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Conversation lifecycle states

Conversation lifecycle states

This page covers the four conversation statuses (Open, Waiting on Customer, Resolved and Spam) and the AI handling states shown alongside them (such as AI Handling, Escalated by AI and AI Resolved). A conversation is always in exactly one status at any moment, and each status maps to a place in the sidebar.

The four statuses

Status

Meaning

Shown in

Open

Needs action from your team — an unanswered customer message or an active AI conversation.

Inbox, Mine (if yours), AI Handling (if AI-handled)

Waiting on Customer

Your team replied last and the customer has not responded. No action needed from you.

Waiting view

Resolved

Closed by a human agent. The thread is read-only until the customer replies.

Resolved view

Spam

Marked as spam; hidden from the main queues.

Spam view

New conversations start Open. Agents can set a conversation's status from the conversation view, and resolving is always an explicit action.

The AI flow states layered on top

Independently of status, the AI support pipeline adds flow states that describe who is driving:

  • AI Handling — the AI is actively working the conversation. Shown in the AI Handling view with an "AI Active" badge.

  • Escalated by AI — the AI has escalated and the conversation is waiting for a human to pick it up.

  • Queued for business hours — the AI escalated outside business hours; the conversation waits until the schedule opens.

  • Assigned to a human — a human has taken over.

  • AI Resolved — the AI resolved it without a human reply. Shown in the AI Resolved view.

  • Resolved by a human — a human resolved it. Shown in the Resolved view.

What you see combines the two layers: a human takeover always takes priority, then escalation and queue states, then the AI state. This is why a conversation can show Open plus an AI Active badge at the same time.

How a conversation moves through

A typical journey:

  1. Customer message arrives → the conversation is Open (and queued for the AI if enabled).

  2. AI handles it → the conversation shows as AI Handling; the customer sees AI replies in the thread. From here, one of two things happens:

    • The AI resolves it → the conversation is Resolved and appears in AI Resolved.

    • The AI can't, and escalates → the conversation shows the "Escalated by AI" badge and appears in the destination inbox.

  3. Human replies → the conversation is assigned to the human and the AI is out of the loop.

  4. Human resolves → the conversation is Resolved.

  5. Customer replies later → the conversation reopens automatically as Open and re-enters the flow (AI first if enabled, since it is a new message).

Resolution and reopening

  • Resolve is always a human action (or the AI's explicit resolution path) — replying does not resolve.

  • A resolved conversation that receives a new customer message reopens automatically as Open. The reopen event is recorded in the thread.

  • Resolved conversations keep their full history, tags, and CRM links.

Marking unread

Unread state is per teammate and independent of status: you can mark any conversation unread (including resolved ones) to bring it back to your attention.

Spam

Marking a conversation as spam removes it from all queues except Spam. Spam conversations are excluded from AI triage routing. You can restore a spam conversation to Open from the Spam view or the conversation actions menu.

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