Configure Returning Customer Detection

Detection is configured per channel because each channel has its own ergonomics — phone needs DTMF prompts, chat can ask in plain language, and the right time-window is rarely the same across all of them.

Before you start

• A user role with admin access
• A clear sense of how long a typical conversation in your team takes to resolve — that’s roughly the threshold you want

Steps

1. Open Settings → Returning Customers.
2. You’ll see a tab for each channel that supports detection: Phone, Chat, SMS, Email. Click the channel you want to configure.
3. Set the per-channel options:

• Enabled — Master switch for this channel. — Off
• Trigger on unanswered conversations — Treat the customer as returning if their previous conversation never got a response. — On
• Trigger on resolved-within-threshold — Treat the customer as returning if their previous conversation was resolved within the threshold below. — On
• Trigger on snoozed conversations — Treat the customer as returning if they have a currently snoozed conversation. — On
• Threshold (minutes) — How far back to look for previous conversations. 1440 = 24 hours, 10080 = 7 days. — 1440
• Intent expiry (seconds) — How long the clarification prompt waits for an answer before timing out. — 3600
• Timeout action — What to do if the customer doesn’t answer the prompt: Do nothing, Add to existing, or Create new. — Do nothing
• Prompt message — The clarification message the customer sees on this channel. Channel-appropriate defaults are pre-filled. — (channel-specific default)
• Auto-merge — Skip the prompt and append automatically when there’s a clear match. Useful for very high-confidence channels. — Off

4. Phone has two extra options:

   
   Skip IVR — when a returning caller is detected, route them past the IVR menu directly into queue.
   Priority queue — boost returning callers’ priority in the queue.

5. Customize the prompt message if your default voice would say it differently. The defaults are sensible starting points but the customer reads this — make it sound like you.

6. Click Save.

Verify it worked

For each channel you enabled:

• Make a test contact from a customer record that has a recent conversation
• Confirm the prompt appears in the channel-appropriate format
• Pick “same issue” — confirm the contact appends to the existing conversation
• Repeat with “new issue” — confirm a new conversation is created

If the customer doesn’t see a prompt at all, check the threshold (the previous conversation might be older than the window) and the trigger toggles (the previous conversation’s state — unanswered / resolved / snoozed — has to match an enabled trigger).

Choosing the right defaults

A few patterns most teams converge on:

• Phone: threshold 1440 (24h), enable trigger-unanswered, priority queue on, skip IVR on. Returning callers usually mean “I called before about this” and getting them past the IVR is high-value.
• Email: threshold 10080 (7 days). Email cases stay open longer and “the same issue, days later” is the most common returning case.
• Chat: threshold 60–240 minutes, intent expiry short. Chat is real-time; if a customer reconnects within the same hour, they’re almost certainly continuing.
• SMS: threshold 1440 (24h). Mirrors phone but the prompt has to fit in an SMS, so keep the message short.

Disabling for a channel

Turn the Enabled toggle off and save. New contacts on that channel always create new conversations until you turn it back on. Configuration values are preserved, so re-enabling restores everything.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: No prompt appears for any returning customer. Fix: Check that the channel is enabled in Settings → Returning Customers and that at least one trigger is on (unanswered / resolved-within-threshold / snoozed). Without an enabled trigger, no previous conversation matches.

• Symptom: The threshold is set but customers from longer ago still get prompted. Fix: Threshold is the upper bound on how recent a conversation must be to match. If your threshold is 1440 (24h), a conversation from 3 days ago shouldn’t match. If it does, capture the customer ID and a sample conversation and escalate.

• Symptom: Auto-merge is appending unrelated contacts to old conversations. Fix: Turn auto-merge off. Auto-merge skips the customer’s own clarification — only safe when your thresholds are tight and false positives are rare.

See also

• What is Returning Customer Detection?
• FAQ — customer keeps creating new conversations