Customer inbox

The customer inbox brings the people who write to your company into Freesbe. Every customer gets their own thread in a channel you pick, so the whole team can see it, answer it, or talk it over first.

Web chat puts a chat button on your website. Visitors write, your team answers from Freesbe, and the visitor sees the answer in the chat.
A shared email address brings mail to an address like support@ into a channel. Replies go back to the customer by email, in the same email thread.
SMS brings texts to your Freesbe phone numbers into a channel. For now it runs in test mode, so you can try it before any text goes out.
WhatsApp brings messages, photos and files sent to your WhatsApp Business number into a channel. Replies go back on WhatsApp, and approved templates let you write first.
Hand-off shows who’s on each conversation and passes it to someone else in a click.
Internal notes stay between the team: the customer never sees them.
Saved replies keep the answers you give again and again one click away.
Suggest a reply drafts an answer with AI, from the conversation and your saved replies.

Put a chat on your website

Only owners and admins can add one.

Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → Customer inbox and click Add web chat.
Give it a Name your team will recognize, like “Main website”, and pick the channel conversations go to. Everyone in that channel sees new chats and can answer, so a channel like #support works well.
Set what visitors see: the Title in the chat (usually your company’s name), a Greeting and a Colour for the button.
Leave Ask for a name and email first on to know who you’re talking to and follow up if they leave. Turn it off to let visitors write straight away.
Under Websites it can appear on, put your site’s addresses, one per line, like https://northwind.example. The chat then only works on those sites. Leave it empty to allow any site.
Click Save, then copy the line under Paste this before </body> on your site and add it to every page that should show the chat.

The snippet looks like this:

<script src="https://app.freesbe.net/chat/AbC123.../widget.js" async></script>

Click Try the chat to open the chat on its own page and send yourself a test message. To change a web chat later, open its ⋯ menu: Edit, Turn off (the button disappears from your site until you turn it back on) or Delete. Deleting a web chat keeps the conversations already in the channel.

Bring in your support email

Keep the address your customers already know, like support@northwind.example. Freesbe gives each email inbox its own address, and you forward your address to it. Only owners and admins can add one.

Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → Customer inbox and, under Shared email address, click Add email address.
Give it a Name and pick the channel emails go to.
Enter Your team’s address, the one customers write to. Replies ask customers to answer it, so their answers come back the same way.
Check the Name on replies. A reply Sam sends comes from “Sam at Northwind Traders”.
Click Add email address, then copy the address under Forward your team’s address to this one.

Then set up forwarding where your email is hosted:

Google Workspace: for a group like support@, add the Freesbe address as a member of the group. For a mailbox, open its Gmail settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP → Add a forwarding address. Gmail sends a confirmation email to the Freesbe address: it shows up in your channel as a conversation, so open the link in it to confirm.
Microsoft 365: in the Exchange admin center, open the mailbox → Mail flow settings → Email forwarding, turn it on and enter the Freesbe address. Tick Deliver message to both forwarding address and mailbox to keep a copy. If your company blocks forwarding outside it, ask your Microsoft 365 admin to allow it for this mailbox.
Anywhere else: look for “forwarding” in your email provider’s settings.

The Freesbe address takes mail as soon as you add it, so you can try it by emailing it yourself.

How email conversations work

Each email from a new sender starts a conversation, with the email’s subject on the card. Later emails from the same person land in the same thread until you close it.
Freesbe shows what the customer wrote this time: the quoted earlier emails and their signature are left out.
Your replies go out with the same subject (Re: …) and as replies to the customer’s email, so the customer sees one email thread.
Attachments aren’t brought over yet. The message lists their names, so you know to ask for them another way.
Turning an email inbox off, or deleting it, bounces mail sent to its Freesbe address. Turn off the forwarding first.

Texts to your Freesbe numbers

Put one of your Freesbe phone numbers in the inbox, and texts to it land in a channel, one thread per customer. Only owners and admins can add one.

Open the Admin Center, then Phone → Messaging, and click Add number.
Give it a Name, pick the channel texts go to, and pick the Number customers text.
Click Add number.

Test mode

A texting inbox starts in test mode: nothing goes to or comes from the phone network.

Type a message under Send a test text and click Send. It lands in the channel from a made-up number, like a customer’s text would.
Reply in the thread as usual. The reply is kept and marked Test mode: not sent, so you can see how working a conversation feels before anyone gets a text.

Going live

When you’re happy with it, click Go live under the number and confirm. From then on:

Texts customers send to the number land in the channel, one thread per customer. Pictures sent with a text are mentioned in the thread but not shown yet.
Replies in the thread are texted back from the same number. Under each reply you see whether it was Sent, Delivered or Failed, with the reason when it failed.
A customer who texts STOP doesn’t get texts from the number any more, and the thread says so. They can text START to get them again.

The number has to be one of your workspace’s own phone numbers. In the US, a number needs its business texting registration (A2P 10DLC) done before it can text customers; replies say so until it is. To stop texting for real, open the number’s ⋯ menu and choose Back to test mode.

Texting for real is opening up gradually. Until it’s on for your workspace, the number stays in test mode and says it’s coming.

Put your company’s WhatsApp Business number in the inbox, and WhatsApp messages to it land in a channel, one thread per customer. WhatsApp comes with the Business plan and up. Only owners and admins can add one.

Open the Admin Center, then Phone → Messaging, and, under WhatsApp, click Add WhatsApp number.
Give it a Name, pick the channel messages go to, and type your WhatsApp Business number with its country code.
Click Add number.

It starts in test mode, like a texting inbox: send a test message under Send a test message, reply in the thread, and nothing goes to WhatsApp.

