Inbox 2.0 FAQ

From engagement to sales and support, your social channels are the front door for many different types of customer interactions. That’s why we built a new Inbox in Hootsuite — to help you delight your customers with faster, better responses.

What is Inbox 2.0?

Inbox 2.0 is our newest digital-first and proactive customer service solution. We developed it using advanced technology from Sparkcentral, a best-in-class social customer service platform Hootsuite acquired in 2021. This enables customers to deliver exceptional customer service via social and messaging channels including SMS, WhatsApp, WeChat, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more.

Inbox 2.0 includes the features available in the previous version of Inbox, as well as many of the advanced customer service features that were previously only available in Sparkcentral. The new and improved Inbox 2.0 is replaces your current Inbox in Hootsuite.

What’s the difference between Inbox vs. Inbox 2.0?

It’s better! Inbox 2.0 includes all the current features of Inbox, plus new and advanced features. With Inbox 2.0, you can :

• Manage public, private, organic and dark post conversations in one place.
• Use saved replies, auto-responders, and automations that speed up responses.
• Connect to your CRM to enable better service and deeper insights into the value of a conversation.
• Route and assign responses to the right individuals and teams.

These are just some of the advanced features we’re bringing to you. For a full list, see the Inbox 2.0 FAQ section of this article.

What are the benefits of Inbox 2.0?

Inbox 2.0 offers many new benefits to teams managing social media and customer service.

Social media teams can:

• Get a bird’s eye view of all messages and engagements — from private to public, and organic to dark — across platforms, in one place.
• Easily collaborate with multiple internal teams to quickly resolve every type of customer message or engagement.
• Prove social ROI by consistently exceeding customer service success metrics and delivering customer satisfaction.

Customer service teams can:

• Resolve more social customer service tickets faster with tools built to enhance your team’s efficiency.
• Collaborate easily with internal teams and ensure seamless hand-offs of customer inquiries.
• Boost customer satisfaction with quick, accurate, and consistent interactions.

When will Inbox 2.0 be available?

To make the transition as seamless as possible, we’re migrating all of our Business and Enterprise customers to Inbox 2.0 in a phased approach. Your Customer Account Manager will reach out to you to give you more details about your exact migration date.

On your go-live date, you’ll just log out and back in to get access to your new and improved Inbox!

Does Inbox 2.0 cost more?

No. Inbox 2.0 will be available for all Business and Enterprise customers, free of charge.

Exact features differ by plan type. For customers who need advanced features such as advanced language support or custom virtual agents, we’ll also offer an Advanced Inbox option, available at an additional cost.

Will Inbox and assignment features be available in Inbox 2.0?

Yes! You’ll have all the previous features from Inbox and assignments, plus many new ones. You’ll be able to assign messages to yourself or your different teams, the same way you do with Streams and assignments in old Inbox. You’ll also be able to use saved filters, similar to what you’ve used in assignments.

Will all my data history and processes be moved to Inbox 2.0?

All your current processes (including saved replies, SLAs, profile notes, saved filters, tag automations, and business hours) will automatically be transferred to Inbox 2.0.

Your conversation history from 2 weeks before migrating will still be visible in Inbox 2.0, as well as your Team Performance report.

Note: If you have assignment automations set up, you’ll have to migrate this process over manually into Inbox 2.0. Your Customer Account Manager will reach out to you to help you enable this process before migrating.

Where are Hootsuite’s data centers located?

Hootsuite’s services are provided and managed by Hootsuite Inc., a Canadian company. Most of our services are developed and maintained from our offices in Canada, but as part of our services we use third-party providers (subprocessors) located in the United States.

We currently store data using AWS data centers in the USA (Virginia and California). More information on our subprocessors is available on our website at hootsuite.com/legal/subprocessor-list.

How does Hootsuite protect private information?

Hootsuite complies with applicable data protection laws with respect to its responsibilities, including the GDPR and Canadian PIPEDA. Customers should be aware that the parties may act as data controllers or processors depending on the data, and there are different obligations that apply to each party. For more information, refer to our privacy policy at hootsuite.com/legal/privacy.

Our customers are also responsible for complying with applicable data protection laws for the data they are handling. For example, customers are data controllers for the content that they choose to load onto Hootsuite services, and will need to ensure they have the legal basis to collect and use such data if it is related to individuals.

Hootsuite's privacy program includes the following elements that are central to most data protection laws:

• Hootsuite has appointed a data protection officer (DPO) and has dedicated individuals managing the privacy function.
• Hootsuite's employees undergo annual privacy training.
• Hootsuite has implemented a process to promptly respond to, and manage data subject requests, such as requests for access and deletion of their information.
• Hootsuite observes privacy by design principles, including conducting privacy impact assessments and reviews when implementing new product functionality, and new processes.
• Hootsuite has adopted technical and organizational measures to protect personal data.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we manage information about individuals. You can find more details about our privacy and security practices on our website under hootsuite.com/legal/privacy and hootsuite.com/trust-center.

