The central section of the Inbox is also the main one: this is where you'll find messages from your customers. Several elements are present here to allow you not only to have maximum immediate context and decide the best way to handle them, but also to be able to act on these messages quickly.

💡 Listed messages must be routed to a team you belong to, and received on a channel for which you have “Reply” permission. These two criteria (team and permission) can be modified by an administrator of your Alcmeon environment in the Settings / Users section.

Several areas appear or may appear in the message list:

• Displaying a message in the list
• Notification of a new message
• Reminder of your messages being processed
• Multiple selection and mass actions

Displaying a message in the list

Customer identification

• His photo, if available, on the channel where he posted his message
• His name or pseudonym on the channel
• The number of messages exchanged in the current conversation
• His VIP status
• Custom Fields configured to appear here

Message content

• The full text of the message, with all links, emojis, etc.
• Any attachments, such as images, videos, or files. You can click on these attachments to open them directly in Alcmeon. See also: Allowed attachments and media, by channel

Qualification Tags

• The language of the customer's message, automatically detected by Alcmeon, and manually editable if necessary via the drop-down menu.
• A drop-down menu per tag that you have defined for your Alcmeon environment in the Settings / Tags section.

Each tag is a list from which the advisor can choose a value, and which is generally used to list the reasons for contact used to qualify the messages and then create statistics.

Tags from the previous message in the conversation are automatically carried over to the next message , allowing you to generally tag only once per conversation, but also allowing you to modify certain tags during the conversation if necessary, without erasing the tags from previous messages to keep track of them.

Actions on the message

A - Process the message

allows you to access the Conversation Page which lists all exchanges with this customer on this channel, and allows you to write the response and then send it to the customer.

B - Archive the message

allows you to finalize the message processing without sending a response. This is the equivalent of “deciding not to respond” to the client.

C - Route to the team…

allows you to forward this message without leaving Alcmeon to another team working in Alcmeon. This button therefore displays a drop-down menu of teams to which this message can be routed.

D - Assign this message to…

Allows you to assign the message to another advisor. This action is subject to specific permission, and it will not be displayed to advisors without this permission. In general, we suggest using the team routing feature instead to avoid being dependent on the presence or workload of a particular advisor.

E - Moderate

Allows you to perform channel-specific moderation actions on that message or customer. For example, deleting the message from Facebook comments, hiding it on Instagram, etc. The actions are therefore channel-specific, and their results are instantly visible on the channel for your customers.

The button (which is the channel symbol) is grayed out when no moderation action is possible on the channel. This action is subject to a specific permission, and it is not displayed to advisors who do not have this permission.

View all moderation actions, by channel

F- CRM Synchronization

Depending on your CRM connector settings like Salesforce or Zendesk, a button allows you to access actions specific to these CRM connectors, in particular the attachment of this customer record in Alcmeon to a contact or customer in your CRM.

See our technical documentation for Salesforce Service Cloud .

Message status

Received

When a message is sent by a client and appears in Alcmeon, it initially has the status "Received" and is waiting to be processed . This status does not appear visually in the list; it is the default status.

Once its processing starts, it leaves the "Received" status and can have several statuses:

Assigned to me

This message is assigned to you, you are the only one who can process it to reply or archive it.

To assign a message to yourself, click on the blue arrow icon, you will then be redirected to the Conversation Page

When you log out of Alcmeon or are automatically logged out, this message will be unassigned to you and will return to a “Received” status to be handled by another advisor.

Assigned to [name]

This message is assigned to another advisor.

You cannot assign it to yourself, as Alcmeon prevents two users from handling the same conversation to avoid possible double replies to the same customer. The action buttons are all disabled, and the “arrow” button is replaced by an “eye” button that still allows you to access the Conversation Page in spectator mode.

Message routed to another team

This message has been routed to a team you don't belong to. You'll still see it in your inbox, but if you refresh the page, it will disappear.

As with the “Assigned to [name]” status, you cannot assign it to yourself.

Put on hold by me

You have snoozed this message so you can reply to it later.

Placed on hold by [name]

This message has been put on hold by another advisor.

As with the “Assigned to [name]” status, you cannot assign it to yourself.

Request for help made by me / by [name]

A request for help has been made on this message.

Similarly to the “Assigned to [name]” status, you cannot assign it to yourself because it is awaiting a response from a supervisor with “respond to help requests” permission.

Supervisors with the “Respond to Help Requests” permission received an alert, and are the only ones who still have access to the action buttons for this message, so they can assign it to themselves and respond to the help request.

Answered by me / by [name]

This message has been replied to and has now been processed: you can move on to another customer!

Archived by me / by [name]

This message has been archived (i.e. it has been decided not to respond to it), its processing is now complete: you can take care of another customer!

Deleted message: you can archive it

This message has been deleted by the customer himself and can no longer be replied to.

The message content appears crossed out.

Learn more about statuses and the Lifecycle of a customer message

Message information

To the right of each message in the inbox, you will find the following information:

• The channel icon and photo of the account on which you received this message.
• The name of the account on which you received this message.
• The name of the channel, preceded by “Public” or “Private” depending on the nature of the channel.
• The team the message is currently routed to.
• The age of the message.

🦊 Tip: Hovering over the timestamp displays the exact date and time. Additionally, in the case of a public post like a comment, you can click on this information to open the customer's post in a new tab on the original channel (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).

New message notification

When one or more new customer messages arrive, you will be notified by the appearance at the top of the page of a yellow button “N new messages”.

Clicking this button refreshes the contents of the message list to show this or these new messages.

Additionally, if your inbox is empty and a new client message arrives, your Alcmeon browser tab will flash a red icon. This allows you to be notified even if you are working in another browser tab.

Reminder of your messages being processed

This area may appear above the message list . It appears if you have messages in progress, to remind you that these are probably the most urgent to deal with first.

It distinguishes 3 cases:

• the reminder of messages assigned to you,
• the one of messages you have put on hold, and
• the number of messages for which you received a response to your request for help.

In all these cases, clicking on the link allows you to access the “In progress” / “by me” tab: you will be able to view these messages and decide whether to process them.

Multiple selection and mass actions

It is possible to select multiple messages from the inbox to perform an action on all of them at once.

💡Mass actions require specific permission, which can be changed by an administrator in the Settings / Users section. If you don't have this permission, mass actions will not be visible to you in your inbox.

💡 These mass actions only appear in the “Received” and “In Progress” tabs of the inbox.

Select multiple posts manually, or select all posts visible on your page by checking the box in the top right corner.

This brings up a mass actions menu bar, where you can choose to cancel your selection, or complete your selection with all the inbox messages you are viewing, even those you have not yet displayed in your page if there are any, and then choose one of the following mass actions.

Mass Reply

This action allows you to send the same reply to all selected messages.

This action is only available if all messages in the list you are viewing were sent to the same channel. For example, if the list includes Messenger messages as well as Facebook comments, the mass reply action will not appear.

Bulk Archive

This action allows you to change the status of all selected messages to “Archived” .

This action appears for any message type, for all channels.

Export

This action will generate an Excel export of all selected messages, which you can download.
This action appears for any message type, for all channels.

You will have the choice between 2 export options:

Export these messages : The Excel file will contain the selected messages as well as additional data about these messages such as their author, date, etc. As soon as the Excel file has been generated, a download will begin in your browser.

Export these messages + their conversations : The Excel file will contain not only the selected messages but also all other messages that are part of the same conversations as the selected messages. As above, all these messages are accompanied by additional data. Because the generation time for this file is longer than the previous option, you will receive an email at the address provided in your Alcmeon Account containing the Excel file as an attachment.