Resolving and reopening conversations

Closing

Close at the top of the thread puts the conversation away. It leaves your open list and lands in Closed.

Closing is not deleting and it is not a judgement about whether the customer was happy. It means “there is nothing waiting on us here”. Close freely: an inbox that only contains live work is worth far more than one kept open out of caution.

When a chat closes, two things may happen depending on your settings: the visitor is asked how it went, and they may be emailed a copy of it.

Reopening

A closed conversation reopens the moment the visitor writes again, with its whole history intact. They do not start a new thread and they do not repeat themselves, and whoever picks it up can read everything that was said before.

You can reopen one yourself from the thread if you closed it too early.

Letting quiet ones close themselves

Most conversations do not end, they trail off. Somebody gets their answer and closes the tab. Left alone, every one of those sits in the inbox looking like it needs attention, and after a week the queue means nothing.

Settings → Data & privacy has a setting for this: close a chat with nothing said for a given length of time. It is off by default, and the shortest option is thirty minutes, because closing a conversation under somebody who is still reading a long answer is worse than a tidy inbox is good.

It is measured from the last thing actually said rather than from when the chat started, and writing again reopens it, so nothing is lost. The close appears in the transcript as an automatic one, so it does not look like a colleague did it.

How long closed chats are kept

Also under Data & privacy. A closed conversation is deleted once it reaches the age you set, along with any files sent in it. Chats that are still open are never touched by this.

Your plan sets the longest you can choose. Free keeps thirty days, Starter a year, Pro and Business keep everything until you say otherwise.

Last updated 22 September 2026.