Help · Conversations

Conversations

When somebody texts your store's number, it lands in Conversations, its own item in the app's menu. While conversations wait for your reply, the menu says how many — Conversations (3). The list of conversations is on the left and the open conversation is beside it, so you can move from one to the next without losing your place. On mobile, the list is one screen and a conversation is the next; the arrow at the top takes you back.

If your store has no text number yet, nobody can text you, and the screen says so. Setting one up is on the Settings tab, under Text messages.

Needs reply, All and Unknown numbers

The list has three tabs:

• Needs reply — conversations where their newest text is waiting for an answer, the one who has waited longest at the top. The number on the tab is how many are waiting. A STOP, a START, a HELP, their phone carrier's own notice or a reaction never puts a conversation here; a question does, and so does a ❓ reaction.
• All — every conversation, newest first. The No reply needed button under the tabs shows only the ones marked that way.
• Unknown numbers — texts from numbers none of your profiles has (see below). Once a profile has the number, its texts move to that person. Where the list is narrow, the tab reads Unknown.

On a keyboard, ← and → move between the three tabs.

The search box finds a conversation by name, email or phone number. Press Escape or the × in the box to clear it.

Each row shows who it is, when they last texted, the start of their last text, and one tag saying where it stands: Needs reply and how long they have waited, Maya is writing a reply, Answered by Maya (or Answered by you), No reply needed, or Texted STOP. A name in bold is waiting for your reply — bold means exactly what Needs reply means, wherever you see it.

The list keeps itself up to date while it is open — new texts, the Needs reply count and who is writing appear on their own, and a conversation you have open shows a teammate's reply as soon as they send it.

If a check for new texts fails, nothing on screen goes away — the list, the conversation and anything you have typed stay put, and the next check tries again. After a few failed checks in a row a quiet line says so — above the list, and above the open conversation too, so on mobile, where only the conversation shows, it still tells you.

When no conversation is open, the right side says how many need a reply and offers Answer the oldest. Nothing opens by itself, because opening a conversation marks its texts read for everyone.

A conversation starts only when somebody texts your store's number. A link to one that is not there — somebody who has never texted you, or texts that are no longer kept — says There is no conversation here. with Back to conversations.

Whoever replies first has it

There is nothing to assign. Whoever on your team replies first has the conversation: the list then reads Answered by Maya, and the conversation says "Maya answered at 2:14 PM" above the box — or "You answered at 2:14 PM" when it was you. The reply that answered is labeled the same way, Maya's reply or Your reply; an earlier reply reads just Reply.

While somebody on your team is typing a reply, everybody else sees "Maya is writing a reply to Priya right now." over the box, and their own button reads Send anyway, with "If you send too, Priya gets two answers." Nobody is locked out. The line goes away about a minute after Maya stops typing.

No reply needed

Some texts need no answer — a thank-you, an "ok". The small check beside their name at the top of the conversation is No reply needed: press it and the conversation leaves Needs reply. The check turns green. Pressed again, it reads Needs a reply and puts the conversation back. If they text again with something that wants an answer, it is back under Needs reply on its own.

Under their name the conversation says who marked it and when — "No reply needed — Maya, 2:14 PM." If a new text came in after you opened the conversation, nothing is marked: the screen shows you the new text and says so, so nobody passes over a question without reading it. Owners, managers and marketers can mark a conversation No reply needed; our support staff never can.

About

A conversation's top line is their name, number and location; under it, their consent for texts and email, their orders and any unused discount code. About is the rest: their email, their profile, what they have spent, their latest order, the discount codes they hold, the images they have sent you (the newest twelve, each opening the image viewer), and what they did most recently.

Their latest order shows its number, the day it was placed, its total and where it stands — not fulfilled yet, partially fulfilled, fulfilled, canceled or refunded — and the items in it. An older order imported with your order history may show no number; the date and total are still there. Under it is each shipment: the carrier, the tracking number with a button that copies it, and Track package, which opens the carrier's tracking page in this same tab, leaving Shopify's admin. A shipment with no tracking number yet says so. Open in Shopify opens the order in your Shopify admin in a new tab, so the conversation stays open in this one. Somebody with no orders has one line saying so.

