Talk to your team without leaving the conversation
Notes, mentions and internal chat exist so "does anyone know about this customer" does not have to happen in a different app.
The failure mode this prevents is familiar: an agent has a question about a customer, asks in a group chat somewhere else, gets an answer, and that answer is now permanently lost to everybody who deals with that customer afterwards.
The rule that fixes it: if it is about the customer, it belongs on the customer. Everything else can go wherever your team already chats.
Before you start
- A contact or conversation to talk about.
- Colleagues who read their notification feed.
Steps
Mention rather than message
A mention on the contact carries its own context — the colleague opens it and sees the conversation, the history and the record. A message in another app makes them go and find all of that.
Use notes for anything the next person needs
If it would still matter in a month, it belongs on the contact rather than in a chat thread that scrolls away.
Keep the ephemeral part ephemeral
"Can you take this one, I'm on a call" does not belong on a customer's permanent record. Not everything needs to be filed.
Escalate by assigning, not by asking
If somebody else should own it, a manager assigns it. Asking in chat and hoping is exactly how conversations go quiet — nobody has it, so nobody is accountable for it.
Answer where the question was asked
If somebody mentioned you on a contact, reply there rather than in another app. A half-answered mention is worse than none, because the record now looks handled.
Check it worked
Open a contact one of your colleagues worked last week and try to answer, from the record alone, what the customer wanted and what was promised. If you cannot, the answer went into a chat thread somewhere instead of onto the contact — which is the habit this is meant to replace.
The parts people get wrong
- Notes and mentions are included on every plan.
- A note is visible to everybody with access to that customer, indefinitely. That is the point, and it is worth remembering as you type.
The ones people actually ask
Should I message a colleague in another app or mention them here?
Mention them here. A mention carries its own context — they open it and see the conversation, the history and the record. A message in another app makes them go and find all of that, and half the time they do not.
What belongs on the record and what does not?
If it would still matter in a month, it belongs on the contact. Can you take this one, I am on a call does not belong on a customer's permanent record. Not everything needs filing.
Somebody asked in chat for a colleague to pick up a conversation and nothing happened.
Asking is not routing. If somebody else should own it, a manager assigns it — otherwise nobody has it and nobody is accountable for it, which is exactly how conversations go quiet.