Group chats
Most conversations are one-on-one. Some need a second pair of eyes — a complex refund, a technical escalation, a high-value enterprise customer. Group chats turn a regular conversation into a multi-agent room.
In this guide:
- When to use a group chat
- Add a teammate
- Visibility rules
- Closing the chat
- Internal notes vs. multi-agent reply
When to use a group chat
- Domain expertise needed. The customer asks a deep technical question; you bring in an engineer.
- Manager review. A refund request above your authority — invite the manager to approve in-thread.
- Cross-team handoff. Sales escalates to onboarding — keep both teams in the loop.
- Sticky enterprise customer. A VIP gets a dedicated room with their account team.
For everyday assignment, use Assignment instead — it’s cleaner.
Step 1: Open the conversation
From the Open queue, pick the conversation.
Step 2: Add a teammate
Click Invite to chat (or the “+” icon next to the assignee).
Pick teammates from the org member list. Each invitee gets a notification:
- “@Agent invited you to a conversation with Customer …”
- They click → conversation opens in their dashboard.
Screenshot: A multi-agent conversation with several teammates in the participant list.
The customer sees a single chat thread — they don’t see who else is invited until that person replies.
Step 3: Reply rules
Anyone in the room can reply. Replies go out to the customer signed by the responding agent’s name and avatar — the customer sees Carla’s reply, then Devon’s, then Carla’s again.
To keep one consistent voice, designate a lead agent and have everyone else use internal notes (see below).
Internal notes vs. customer replies
Two reply modes in the composer:
- Reply — visible to the customer.
- Note — visible to your team only. Customer never sees it. Use to discuss strategy, share context, ping a teammate.
Switch with the toggle next to the send button (or Cmd+Shift+N for note).
Step 4: Closing the chat
When resolved:
- Lead agent (or any participant) marks the conversation as Solved.
- Optionally, write a resolution note — visible to all participants for future reference.
- The conversation closes for everyone.
Visibility rules
- Within a group chat: every participant sees every message and note.
- Outside the group chat: non-participants in the org with
conversations.readpermission can still see the transcript, but cannot reply unless invited. - The customer sees a single thread of customer-facing replies — internal notes are hidden.
Permissions
conversations.invite— to add teammates.conversations.read— to be invitable.- For sensitive accounts (VIP enterprise), restrict invitability to a specific team.
Tips
- Designate a lead. The customer experiences chaos if three agents reply with conflicting answers.
- Use notes liberally. Internal-only commentary keeps everyone aligned without flooding the customer.
- Don’t leave too many people in stale rooms. Once the issue is resolved, close — group chats accumulate notification noise if left open.