Beside View profile, which opens their profile here, View in Shopify opens the same person in your Shopify admin — their orders and everything else Shopify keeps — also in a new tab. It is there when the profile is linked to a customer in your Shopify store and your store is connected.

When the screen has room — a laptop, inside Shopify too, even with Shopify's menu open — About is a column of its own on the right, always open beside the conversation. On a smaller screen the About button with their name, at the top right of the conversation, opens it over the conversation, and its × closes it; on mobile that button is the person icon. A number none of your profiles has has no About.

A long list of items in their latest order shows two lines; point at it to read the whole list.

The email when somebody texts

When somebody texts your store's number with something that wants an answer, your team gets an email saying who texted and what they said, with a button to open the conversation. It comes at most once per conversation every 15 minutes, never for STOP, START, HELP or a reaction (a ❓ is a question, and it does), and never with an image in it.

Replying to that email does not text them; answer here. Each person decides for themselves in Settings → Notifications.

The number in the menu

At app.carpemessaging.com, the number beside Conversations in the menu is how many conversations need a reply, across the store — the same number the Needs reply tab shows. It goes down as your team answers them or marks them No reply needed.

Inside Shopify, the number is part of the menu item's name — Conversations (3) — and the item reads plain Conversations when nothing is waiting. While Conversations is open in a browser tab of its own, the tab's title shows it too, as "(3) Conversations".

Replying

Type in the box under the conversation and press Send reply. A reply goes to the number on their profile, and your store's name goes in front of your words.

Beside the button, a pill says when your reply would go: for somebody without consent to your marketing texts, how long you can still reply — "7 h to reply"; when it is their quiet hours, the time it would go — "Goes at 8:00 AM". Somebody with consent gets no countdown, because the day does not limit a reply to them. The ⓘ beside the pill shows the rules in four lines — point at it, tap it, or reach it with Tab.

The name is there so they know who it is from — the screen shows you the exact name before you send.

The small count beside the button — "14 characters" before you type a word — counts the characters in your reply, your store's name at the start included; point at it and it says so. On mobile it sits just above the button. A long reply goes as more than one message part, and then it says how many — "164 characters · 2 parts". An emoji counts for more than a letter. A link counts every character of it, because it goes exactly as it is in the box.

The 👍 button beside Attach images adds an emoji where your cursor is, with your store's favorites first; type a word in its search box to find any other. One emoji makes every part of the text shorter — 70 characters instead of 160 — so a reply that fit in one part can become two, and the number beside Send reply shows it.

When a conversation opens, the box is ready for you to type in. On mobile, tap it first, so the keyboard does not cover the conversation.

When you can reply depends on their consent to your texts:

• Somebody subscribed to your texts can be answered at any time — the day after they wrote, or next week. More than a day after their last text, a reply goes out under their consent, so it follows the same rules as your marketing texts: it waits for their quiet hours to end, and it counts toward their state's daily limit on texts where their state has one, and toward the 10 texts a day no phone goes over. Their consent has to be on record for the number on their profile.
• Anybody else can be answered only while the conversation is open: within a day of their last text to you, from the number on their profile. They wrote to you, so you may answer. After a day, the box is replaced by a sentence saying so, and the next text they send opens it again.

A reply goes only to a number in the US or Canada, and a reply to Canada ends with your contact line, like every text to Canada. Nobody who texted STOP, or whose texts are blocked, gets a reply at any hour.

If a reply does not go, the screen tells you why, in words. When the reply was refused, it stays in the conversation marked Not sent so you can see what you wrote.

A reply within a day of their last text goes right away, even at night. If somebody texts you at 11pm and you answer at midnight, your reply goes at once — they just wrote to you, so they are expecting an answer. The day counts from their most recent text to your store's number, from the number on their profile. Everything else still applies: if they texted STOP, no reply goes, at any hour.

A later reply written during their quiet hours is not lost. If more than a day has passed since their last text and it is too early or too late where they are, the reply is scheduled and goes out on its own when their quiet hours end, after any reply you scheduled before it — the screen says when, and the reply shows in the conversation with a Cancel button until then. Everything is checked again at that minute: if they texted STOP in the meantime, it does not go. If a scheduled reply cannot go at all — the team member who wrote it no longer has access to your store, for example, or an image in it was deleted from Content → Images & media — it stays in the conversation marked Not sent, with the reason.

