A store with a website, an Instagram account, a WhatsApp number and an email address has four inboxes, each with its own tab, its own notifications and its own half-remembered conversations. The fix is not another tool with a fifth tab. It is one place where every message lands, one agent that answers the routine, and one profile per customer whichever door they came through.
This is the order we recommend for setting that up in ConvertPilot, with the decisions that matter at each step. Website chat and email are on the Free plan; WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and SMS open on Premium.
Before any channel: four decisions
- What the agent must never improvise. Returns window, who pays return shipping, discount policy, delivery promises. Write each as a training rule (a trigger and the exact response) so the answer is the same on every channel.
- What it should know. Sizing notes, materials, opening hours, where you ship. This goes in the knowledge base. The agent also reads your pages, so anything already on the site does not need repeating.
- When people are available. Live-chat hours per day, in your time zone. Outside them the widget shows your away message; the agent keeps answering what it can, and anything it cannot handle waits in the inbox with the customer’s details.
- Who gets what. Per channel, whether the agent replies first and who new conversations are assigned to. A store where one person owns Instagram and another owns email can set that once in Automations.
Step 1: website chat
Start with the widget because it is the channel you control end to end. On Shopify and Wix it is installed by the app; anywhere else it is one script tag in the site’s custom code area. Set the launcher colour, the header title, the greeting and three or four popular questions, and watch the live preview as you edit. Then send yourself a message from the site and read the reply, and its trace, before going further.
Step 2: email
Email is connected out of the box: any conversation can be continued by email from the reply box, and replies come back into the same thread. Decide whether email conversations get the agent or go straight to a person. Many stores keep the agent on for website chat, where speed matters most, and let email wait for the team.
Step 3: WhatsApp Business
Connect the WhatsApp Business account with the embedded sign-up in Settings › Channels. Customers write to the number they already have for you, the agent answers, and your team picks up in the inbox or the mobile app. One thing to decide: whether the agent replies first on WhatsApp (it can) or whether the number goes straight to a person.
Step 4: Messenger and Instagram
Connect the Facebook page, then the Instagram account linked to it. Instagram DMs are where product questions arrive as photos and one-line messages (“is it in olive?”), which is exactly where product cards earn their place: the agent answers with the item, the price and a Shop Now button rather than a paragraph.
Step 5: Telegram and SMS
Telegram takes a bot token from BotFather. SMS takes a dedicated number added from Settings, billed per number to the same card as your plan, with an allowance of outbound texts per 30 days by plan. Both arrive as ordinary conversations in the same inbox.
Then: the settings people skip
| Setting | Where | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Assignment defaults | Automations | Unassigned threads sit. Give each channel an owner. |
| Labels | AI settings › Labels | VIP, hot lead, at-risk and your own. The agent applies them; your CRM sync depends on them. |
| AI tagging | Integrations › AI tagging | Price objection, purchase intent, shipping question, sizing. Switch on the ones your marketing tool can act on. |
| Notifications | Settings › Notifications | New-message emails, the daily suggestion digest, the unread and assigned digest. Pick what you will actually read. |
| Translation | Settings › Translation | The language your team reads in. Customers get replies in theirs. |
What a good first week looks like
- The trace opened on a dozen replies, and one or two rules adjusted because of what it showed.
- Every channel with an owner, and no thread older than a day in Unassigned.
- A knowledge gap suggestion or two accepted from the assistant thread (it proposes them from the questions customers actually asked).
- The mobile app installed by whoever covers evenings.
One inbox is a decision about attention, not software. Connect the channels in the order you can actually staff them, and let the agent take the routine on each one before adding the next.
The channels page lists what each channel needs to connect and which plan it is on. The features page shows every screen mentioned here, cut from the real console.