Requests: seeing and following up customer requests

What is a request, and where does it come from?

A request is something a visitor leaves for you that needs follow-up. Requests aren't opened by hand in the panel; they come from conversations:

• The AI agent: when a visitor wants to pass something to your team or be contacted, the agent takes their email address or phone number and opens the request. This is on in every AI Assistant step; to turn it off, switch off “Can take tickets” in the step's “Tools” tab. If the same person writes again from the same agent within an hour, no new request opens; what they add is appended to their open request.
• The “Request” step in a flow: it takes the visitor's request and, if “Ask for contact details” is on, their contact details. The request opens when the visitor presses “Send”. The AI writes the subject; the name is taken from the agent's earlier answers.
• The agent's order actions: a cancellation, return, exchange, address change or order note also lands as a request once the store has saved it. If the same request comes again within an hour, no new request opens.
• When credits run out: a request left in the contact box the visitor sees when the agent can't answer.

To prevent abuse, at most 5 requests an hour are taken from the same visitor.

The Requests screen

Open “Requests” from the menu. The tabs at the top split requests by status: “Open”, “In progress”, “Closed” and “All”; each tab shows a count. The newest request is at the top; press “Refresh” to update the list.

With the search box you can search the subject, name, contact details or description. If requests come from more than one agent you can also filter by agent, and if there are urgent requests, by priority.

The table shows the subject, the visitor (with a “no contact” warning if there are no contact details), the agent it came from, the status and the date. If any request was sent to a help desk, the “Forwarded to” column shows where.

The “Urgent” badge appears when: in the Request step, the AI decides from how the conversation went; in order actions, cancellations and address changes are urgent.

Handling a request

You don't reply to a request in the panel and requests aren't assigned to anyone; you contact the visitor through your own channel (email, phone).

1. Click the request's row. The detail shows “Visitor”, “Contact”, “From agent”, “Description” and the last messages of the conversation (“Conversation”). For requests from the Request step, “Open the conversation” opens the whole conversation.
2. If it came from the Request step or an order action, read the conversation's summary and the “Suggested first step” in the “Handoff note”.
3. Set the status to “In progress” and contact the visitor.
4. Write what you did in “Team notes”. Everyone on your team sees them; notes don't go to the visitor or the help desk and can't be changed later.
5. When you're done, set the status to “Closed”.

From the row's three-dot menu you can also change the status or, if available, press “Open the conversation”.

Using it with a help desk

If Zendesk, Gorgias, Freshdesk or Intercom is connected, every new request is also sent there and its link appears on the request; one help desk can be connected per workspace. If the contact detail is an email, the request is opened on that person's behalf; if it's a phone number, it's written in the request. Urgent requests are marked urgent there too.

The status of a forwarded request is managed in the help desk; in the panel the status is locked and shows, for example, “Managed in Zendesk”. The status is fetched from the help desk when you open the Requests screen or press “Refresh”.

If sending fails, a warning appears on the request; you can try again with “Resend”. For details, see the help desks article.

Who can do what?

Every member can see requests. Changing the status, adding notes and resending require the owner, admin or support role; observers can only read.

To hear about new requests, route the “New support ticket” notification to a channel on the “Alerts and notifications” page. In a new workspace this notification is off; it's turned on for email when you add a ready-made agent.

Are requests deleted?

Requests aren't deleted. If a visitor asks for their personal data to be deleted, the request's content is cleared and the request shows “Content deleted”.