A scheduled reply goes within a day of when you wrote it, or not at all. If it is still waiting a day later, or would go only after that, it stays in the conversation marked Not sent, so a reply never arrives days after the conversation it belonged to.

A reply to somebody neither their location nor their area code places is scheduled the same way, for the hours that are a decent time in every US state at once — the Quiet hours for texts page says which hours those are.

For anything else that makes a reply wait — their number has already had as many texts as it may for now, for example — your words stay in the box and the screen says why.

Owners, managers and marketers can reply. A reply sends a text, and a viewer can read every conversation but cannot send one. Our support staff can open a conversation to help you and can never reply to one.

Pausing a profile does not stop a reply — a pause holds your marketing, not your answers.

Saved replies

Saved replies are the answers your team types most, ready to put in a reply with one press. The built-in Tracking reply and the ones your team uses most — three in all — sit in one small row just above the reply box, as many of them as fit whole, and All saved replies opens the full list with a search box.

From the keyboard, type / — at the start of your reply or after a space. A small list of saved replies opens above the box, the built-in Tracking reply and then the ones your team uses most first. Type a letter or two to narrow it: replies whose name starts with those letters come first, then names with a word that starts with them, then replies that only mention them. So /tr and Enter puts in a reply named "Tracking…" ahead of one that just mentions tracking. Enter (or Tab) puts the first one in your reply in place of the / and the letters; ↑ and ↓ choose another first. Each reply shows a one-line preview, with its details (first name, order number) marked the way they are in the box. While the list is open, Enter never sends. Esc closes it and leaves what you typed. A / in the middle of a word, like "and/or", is just a slash.

Pressing one puts it in the box already filled in for this person — their first name, their last order number, the link to their order's status page, the tracking number and tracking link of their latest order's newest shipment, a discount code they have not used, or your store's link. So you read the real words, tracking number and all, before they go. The words stay yours to change before you press Send reply; nothing is sent until you do.

If this person has no value for one of those details — no orders yet, or an order that has not shipped — the box tells you which ("Nina has no orders yet — fill in or remove the order number", "No tracking number yet for #1042 — fill one in or remove it"; with no orders at all, every order detail is named in one sentence), the detail stays marked in the reply, and Send reply waits until you fill it in or take it out. A reply never goes with a blank or a placeholder in it.

Adding and changing saved replies

You add and change saved replies right where you use them. In the All saved replies window, New saved reply and each reply's Edit turn the window into a short form — a name, the reply, and its details — and Save takes you back to the list. You never leave the conversation, and anything you had typed in the reply box is still there when you close the window.

The Saved replies tab at the top of Conversations lists them all in one table — each one's name, its words and how often your team has used it — with a search box, New saved reply, and Edit on each row.

While you write one, the buttons under the reply put in a detail — a first name, the last order number, the order status link, the tracking number, the tracking link, an unused discount code or your store's link. Each detail shows in the reply as a chip, and is filled in for each person when the reply is used; the words can still be changed before it is sent. A first name has a word for somebody with no first name on file — "there" unless you change it in If there is no first name, say…. The small count beside the buttons says how many characters the reply makes, counting each detail at the length of a typical one — a tracking link is long.

Every store has a built-in Tracking reply for "where is my order?", marked Built in and listed first: "Hi" with their first name, "your order" with their last order number, "is on its way. Track it here:" and the tracking link. Used in a conversation, it fills in their order number and the carrier's tracking link; for an order that has not shipped yet, the box says so and waits. It cannot be deleted. Edit opens it as a new saved reply of your own; saved as Tracking, yours takes its place in every list, and if you delete yours, the built-in one comes back.

Delete asks once before it deletes. Replies already sent do not change.

Owners, managers and marketers can add, change and delete saved replies; everybody on your team can use them.

Suggest a reply

Suggest a reply asks Talaria, our assistant, to draft an answer from the conversation and their orders — only when you press it, and Talaria never sends anything. You read the draft and press Send reply yourself.

The draft goes in the box, marked "Talaria wrote this from the conversation and their orders. Read it before you send." Change what you like, or press Clear, or Suggest another. If you had already typed something, the draft replaces it and Put my words back returns your words in place of Clear. Nothing is drafted in the background or on its own.

