Getting started with inboxes

OpenPhone is different from other business phones you may have used. In this article, we’ll explain how inboxes work in OpenPhone and how you can use them effectively.

What is an inbox?

An OpenPhone inbox contains all the phone and text communications tied to a specific number. Instead of having your calls, messages, and voicemails scattered in different menus, you can find them all in one place in your inbox. 

Why inboxes are useful

Inboxes are pretty simple to understand, but they offer a whole host of benefits for your day-to-day communications:

• Unified view of your conversations: View all your messages, calls, voicemails, call recordings, and internal comments in a single thread. Get a 360 degree view of your customer interactions. For example, if a new sales team member wants to activate an old prospect, they can review their past interactions with your team and adjust their pitch for your product or service. 
• Easier categorization: Give each inbox a custom name and number to distinguish your notifications and categorize conversations into different buckets. If you’re a business owner managing your sales and support teams, you’ll be able to context switch easily and see which notifications need your immediate attention.
• Inbox-level access: Add team members to inboxes you want them to have access to so that the right people have visibility into the right conversations. 

Run a retail business with multiple locations or a sales team that handles different regions? Give team members in each location access to their specific number. 

Why you should share your inboxes

OpenPhone works best when you share your inboxes with your team. Here’s why:

• Visibility: Know exactly which team members are communicating with your customers with a shared inbox. Whether it’s a sales or support conversation, sharing your inbox makes sure your team moves efficiently.
• Collaboration: Ask for help from team members in real time instead of toggling between multiple apps to troubleshoot customer issues. 
• Analytics: Get a clear picture of your team’s performance with OpenPhone’s analytics. See how many calls and messages are being handled by each rep every month.

Want to know more about the benefits of shared numbers? Check out this article. 

How to make a call in your inbox

First things first — here are two options for calling a number from your OpenPhone inbox:

• If you’re in the desktop app:

1. 1. Click the Call icon in the Calls or Chats menus.
   2. Use the shortcut C and dial a number.

• If you’re in the mobile app, tap the Keypad at the bottom of your screen.
•  

How to send a message in your inbox

Note: You’ll need to complete your 10DLC registration or toll-free number registration to send messages from your OpenPhone workspace.

Sending texts is as easy as making calls in OpenPhone:

• If you’re in the desktop app:
  1. Click the Chat icon in the Calls or Chats menus.
  2. Use the shortcut N to start a new conversation.
• If you’re in the mobile app, tap the Pencil icon in the lower right corner of your screen.

Navigating through your Chats and Calls

You’ll be spending a lot of time in your Chats and Calls menus. As your business grows, it can get easy to get lost in the conversational clutter. Here are some shortcuts to navigate through your chats and calls:

Chats

Your Chats menu shows all the interactions with each of your contacts, including texts, calls, recordings, and more.

To keep your inbox organized, you can organize each of these ongoing conversations as Open or Done. 

• Open conversations are for conversations that are ongoing — a support issue, a customer questions, an appointment booking, or anything else.
• Mark a conversation as Done when you’ve completed the purpose of each individual conversation.

You can also filter through your conversations to tackle the ones that need your attention the most — Unread, Unresponded, or by Company or any custom Tag you use.  

For example, you can filter your inbox to only show conversations with your VIP customers.

For more on how you can filter your conversations in OpenPhone, check out this article.

Calls

Your Calls menu shows all your call data in your OpenPhone workspace. Think of it as a filtered view so that you can focus on your calls instead of the entire conversation thread. 

At a glance, you can see which calls have:

• Gone unresponded
• Left voicemails
• Come inbound or gone outbound

You can also filter by team members to see how busy your team is.

Select a completed call to see the call recording, AI call summary and transcription (if enabled).

Want to learn more about how you can optimize your OpenPhone inboxes? Check out this video:

Up next: Contacts

We’ve shared the basics of navigating your OpenPhone inbox. Next, we’ll tackle how contacts work and all the information you can add to your contacts in your OpenPhone workspace. 

Check out the next article in this series here.