What a shared inbox fixes, and doesn’t

Five phones, five versions of the truth

Most small teams start the same way. The WhatsApp number lives on the manager’s phone. Telegram runs on a sales rep’s personal account. Someone checks Instagram between posts, and the support email belongs to whoever set it up. Each channel works on its own. Together they leave gaps.

The gaps are predictable. A customer writes on WhatsApp, then again on Instagram because the first reply was slow. Two people answer the same question in different words. Another question goes unanswered because everyone assumed someone else had it. When an employee leaves, the history leaves with their phone.

A shared inbox closes those gaps. It is one place where every customer conversation arrives, visible to the people who should see it. In Risti, that one place holds WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, email, website chat and calls.

Ownership: one name on every conversation

Seeing a message is not the same as owning it. A shared inbox that shows everyone everything, with no owner, just moves the confusion to a bigger screen. The useful part is a clear answer to one question: whose is this? In Risti, new conversations wait in Not taken yet until someone presses Take it.

Owners and admins decide, in Roles & access, who may claim conversations that nobody has taken. Agents see the conversations assigned to them and to their teams; owners and admins see all of them. Routing decides where conversations land first: each connected app sends its conversations to the teams you pick, and an app routed to no team sends them to your default team. Sales can get Instagram while support gets email, and nobody forwards screenshots to hand a customer over.

Every conversation can also carry three roles, each with a different job:

• Responsible: the person who owns the reply. There is only ever one.
• Helping: teammates who work on it with them, such as a colleague who knows the product better.
• Following: people who want to see what happens without acting, such as a team lead.

A shared inbox with no owner just moves the confusion to a bigger screen.

Notes and mentions the customer never sees

Much of customer service is teammates talking to each other. “Is this order already refunded?” “Can you check the delivery date?” On personal phones, that talk happens in a separate group chat, away from the conversation it is about.

A private note keeps it in the thread. Only your team sees it. Type @ to mention a teammate: they get notified, the mention waits on their Mentions page, and a teammate who couldn’t see the conversation is added as Following. The next person who opens the conversation reads the customer’s messages and the team’s notes in one place.

Saved replies help with the questions that come every day. Type / in the reply box to pick one, then adjust it for the person you are answering.

What a shared inbox doesn’t fix

A shared inbox makes the work visible. It does not do the work. Know the difference before you switch, and judge the tool by what it can change.

• It doesn’t make replies faster on its own. Visible queues help, but deadlines need rules. Service levels on tickets set targets for the first reply, the next reply and the fix, counted in your working hours.
• It doesn’t write your answers. If the delivery policy lives in one person’s head, it still does. Put it in the Library, where your team and MaryAI can both use it.
• It doesn’t decide who owns what. The roles are there; agreeing who covers Instagram on Saturdays is still your call.
• It doesn’t change each channel’s rules. WhatsApp and Instagram keep their 24-hour reply windows, and a Telegram bot still can’t write first.

Signs your team needs one

Each of these already costs you something: a customer who waits, an answer sent twice, a history nobody can find when it matters. You probably need a shared inbox if two or more are true for your team today:

• More than one person answers customers.
• Customers reach you on more than one channel.
• Someone asked “did anyone reply to her?” this week.
• Customer history lives on a phone that leaves when its owner does.
• Hand-overs happen in a separate chat, by screenshot.

Moving over without losing history

If one person answers one channel and nothing gets lost, a shared inbox adds little yet. The time to switch is just before a second person starts answering, not after the first missed order.

Switching does not mean starting from zero. With WhatsApp’s recommended option, the same number keeps working in the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, up to six months of chat history comes into Risti, and replies sync both ways. A Telegram account connects like another device, so that phone keeps working too. Disconnecting an app later keeps its conversations in the inbox, and connecting the same account again continues them.

To start, connect WhatsApp, then invite your team and give each person a role. The Free plan includes a few seats, and AI agents take no seat. The pricing page has the current limits.

Questions people ask