A draft can use the same details a saved reply does — their first name, their latest order's number, status link, tracking number and tracking link, an unused discount code, your store's link — and they are filled in for this person the same way, so a detail they have no value for is named and Send reply waits.

Talaria reads the words of the conversation and their order details. It never sees the images anybody sent, their email address or their phone number, and it does not promise refunds, dates or prices it was not given. Your store can ask for a limited number of suggestions an hour; when that is reached, the screen says when you can ask again.

Texts from a number no profile has

A text from a number none of your profiles has does not go in your main list. It goes to a separate, quiet list, From unknown numbers — the Unknown numbers tab in Conversations.

• You can read those texts there, under the number itself. There is no one to reply to — replying needs a profile — so there is no reply box, and no No reply needed check.
• Nobody on your team is emailed about them, and they are not counted as unread or as needing a reply.
• Each number gets one automatic reply, once, ever: it says you do not have their number on file yet and how to sign up for your texts and reach you. It shows in the number's conversation as Automatic reply to a new number. You change its words, or disable it, on Settings → Text messages, under Reply to new numbers — the Text messages help page has the details. STOP, START and HELP never get it — HELP gets the answer below instead, once.
• Each one is deleted automatically 30 days after it arrives, with any image that came with it. A STOP or START is the exception: it is kept, because it is the record of what that number asked.

Once a profile with that number exists — they signed up, ordered, or you imported them — new texts from it land in that person's conversation, and the texts it sent before move there too, within a minute or two, with the automatic reply it got. They leave the Unknown numbers tab and are kept as long as the profile is. They do not put the conversation in Needs reply: they were sent before the number was anybody's. Somebody who was once a profile — a past customer who opted out, for example — still has one, so their texts stay in your main list.

Images they send you

An image somebody texts you is kept for as long as their profile is, and shown in the conversation — so are short videos and voice notes. Several images in one text show as up to four tiles, with "+2" on the last when there are more.

An image is never public: the link your screen uses to show it lasts ten minutes and is made fresh each time you open the conversation, and every time somebody on your team views one, we record who and when.

Press an image to see it large. The viewer fills your screen with the image at its full size — exactly as they sent it, not a small copy — so you can judge detail and color. Click the image, or scroll over it, to zoom in past its own size; drag to look around; press Fit to screen to see all of it again. The arrows, or ← and → on your keyboard, move through every image in the conversation, theirs and yours; Escape closes it.

Download saves a copy of an image they sent to your device. A downloaded copy leaves the app: it is no longer covered by the deletion that happens with their profile, so keep it only as long as you need it.

Many phones send images in a format Safari shows and other browsers do not. In Chrome, Edge or Firefox such an image shows as "An image — download to see it"; download it to open it on your device, or open the conversation in Safari.

The images a person has sent are also on their profile, under Images they sent.

An attachment too large to keep, or of a kind we do not keep, is not shown; the conversation says one arrived.

Reactions

When somebody reacts to one of your texts on their phone — a heart, a thumbs-up, a laugh — Conversations shows a small reaction under that text, with the emoji and their first name. A reaction doesn't end their text consent — only a real STOP does — and it never puts a conversation in Needs reply, except a ❓, which is them asking.

Many phones send a reaction as a text of its own, such as “Loved ‘Your order shipped’” or “Reacted 👍 to …”; that is the text Conversations reads. Point at a reaction to see who reacted and when. In the list, a conversation whose newest text is a reaction reads like “👍 Reacted to ‘Your order shipped’”.

A heart, a thumbs-up or any other reaction never makes a name bold and never sends your team an email. A ❓ does both, like any question, and the email shows it as “❓ Reacted to …”.

If they take a reaction back, it disappears from under the text. Until they text again, the list says what they took back — “Removed ❤️ from …”.

When the text they reacted to is not in the conversation — an older one, for example — the reaction shows as one short line where it arrived.

A reaction is only ever the words their phone sends. If they add anything of their own — “Liked ‘Your order shipped’ STOP”, say — it is an ordinary text, and a STOP in it stops texts. Conversations recognizes the reactions iPhones and Android phones send in English, and the commonest Spanish ones. A reaction in another language, or one their phone words differently, is read as an ordinary text — so if the text it quotes says STOP, it stops texts.

