How do I get all my customer messages in one inbox in TactStack?
Short answer
Connect your business texts, email, website chat, and social messages to the shared inbox, then assign every conversation an owner. One thread per customer shows calls, texts, and emails in order, so anyone can pick up where the last person left off without asking around.
Before you start
- A text-enabled business number.
- Access to the email address customers reply to.
- Admin access to your social pages, if you use them.
- The people who should be answering messages.
Step by step
- 1
Connect one channel at a time
Start with texting, then email, then chat, then social. Verify replies work before adding the next one.
Adding everything at once makes a broken channel impossible to spot.
- 2
Give every conversation an owner
Auto-assign by channel, job type, or round robin so no thread sits in a no-man's-land.
Unowned conversations are the number one source of slow replies.
- 3
Agree on response-time targets
Set a target per channel, like five minutes for chat and one hour for email, and alert when a thread ages past it.
A target with an alert behind it is the only kind that holds.
- 4
Use internal notes instead of side channels
Notes on the thread keep context with the customer instead of buried in a group text.
The next person needs the context more than you needed to vent.
- 5
Close threads deliberately
Mark conversations resolved so the open list means something and unread is real.
An inbox nobody trusts gets ignored within a month.
- 6
Check the mobile app works for the field
Techs should be able to read and reply from a phone with the same history the office sees.
Field visibility is what stops duplicate customer calls.
What good looks like
- Every customer message lives in one place with full history.
- Nothing sits unanswered because no one knew it was theirs.
- New team members get context without interrupting anyone.
- Response times become measurable instead of anecdotal.
Common mistakes
The ways this goes wrong in communication, and what to do instead.
Leaving one channel outside the system›
The channel that stays on someone's personal app is the one that loses a customer.
Do this instead: Connect every channel you publish, and stop publishing the ones you will not monitor.
No assignment rules›
Shared responsibility with no owner turns into no responsibility.
Do this instead: Auto-assign on arrival and alert the owner when a thread goes stale.
Using the inbox as a to-do list›
Threads left open as reminders bury the ones that need a reply now.
Do this instead: Create a task for follow-up work and close the conversation.
Frequently asked
5 questions about run every channel in one inboxRelated guides
Pick the next thing to set up, or back up a step if something here assumed work you have not done yet.
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The natural follow-on tasks once this one is working.
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More in Communication
Nearby tasks that share the same setup and vocabulary.
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