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A conversation is the core unit of work in PingBack. It represents a thread of messages between your team and a customer, tied to a specific channel (such as your web widget, WhatsApp, or email). Every inbound message from a customer either opens a new conversation or continues an existing one.

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How conversations are created

Conversations start in one of two ways:
  • Customer-initiated — A customer sends a message through a connected channel (your web widget, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.). PingBack automatically creates the conversation and routes it to your inbox.
  • Agent-initiated — An agent creates a conversation manually from the dashboard, selecting a customer and channel. You can include an optional opening message when creating it this way.

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Conversation statuses

Every conversation has a status field that reflects where it sits in your support workflow.
You can reopen a resolved or closed conversation at any time by updating its status back to open.

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Conversation fields

When you view a conversation in your inbox, you can see the following fields:

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Message sender types

Each message in a conversation has a sender_type that identifies who sent it:

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Filtering conversations

You can filter your inbox to focus on what matters. PingBack supports filtering by:
  • Status — View only open, pending, or closed conversations.
  • Assignee — View conversations assigned to a specific agent.
Use these filters together to manage workload across your team. For example, view all open conversations assigned to a particular agent, or find all pending conversations that have no assignee.

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Resolving and closing conversations

PingBack separates resolving from closing:
  • Resolve — Marks the conversation as resolved and records a resolved_at timestamp. Use this when you’ve addressed the customer’s issue.
  • Close — Sets the conversation to closed and records a closed_at timestamp. Closed conversations are moved out of the active inbox.
Build a habit of resolving conversations as soon as a customer’s issue is handled. This keeps your inbox clean and gives you accurate resolution-time metrics.
To resolve a conversation via the API:
To close a conversation via the API:

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AI handoff

If you have AI auto-reply enabled, PingBack’s AI can handle conversations automatically. When the AI determines that a human agent needs to step in — for example, if the customer’s question is too complex — it sets the needs_human_handoff flag on the conversation. Conversations with needs_human_handoff set to true appear in the Pending Handoffs list in your dashboard. You or an admin can then assign the conversation to a live agent.
Conversations flagged for handoff are still being handled by the AI until an agent takes over. Assign them promptly to avoid leaving customers waiting.