Articles on: Inbox

Getting started with the Crisp Inbox

Learn how the Crisp Inbox works so you can reply faster, collaborate cleanly, and stay organized from day one.

The Crisp Inbox is where all your customer conversations come together. Whether you are answering live chat, email, or social messages, this guide will help you understand the core tools that matter most when you start working in Crisp.

This guide is the best place to start if you want to learn the Inbox quickly:

Watch the Inbox tour → a quick walkthrough of the interface
Understand what the Inbox centralizes → channels, context, and collaboration in one place
Set yourself up before replying → avatar, notifications, and basic habits
Handle conversations efficiently → collaboration, filters, reminders, and routing
Reply faster with built-in tools → shortcuts, knowledge articles, and AI assistance
Start proactive conversations → create outbound chats and emails from the Inbox

Watch the Inbox tour

If you prefer to start with a visual walkthrough, this video gives a complete tour of the Inbox and its most useful daily actions.

What the Inbox centralizes

The Crisp Inbox is your shared workspace for customer communication. It brings together live chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, Messenger, and other connected channels into one interface, so your team can work from the same place.

From the Inbox, you can:

Reply to customers in real time
Collaborate with teammates through assignments, mentions, and private notes
Organize conversations with filters, reminders, routing, and sub-inboxes
Access customer details, conversation history, and browsing context
Share knowledge base articles and use AI-powered reply assistance

This is what makes the Inbox the main entry point for day-to-day support work in Crisp.

Set yourself up before replying

A few small setup steps make the Inbox much more comfortable to use every day.

Add your avatar

A clear avatar makes the conversation feel more personal and helps customers recognize who they are talking to.

Upload your profile picture from your Crisp account

You can update it from your account settings. If you need the detailed steps, see Upload your profile picture.

Review your notification settings

Before you start answering customers, make sure your notifications match how you work. Crisp lets you receive desktop, mobile, and email notifications so you stay responsive without being interrupted more than necessary.

Notification settings in the Crisp account menu

Useful notification articles:

Master the conversation composer

Most daily work happens in the message area of a conversation. Once you are comfortable with the composer, the rest of the Inbox becomes much easier to use.

See what the visitor is typing

For conversations happening through the Crisp chat widget, you can often see what the visitor is typing before they send the message. This helps you prepare your answer and keep the exchange fluid.

Send messages and files

You can reply with plain text or use the enriched editor to format messages with Markdown. Files, screenshots, and documents can also be attached directly from the Inbox.

Useful companion articles:

Translate conversations in real time

If you support customers in multiple languages, LiveTranslate can translate messages as you write them and help you reply in the customer's language directly from the Inbox.

You can learn more about it here: LiveTranslate.

Work together inside a conversation

Crisp is designed for teamwork, not just one-to-one chat handling. The collaboration tools below are the ones your team will use most often.

Mentions

Use a mention when you want to notify a teammate and pull them into the conversation without changing what the customer sees.

Read the dedicated guide: How do I mention a team member?

Private notes

Private notes let your team add internal context directly inside the conversation. Customers never see them, which makes them ideal for handoffs, explanations, or next steps.

Read the dedicated guide: How do I use private notes and mentions?

Assignments and routing

You can assign a conversation manually to yourself or to a teammate, or let Crisp distribute conversations automatically with routing rules.

Read the dedicated guide: How does Routing / Assign work?

Handle conversations efficiently

Once you start receiving more messages, organization matters just as much as speed.

Understand conversation states and ordering

Pending, unresolved, and resolved conversations are not displayed in the same way. Crisp also offers alternative ordering views such as Longest waiting and Most recent.

Read the dedicated guide: How are conversations ordered in the inbox?

Use filters and custom views

The built-in filters help you focus on the conversations that matter most, and custom filters let you build your own views based on conversation data, state, language, segments, channel, and more.

Read the dedicated guide: How can I create custom filters for my conversations?

Set reminders for follow-ups

Reminders bring a conversation back to your attention later and help you avoid missing follow-ups.

Read the dedicated guide: How do Reminders work?

Organize teams with sub-inboxes

If your company works across multiple teams, brands, languages, or workflows, sub-inboxes help you separate conversations more clearly inside one workspace.

Switching between the main inbox and sub-inboxes in Crisp

Read the dedicated guide: How can I create sub-inboxes in my Crisp Workspace?

Reply faster with built-in tools

The Inbox includes several shortcuts that make repetitive support work much faster.

Use message shortcuts

Shortcuts are saved replies that you can insert instantly by typing ! in the composer. They are useful for common questions, onboarding answers, billing replies, and handoff messages.

Read the dedicated guide: How can I use Shortcut replies / Canned messages?

Type ? in the composer to search your knowledge base and send an article directly into the conversation. This is one of the fastest ways to guide customers toward self-serve answers without leaving the Inbox.

Knowledge base resources to know:

Use AI assistance when available

If AI assistance is enabled in your workspace, agents can review AI-generated suggestions directly from the Inbox before sending them. This can help your team answer faster while keeping full control over the final reply.

If you are exploring Hugo more broadly, start here: Hugo.

Use customer context before you answer

The Inbox is not only a message list. It also gives you context about the person behind the conversation.

Review contact details and history

From the conversation sidebar, you can review the contact's name, email, phone, company, segments, and custom data when available. You can also look at previous conversations before replying.

Use browsing context when available

Depending on the channel and the visitor's session, Crisp can also show useful browsing context such as the page they are on or the pages they visited before reaching out. That context is often enough to save a follow-up question.

Read more about profile enrichment here: How does Crisp detect user names, avatars and social profiles?

Start proactive conversations

You do not have to wait for customers to contact you first. The Inbox also lets you start new conversations yourself.

Create a new conversation from the Inbox

Create a new conversation

You can start a fresh conversation directly from the Inbox when you already know who you want to contact.

Read the dedicated guide: How can I create a new conversation?

Send an outbound email

If email is configured in your workspace, you can also start an outbound email conversation from the Inbox.

Read the dedicated guide: How do I create and send an email from my inbox?

Where to go next

Now that you have the Inbox basics, the best next step is to go deeper into the tools your team will use most often.