Sending images

Attach images puts up to three of your own images in a reply — from your images in Content → Images & media, or a new one you upload there and then. An image somebody texted you is never offered: you can only send your own.

Your images show small inside the box, each with an × to take it out, and under the box the price of that text: "A text with 2 images costs $0.0892." A text with images costs $0.0446 for each image — the Plans and billing page has the details. A reply with images can go with no words at all; your store's name still goes in front.

An image too large to send by text says so when you pick it: "This image is too large to text. Pick a smaller one." Pick a smaller one, or upload a smaller copy. Phone companies accept at most 600 KB in one text, so your images together must fit in that: smaller copies are sent when that makes them fit, and when even those don't, the reply says "Together these images are too large for one text. Remove one, or pick smaller ones." and is not sent. The images you send show in the conversation too, and open in the same viewer.

STOP, and the reply that follows it

Somebody who texts STOP gets no more texts from you — not a campaign, not an automation, and not a reply — until they text START. UNSUBSCRIBE, REVOKE and OPT OUT always count the same as STOP. CANCEL, END and QUIT count when that is what they are asking. The conversation marks the text that did it.

CANCEL, END and QUIT count on their own, like “Cancel” or “END please”, or about the texts, like “cancel my texts”. UNSUBSCRIBE, REVOKE and OPT OUT count wherever they are in the text.

Plain words stop texts too. “Remove me”, “take me off your list”, “no more texts”, “don't text me”, “stop texting me” and “leave me alone” work exactly like STOP, at once, and START brings them back.

“Cancel my order” does not stop texts straight away. A CANCEL, END or QUIT about something else (even a question like “When does the sale end?”) lands in Needs reply with a note under it: “This might be asking to stop texts. Check with them.” Until someone on your team chooses, your marketing texts to that number wait, and your emails still go. If nobody chooses within 24 hours of their text, that number stops getting texts — texts only, never email.

Three buttons are under the note:

• Keep texting lets your marketing texts go to them again. It can be chosen only within 24 hours of their text; after that, their texts have already stopped, and they can text START to come back.
• Stop their texts stops your texts to them. Their profile shows your team recorded it, and your store's customer record is updated. If you choose within five minutes of their text, they get the one text saying so.
• Stop texts and emails does the same, and stops your emails to the person who texted. If others share that phone number, their emails keep going.

The note then says who chose and when. If they text STOP or START first, the note says so and there is nothing to choose. If they aren't subscribed to your texts, nothing is waiting, so only the two stop buttons show. Replies you write in the conversation are never held back, and anyone who can reply can choose.

It is the phone number that said STOP, so it holds for whichever profile carries that number — including one that got the number afterwards. What decides is the number's most recent word, in the order the person sent them: a START sent after the STOP opens replies again, and a START sent before it does not, however late it reaches us.

When two of your profiles share one number, a START brings back all of them — except anyone your store chose never to let back, and anyone whose texts were stopped for good, who stay stopped. If one of them was unsubscribed after that START — by you, or by any other route — no reply goes to the number at all.

When somebody texts exactly STOP, their phone carrier answers them straight away, automatically, from your number. That reply is not from you, and it is not from us. Nobody can change its wording. They see:

NETWORK MSG: You replied with the word "stop" which blocks all texts sent from this number. Text back "unstop" or "start" to receive messages again.

The conversation shows that text, word for word, under their STOP, so you recognize it if somebody forwards it to you and asks who sent it. It names no store because the carrier writes it, not you.

When a stop word arrives inside a longer message, or in a spelling the carrier does not recognize, the carrier does not answer — so your number sends them one short confirmation instead, and it shows in the conversation as an automatic reply to their STOP.

When somebody texts HELP, your number answers them at once with your store's name, how often you text, that message and data rates may apply, how to reach you — your store's contact email from Shopify, or your website if there is none — and how to stop.

A reaction is never a stop word, even a heart on your own “Reply STOP to opt out” — see Reactions above.

Unread

A text counts as read the moment somebody on your team opens the conversation and the text is on the screen. The list does not mark unread texts: a name in bold, and the number beside Conversations in the menu, mean a conversation needs a reply, whether or not its texts have been opened.