What this helps you do
Conversations are your one-to-one threads with individual customers, both the replies you receive and the messages you start. Replies arrive on two rails, Blasts and email, and land in the same inbox. Because a customer can simply reply to a Blast, a restock note turns into holds you work through in one place. This is also where a pickup-ready notice belongs: your staff knows the order is in because your own system told them, and they send the customer a line about it from here. Your team sees who is replying to whom, can assign a thread to a colleague, and keeps private staff notes on each customer (size, the brand they collect, the special order still on the way) that the customer never sees.
When to use it
Use it when a customer replies to claim something from a restock, asks whether you have it in another size, asks you to hold it until the weekend, checks on a special order, or when the order they placed is ready and someone needs to tell them.
How to do it
- Open Conversations.
- Read replies as they arrive, or click New conversation to message any connected customer.
- Reply in the thread; the Hub answers on the rail the customer uses, Blasts or email.
- Assign the thread to the right person, for example the counter for a hold or the buyer for a special order.
- When an order or a hold is ready, open that customer's thread and tell them: the pickup window, where to come, what name it is under.
- Open the customer's page for their history, replies, household and staff notes.
- Search by name, email, or message text to find any thread.
Example
After the restock Blast, a regular replies asking you to hold a 9 until Saturday. It appears in Conversations. The manager assigns it to the counter, who puts the box under the register and adds a staff note with the customer's size. When the special order she has been waiting on arrives on Thursday, the buyer opens the same thread and tells her it is in and ready until Sunday.
Good to know
- The Hub is not a point of sale, an order system or a stock list, and it never sees what anyone bought or spent. It does not know an order is ready: your staff does, and they send the notice. Keep the hold and the order where you keep them today.
- Replies can be turned off per Blast, for example on a plain change of hours; a reply to such a Blast is marked so you know the context.
- A Leader only sees replies from the audiences they are granted.
- STOP and START are handled automatically on both rails, and the customer's page shows their opt-out state.
- Receiving is free for customers; a reply they send uses their own Blasts credits, never the store's.