even smarter. The AI Chatbot can qualify users first (pricing, support, bug report, etc.) and then apply the assignment rule automatically, making the whole flow faster and more accurate.
To create or manage your rules, open the Routing / Assignment settings in your Crisp Inbox.
Create a department routing chatbot
7. Create sub-inboxes
If you manage multiple brands, products, or departments, you can use sub-inboxes to keep conversations organized. Each sub-inbox works like a dedicated space with its own channels, rules, and team members.
This makes it easy to separate support flows, for example, one inbox for sales, another for support, or a different inbox for each brand you operate.
Agents can switch between inboxes at any time from the inbox selector.
Organize your workspace with sub-inboxes
8. Import user data
If you already have an existing user base, you can import it into Crisp so you recognize customers as soon as they contact you.
This allows you to see user profiles, past interactions, and any custom data you decide to track.
Typical inputs:
- A CSV file of user data, or
- A custom integration through the API
9. Track custom data
Custom data lets you attach additional information to your users and conversations such as their plan, lifecycle stage, or product usage. This is useful for personalization, routing, and reporting.
You can send custom data from your product or e-commerce using the JavaScript SDK or the REST API.
To get started, you’ll typically need:
- Access to your codebase (to update the JavaScript snippet)
- Crisp installed in your product or e-commerce
- A list of data points you want to track
Here's just a small collection of some of our favorite support-related articles that could help you to get things right from the beginning.
Best Shared Inbox software with AI for 2025 and beyond
Customer Service Automations Every Support Team Should Deploy
Joining an existing team
Joining an existing team is very common with Crisp. If you've just joined a company that already uses Crisp, this section will help you get up to speed quickly and provide great support from day one.
Watch: How to Use Crisp Inbox for the First Time
This video gives you a guided tour of the Crisp Inbox for new operators.
You’ll learn how to navigate the inbox, send messages and files, collaborate with your teammates, organize your conversations, and use smart tools like shortcuts, knowledge articles, or reminders.
1. Set up your profile
Start by making your profile recognizable and ensuring you receive the right notifications.
Upload avatar
A friendly, professional avatar shows customers that there’s a real person behind the chat. Companies that set up agent profiles tend to have more conversations and higher engagement.
Update notification preferences
Next, adjust your notification settings so you stay responsive without being overwhelmed. Choose how you want to be notified (desktop, mobile, email) and for which events.
Access your notification settings from your profile, then enable the channels that suit your way of working.
Understand email notifications
Fix browser notifications settings
2. Learn how your team works
Every team has its own rules and habits.
To avoid confusion, ask your admin or team lead if there are internal guidelines for:
- When to assign or resolve conversations
- How and when to use segments or tags
- Expected response times for different channels
- Which conversations should be escalated and to whom
If your team uses segments to group users (for example: “paying customer”, “trial”, “bug report”), you can learn more about how they work here:
3. Use the Inbox productivity tools
Most of your time will be spent in the Crisp Inbox. Here are the key tools you should know from day one.
Shortcuts (!)
Shortcuts are saved replies for common questions. Inside a conversation, type ! to open the shortcut menu and insert a reply instantly. This helps you respond faster and keep answers consistent across the team.
25 examples of canned messages
Knowledge articles (?)
You can also share knowledge articles directly from the Inbox. When answering a conversation, type ? to search your knowledge base and insert a link to the most relevant article. This reduces typing time and encourages customers to self-serve next time.
MagicReply (AI)
If your workspace has Crisp AI enabled, you can use MagicReply to get AI-powered reply suggestions based on your existing knowledge base and past conversations. You stay in control: review the suggestion, edit it if needed, and send.
4. Escalate when needed
You don’t have to have all the answers yourself.
If you’re unsure how to reply or you need help from another department:
- Mention the right teammate in a private note, or
- Reassign the conversation to the appropriate team or agent.
This ensures customers always receive the best possible answer, while you stay aligned with your team’s workflow.
Use private notes and mentions
Here are a few additional resources that can help you improve your day-to-day customer service:
Strategies to reduce time to resolution with examples from companies around the world
10 proven ways to improve customer service response time (with AI-powered examples)
How to offer 24/7 support without outsourcing?
Updated on: 21/11/2025
Thank you!