Connect WhatsApp

Click Connect WhatsApp under the number.
Sign in with Facebook in the window that opens, pick your business, and pick (or create) the WhatsApp Business account that has the number. Freesbe only asks to manage that account’s messages.
You’re back in Phone → Messaging, and the inbox is live.

From then on:

WhatsApp messages to the number land in the channel, one thread per customer, with the name the customer uses on WhatsApp. Photos, videos, voice messages, stickers and files show in the thread like any other file; locations show as an address.
Replies in the thread go back on WhatsApp from your number. Attach a photo, video, voice recording or file to a reply and it goes too, with your words as its caption. Under each reply you see whether it was Sent, Delivered, Read or Failed, with the reason when it failed.
WhatsApp only takes free-form replies within 24 hours of the customer’s last message. After that, the bar over the box says so and offers Send a template.

WhatsApp bills your WhatsApp Business account under Meta’s own pricing: the charges come from Meta, not on your Freesbe bill. Replies within 24 hours of a customer’s message are free under Meta’s current pricing; templates are charged per message, and marketing ones cost more than updates.

Templates

A template is a message Meta approved ahead of time, with blanks like {{1}} for a name or an order number. WhatsApp takes one any time: it’s how you reach a customer after the 24 hours, and how you write to someone who hasn’t written to you. When they answer, you can reply freely for 24 hours again.

To send one in a conversation, click Send a template on the bar over the box (or Templates, while the 24 hours are still running). Pick a template, fill in its blanks, check What they’ll see, and click Send template. It shows in the thread as your message.

To write to a customer first, open Inbox and click Message on WhatsApp. Type their number with its country code (and their name, if you like), pick a template and fill it in. Their conversation starts as a new thread in the inbox’s channel, or carries on in the open one if they already have one.

Templates live on your WhatsApp Business account. Owners and admins see them under the number in Phone → Messaging, with whether Meta approved, is still reviewing, or turned down each one. To make one there:

Click New template.
Give it a Name in lowercase with underscores, like restock_alert, and pick its Language.
Pick its Kind: Updates for something the customer did or asked for (an order, a booking, a ticket), Marketing for offers and news.
Write the Message, with {{1}}, {{2}} where something changes each time, and give an example for each so Meta’s reviewers can read it. Add a Footer if you like.
Click Send for review. Meta usually answers within a day; the template can be sent once it’s approved.

Until the inbox is connected to WhatsApp, three sample templates stand in for yours, so you can try it all in test mode. Templates with a picture header or a link button that changes each time can be made in WhatsApp Manager but not sent from Freesbe yet.

Change or stop

A number used in the WhatsApp Business app on a phone moves to the inbox when you connect it. To stop answering on WhatsApp, open the inbox’s ⋯ menu and choose Back to test mode. If replies stop going out (for example, someone removed Freesbe from your business on Facebook), click Connect again.

What visitors see

A round button sits in the bottom corner of your site. Clicking it opens the chat with your title and greeting. The visitor’s first message starts a conversation, and your team’s answers show up in the chat with the first name of whoever wrote them.

The chat remembers the visitor in their browser, so they can close the page and come back to the same conversation. Visitors never see your channel, internal notes or anyone’s email address.

Answer a customer

When a customer writes, Customer inbox posts a card in the channel with their name, the inbox they wrote to and who’s on it. Their messages land in the card’s thread. Click Open conversation, or Take it to make it yours.

In the thread, a bar over the message box shows who you’re talking to and what you can do:

Reply to customer sends what you write to the customer. Under each reply, Freesbe shows Sent to the customer, or what went wrong if it couldn’t send it.
Internal note keeps what you write between the team. The box turns amber so you can tell, and the note is marked Internal note. Mention someone with @ to bring them in.
Saved replies drops one of your team’s saved answers into the box, ready to change before you send it.
Suggest a reply writes a draft with AI from the conversation and your saved replies. It goes in the box for you to read and change; nothing is sent until you send it.

When you reply and nobody is on the conversation yet, it becomes yours.

Changing or deleting a reply after you send it doesn’t change what the customer already got.

Hand off and close

The name on the bar is who’s on the conversation. Click it to Take it myself, hand it to anyone in the channel, or Unassign it. Customer inbox notes each change in the thread, like “Sam handed this conversation to Marcus”, so everyone can follow along.

Click Close when you’re done. If the customer writes again later, a new conversation starts in a new thread, and the old one stays as it was. Click Reopen to pick a closed one up again.

The Inbox page

Inbox on the left, under your workspaces, opens every customer conversation in one list, newest change first. Its number counts the open conversations that are yours or that nobody is on yet.

Open, Mine, Unassigned and Closed filter the list.
Waiting on you marks conversations where the customer wrote last.
With more than one inbox, pick one to see only its conversations.

You see conversations in public channels and in private channels you’re in.

Saved replies

Saved replies are answers your team gives again and again, like shipping times, opening hours or how returns work. Open them from Saved replies on the Inbox page or in a conversation, then Manage saved replies.

Anyone on the team can add and change saved replies. Admins and the person who added one can delete it.

Suggest a reply follows your saved replies, so they’re also the place for your policies and facts: the AI uses them instead of guessing.

Good to know

The inbox isn’t open to apps and the API’s app tokens; conversations can only be answered by people in the channel.
A workspace can have up to 20 inboxes of every kind together, for example one per website or brand.
Each number can be in one texting inbox and one WhatsApp inbox.
A workspace can send 1,000 WhatsApp replies and templates a day.
WhatsApp takes photos up to 5 MB, videos and voice messages up to 16 MB, and other files up to 100 MB.
Each email inbox takes up to 2,000 emails a day, 100 of them from one sender, and a workspace can send 500 emailed replies a day.
A customer’s message can be up to 4,000 characters.
Suggest a reply shows when AI is on for your workspace, like summaries and translations.