Pending as "Waiting for the Customer": Automatic Reopening, Follow-up, and Paused SLA

When to Use

• Your operation marks conversations as Pending to wait for a customer response, and they end up forgotten in the queue.
• You want the conversation to automatically return to the queue when the customer responds.
• You do not want the waiting time for the customer to count against your response SLA.
• You want follow-up and automatic closure to also include Pending conversations.

Prerequisites

• The conversation inbox cannot have an active support bot.

How It Works

What Changes When Enabled

Three behaviors apply to Pending conversations.

The conversation reopens when the customer responds. When a message is received from the contact, the Pending conversation switches to Open, notifies the assigned agent, and re-enters distribution and counters. Previously, it remained stuck: no notification, out of the queue, and out of the metrics.

Follow-up and automatic closure now include Pending. They follow the same timeframes already set for Open conversations. No new timeframe adjustments are needed.

The response SLA pauses. While the conversation is Pending, the response SLA counter is paused. When it reopens, the SLA resumes, deducting the time it was waiting.

What Does Not Change

• The status label on the screen remains "Pending". The label change to something like "Waiting for Customer" has not been implemented yet.
• Messages sent by the agent do not change the status. The conversation leaves Pending due to a customer message, manual action by the team, or automatic closure.
• If the inbox has an active support bot, the conversation remains Pending.

When the Behavior Is Disabled

Follow-up, automatic closure, and SLA pause only apply to Open conversations, just like before.

Notes