Why does the bell say a customer is still waiting?

Two new kinds of message can appear in your bell: one warning you that a customer is close to waiting longer than you meant them to, and one telling you that they now have. Both name the customer and say, in a sentence, what they are still waiting for.

You do not have to switch anything on. Every account starts with a reply-time target already set, and you can change it whenever you like under Settings, Inbox, Reply times.

The clock measures waiting for a PERSON, not for any reply

This is the part worth reading twice. The clock starts when a customer writes in, and it stops when a person on your team replies. An answer from the AI does not stop it.

That is deliberate. The AI answering is usually the right first move, and it often ends the conversation happily. But when someone has asked a question the AI cannot settle, the honest measure of how long they have been kept waiting is how long it has been since a human being looked. A clock that stopped on the AI reply would report every one of those as answered in seconds.

A private note does not stop the clock either, because the customer cannot see one.

What the two messages mean

• A warning. The wait is close to your target, with time still on the clock. This is the one to act on.
• A breach. The wait has passed your target. The conversation is reopened if it was snoozed, so it comes back into view rather than staying hidden.

Each message is written for that conversation: it names the customer, says roughly how long they have waited, and gives the one line of context you need to pick it up without opening it first.

Who gets them

The person the conversation is assigned to. If nobody is assigned, they go to your organization's admins instead, so a conversation with no owner is not a conversation nobody hears about.

They are counted in the unread badge on the bell like any other message, and if you have allowed desktop alerts in your browser and your tab is in the background, one will pop up. A reply-time nudge is time-critical by nature, which is why it is treated the same as being assigned a conversation.

Why you will not be flooded on the first day

A target only applies to waits that start after it exists. Conversations that were already sitting there when the feature arrived are left alone completely: no warning, no breach, ever. Only new waits are measured.

You also get at most one warning and one breach per conversation. The bell rings when the state changes, not every time the clock is checked.

Changing the target

Your account starts on one hour for the first reply and two hours for each reply after that, with the warning fifteen minutes ahead. Those numbers suit most front desks, and you can change them yourself.

1. Go to Settings, then the Inbox tab, then Reply times.
2. Set how many minutes a first reply should take, how long every reply after that may take, and how early you want the warning.
3. Click Save reply times.

Three things worth knowing before you change them:

• The warning has to be smaller than both targets. A warning that arrived at the same moment as the breach would not be a warning. The screen tells you before you save, and the save is refused if it slips through.
• Anything from one minute to seven days is allowed. The ceiling is there so a slip of the keyboard cannot quietly switch the clock off.
• These are measured around the clock, not only during your opening hours, so a message that arrives overnight counts the same as one at midday.

You can also switch the alerts off entirely with the tick box on the same screen. That stops new alerts, it does not clear ones already in your bell.

Only an admin can open this screen and change these numbers.