When to close a conversation in a shared inbox

Close a conversation when the customer's need is met and nothing is pending on your side: the booking is confirmed, the question is answered, the issue is resolved. Close it by a person or a rule, never by time alone, and let any new message from the customer reopen it in the same thread. A conversation that is waiting on the customer is not closed; it is waiting, and it should be visible as such.

The states

Open, with the AI. The AI is handling it. It stays here until the AI resolves it (booking confirmed, question answered) or hands off.

Open, assigned. A person owns it and owes a reply.

Waiting on customer. Your last message asked something or offered something, and the customer has not replied. Not closed; not owed a reply.

Closed. Done. Nothing pending on either side.

Four states is enough. Inboxes with "pending", "snoozed", "on hold" and "in progress" tend to have conversations in every state and nobody sure what any of them means.

When to close

The booking is confirmed and the confirmation sent. The question was answered and the customer said thanks, or did not reply within a day to a complete answer. The issue was resolved and the customer confirmed. The lead said no. The conversation was a wrong number.

Do not close: a conversation where you promised something and have not delivered it. A conversation with an unanswered customer message. A complaint the customer has not acknowledged as resolved.

Who closes

The person who owns it, when the need is met. The AI, when it completed the job (a booking) and the customer's reply was a thanks or nothing. A rule, for "waiting on customer" conversations that have had no reply after a set number of days, provided the last message from you was complete and did not promise anything.

Reopening

Any message from the customer reopens the conversation in the same thread, assigned to the last owner if they are available and to the queue if not. The history is intact. The customer does not know or care that it was "closed"; they replied to the thread. Systems that start a new conversation for every message after a close are the reason people search for "the other thread".

Closing is not deleting

A closed conversation is on the record with everything in it. It is searchable. It appears in the customer's timeline. Closing only takes it off the working list.

The end-of-day review

Five minutes: open conversations assigned to people who have gone home get reassigned or handed to the morning queue. Waiting-on-customer conversations older than a week get a decision: one follow-up or close. Anything open with a promise in it gets checked. That is the whole hygiene routine.

Frequently asked questions

Should the customer be told the conversation is closed?

No. "This conversation is now closed" is a support-desk habit that reads as a door shutting. The customer's need was met; nothing more needs saying.

What if the AI closes something it should not have?

The customer replies and it reopens. Review AI closes weekly for a month; if a category is closing too early, adjust the rule.

How many open conversations is too many?

More than the team can reply to within target. If open conversations grow week on week, it is a coverage problem or a closing-rule problem, and the report tells you which.

What Frontiva does here

Frontiva's unified inbox lets you snooze a conversation until a date, assign it, tag it and set priority, and sorts by real activity, so a customer's new message brings the thread back to the top. The conversation stays on the contact's CRM timeline either way. The four states above are a habit to adopt rather than a setting in the product. See response time targets.