Handling chats as a team

1.Who sees what (roles)

Yapp keeps each person to their lane:

• Branch agent — sees only their own branch's chats.
• Supervisor / Manager — oversight: sees every branch, can move chats around, and sees the unrouted pile.
• Owner (Superuser) — everything, plus settings and billing.

So a customer's conversation is visible to the branch handling it and to management — never to the wrong branch.

2.The inbox, at a glance

Chats are grouped by status so you always know what needs you:

• Open — active, needs attention.
• Pending — waiting on something.
• Resolved — closed off.
• Expired — the 24-hour reply window has closed (see section 7).
• Unrouted — the customer hasn't picked a branch yet (managers only).
• Assigned to me — chats that are yours right now.

3.Picking up a chat

How a chat reaches a person depends on the branch's mode (set under Branches):

• Shared queue — the whole branch sees it. Anyone taps Claim to take it (and can Release it back to the queue). This stops two people replying at once.
• Assigned — chats are owned by a specific agent. A manager can Assign a chat to any agent in the branch.

4.Replying

Open a chat and you get two modes:

• 💬 Reply — your message goes to the customer on WhatsApp. You can attach a photo, document, or add a caption.
• 📝 Note — an internal note your team sees but the customer never does. Use it to leave context ("promised a callback Tuesday").

On Pro, ✨ Suggest reply drafts a response with AI for you to review and edit — nothing is sent automatically.

5.Moving a chat around

• Transfer / Reassign — send the chat to a different branch (e.g. the customer actually needs Durban, not Sandton). The new branch picks it up from there.
• Escalate — hand it to a specific person (e.g. a manager or a specialist). They get notified it's now theirs, and the chat shows an "escalated" flag.

6.Closing off

• Resolve — marks the chat done. If the customer messages again later, it reopens as a fresh chat, so nothing gets lost.
• Reopen — pull a resolved chat back to Open.
• Archive — tidy a chat out of the active list (still fully readable, and it un-archives itself if the customer messages again).

On Pro you can also turn on auto-resolve (Settings): after a customer goes quiet following your reply, Yapp sends one gentle check-in and later closes the chat quietly — it never fires while a customer is waiting on you.

7.The 24-hour window (important)

Once 24 hours pass with no new customer message, the chat moves to Expired — you can't send a normal reply until the customer messages again. (Re-opening an expired chat with a marketing template is coming to Yapp.) This is a WhatsApp rule, not a Yapp limit — but Yapp shows it clearly so you're never caught out.

8.Unrouted chats

Some customers message but never tap a menu option, so they have no branch — these sit in Unrouted (managers only). Yapp nudges customers back to the menu to keep this small, and if an unrouted chat has been waiting over an hour, your managers get a notification so nobody's left hanging. A manager can then assign it to the right branch.

9.Notifications

Turn on notifications per device (from the Dashboard) and you'll get a ping — on your PC or phone, even when Yapp is closed — when a customer messages a chat you handle, or a chat is escalated to you. Enable it on each device you use. (A Pro feature; on iPhone, add Yapp to your Home Screen first.)

10.Little touches

• Customer reactions (👍 ❤️) show on the message they reacted to, just like WhatsApp.
• Photos, documents, voice notes and videos come through in the chat (media retention depends on your plan).
• Delivery and read status show on your sent messages.