Manage contacts in Inbox

Contact attributes are useful details about a contact, such as email address, first and last name, account ID, or job title. These details can help agents personalize their responses, build stronger relationships with customers, and reduce time spent asking questions.

When you add and turn on contact attributes in Inbox, they appear on the right side of the agent workspace. Advanced, Business, and Enterprise admins and agents can add and edit contact attributes. Enterprise plan members can also populate details by integrating with an external customer relationship management system (CRM) or other back-end business application.

• Choose what contact attributes agents see
• Edit a contact
• Delete a contact
• Create your own contact attributes
• Link a contact across channels
• Use the VIP contact attribute
• Report on contact attribute data
• Integrate your CRM with Inbox

Choose what contact attributes agents see

You can choose the contact information you want your agents to see and the order in which they're shown.

1. In Inbox, select Settings, and then select Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Contact attributes.
3. Select Reorder and drag contact attributes up or down in the list to order them in the view. Use the toggle to turn on and off contact attributes.

Edit a contact

Advanced, Business, and Enterprise admins and agents can add and edit contact attributes.

1. In the Contact details panel, select the Attributes tab and then select Edit.
   
2. Enter the information for the attributes you want to change, and then select Save.

For X contacts, you can select Actions, and then select Follow to follow or unfollow a contact.

Delete a contact

When you delete a contact, you delete their conversation history, attachments, and contact attributes. If the person communicates with you again, they’ll appear as a new contact. To delete a contact, select the Actionstab, and then select Delete.

When you delete a contact, we'll create a log of the event that includes contact hint information, the deleted contact's platform, the deletion date, and the admin who deleted the contact. To view all deleted contacts, go to Admin settings, expand Privacy and security, and then select Deleted contacts.

Create your own contact attributes

Create custom contact attributes to meet your business needs.

1. In Inbox, select Settings, and then select Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Contact attributes.
3. Select Add attribute.
4. Select from one of the following options:
   • Text field - Freeform text or numbers.
   • Dropdown list - A set choice of two or more options.
5. Follow the steps to complete and save your attribute.
6. Select Reorder and drag contact attributes up or down in the list to order them in the view. Use the switch to turn on and off contact attributes.

Types of contact attributes

There are two types of contact attributes:

• Platform contact attributes are attributes that are automatically populated by the system with channel metadata, and they vary by channel.
• Custom contact attributes are created by admins. Any new contact attribute you add is a custom contact attribute.

Link a contact across channels

Link conversations from the same contact across different channels using shared contact attributes. For X and Instagram, conversation histories are matched across channels using unique user IDs. For all other channels, you can specify a contact attribute to match conversation histories automatically.

1. Go to Inbox Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Contact attributes.
3. Under Attribute used for matching, select Change to choose a new attribute.

If you don’t select a matching attribute, the conversation histories in different channels for the same contact will not be linked, with the exception of X and Instagram contacts. To see cross-channel conversation history, see View a contact's conversation history.

Use the VIP contact attribute

VIP is a standard contact attribute used for the following purposes:

• Route important contacts to a specific team.
• Prioritize contacts higher in your queue.
• Exchange data with a virtual agent to trigger a specific VIP bot flow.
• Export data to a third-party system, such as a ticketing system or CRM.

Contacts with the VIP attribute are also part of the VIP contact group and get prioritized and routed accordingly. Learn more about priority scores.

VIP is turned on by default so agents can designate and identify VIP customers. To turn it on or off for agents, use the following steps:

1. Go to Inbox Admin settings.
2. Expand Agent workspace, and then select Contact attributes.
3. Scroll down to find the VIP entry in the Name list and turn it on or off.

When VIP is turned on, agents can do the following:

• Designate a customer as VIP by selecting VIP when they edit the contact's attributes.
• Filter by VIP status by selecting Filter, Contact groups, and then selecting VIP.

When the VIP attribute is turned off, agents won’t see the VIP field.

Report on contact attribute data

To generate a report containing contact attribute data, follow these steps:

1. In Inbox, select Track performance, and then select Exports.
2. Select Contact attributes from the Export type list.
3. Follow the steps to build your report, and then select Generate export.

Integrate your CRM with Inbox

You can pull customer contact data from your customer relationship management (CRM) tool into Inbox.

In Inbox Admin settings, expand Integration and APIs, and select CRM to set up your integration. To learn how to connect your CRM system, see the Inbox CRM API Reference. You can choose which contact attribute to use as the lookup key (many of our customers use Email for this key).

Allow agents to add and edit CRM-managed contact attributes

You can allow agents to add and edit all contact attributes that are managed by your CRM on the Contact tab in Inbox. After an agent makes a change to a contact attribute and the conversation status changes, the attribute is updated in the CRM. To allow agents to make changes to contacts in your CRM, use the following steps:

1. Go to Inbox Admin settings.
2. Expand Integrations and APIs, and then select CRM.
3. At the bottom of the page under Contact attributes, turn on Enable editing of contact attributes managed by CRM.