What features are available with each plan type?

Inbox 2.0 offers a wide range of powerful features to enhance your customer service. See the following sections for more details.

Centralized conversation management

Inbox 2.0 is one place to answer messages across social networks listed in the following table. You can also view and respond to messages on mobile.

Conversation management features

Social network	Professional, Team, and Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Facebook (public, private, and dark posts)
Twitter (public and private)
Instagram (public and private)
LinkedIn (public)
Hootsuite Messenger (web chat)
WhatsApp			$

Message organization and prioritization

Use advanced features like filters, tags, and automations to organize and prioritize your conversations.

Conversation prioritization features

Feature	Professional and Team	Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Filters Manage asynchronous communication better by filtering for new messages and responses that need your attention, pending messages that you've already responded to, and resolved conversations that you want to close.
Topics and tags Use topics and tags to assign conversations to specific individuals or teams, analyze themes, and prioritize conversations.		Tags only
Automations Automate assigning topics and tags, or resolving a conversation based on rules you create to save time, ensure consistency, and eliminate human error.		Tags only
SLA notifications Get notifications to highlight conversations that fail to meet response time SLAs so they can be identified and addressed promptly.
Prioritization rules Set up rules to prioritize each conversation based on channel, topic, and contact groups, ensuring urgent conversations and priority customers are handled first.

Tools for enhanced response times

Use features like saved replies and autoresponders to speed up message handling and resolution.

Faster response time features

Feature	Professional	Team and Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Business hours Set business hours so your customers know when you’re available.
Saved replies Save your most frequently used replies to make it faster and easier to respond to questions.
Autoresponders Send automated responses to messages based on keywords and business hours.
Language detection Use language detection to trigger autoresponders in the customer’s language and automatically route conversations to teams with specific language skills.
Chatbot APIs Connect your own bot to Inbox 2.0 to automate actions like responding to messages, resolving conversations, applying topics, and setting contact attributes.
CSAT surveys Send a custom CSAT survey at the end of a conversation to request real-time feedback.

Full contact profiles

Add custom contact attributes, group contacts for more efficient routing, and more.

Contact management features

Feature	Professional and Team	Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Contact attributes Add custom attributes to your contacts to include details like email, name, account ID, or job title. Use an autoresponder to automatically ask for these details and populate these fields.
Conversation history See your conversation history with a contact for a full picture of your company's interaction with them.
Notes Add notes that are only viewable internally.
Contact groups Group contacts for prioritizing or routing conversations in the queue.
VIP designation Mark a contact as "VIP" to help prioritize conversations.
CRM integration Integrate your CRM with Inbox 2.0 through Tray.io.

Team collaboration

Use message assignments to make sure that someone takes responsibility for each conversation that comes in. Route messages to the appropriate agent based on skills and availability. These features are available to members in a Hootsuite organization.

Collaboration features

Feature	Team	Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Conversation assignments Assign a conversation to teams, yourself, or a teammate.
Stream assignments Assign messages from Hootsuite Streams to teams, yourself, or a teammate.
Collision avoidance See if another teammate owns a response, or is already answering the message ("is typing").
Skills-based routing Automate sending messages to experts who are best able to answer your customer's question.
Agent availability Allow agents to set when they are available or away to receive incoming messages.

Real-time monitoring

Get real-time insights to optimize workflows and improve performance.

Performance monitoring features

Feature	Professional, Team, and Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
Integrated analytics Use integrated analytics and team performance insights to identify what's working well and what might need improvement.
Data export Export your data for further analysis.
Real-time monitoring Optimize workflows and increase team productivity with real-time monitoring of metrics across users, teams, channels, and topics.

Privacy and security

Hootsuite is GDPR compliant. In addition, you can delete contact information or mask messages to ensure that private or sensitive information is protected.

Privacy and security features

Feature	Professional	Team and Business	Enterprise	Advanced Inbox
GDPR compliance
Contact deletion Delete a contact to permanently remove their conversation history, attachments, and contact attributes from Inbox 2.0.
Contact muting Mute contacts to prevent messages from certain contacts from entering the queue. You can still find muted contacts and full conversation histories by searching for a contact's name or conversation content.
Message masking Hide sensitive information like credit card or social security numbers with manual or automatic message masking.	(manual only)
Audit trails Keep track of the actions performed in a conversation, who performed them, and when, to help you make sure conversations are handled according to your organization’s policies.