Messages

Every customer text and email conversation in one place, laid out like the chat apps you already use.

Messages is the one home for talking to customers. Every text and email conversation lives here, whether you started it with an outreach follow-up, the AI receptionist answered a cold call or text, or the customer wrote in first. It works like WhatsApp: conversations on the left, the open conversation on the right, and a composer that never moves.

The list

One row per conversation: the customer's initials, their name, their vehicle, the last message in two lines, and when it happened. Email conversations carry a small Email word after the name. Unread conversations show a dot at the left; the open one never does.
The vehicle under the name is the one in your shop right now; otherwise it is the car from their latest visit. A customer with several cars shows "+1 more" after it, and the details column lists them all.
Search finds names, phone numbers, emails, vehicles, and words inside messages.
Filters: All, Unread, Texts, Email, Archived.
Cold callers with no customer record show up under their phone number, so no conversation can hide.
Use the arrow keys to move between conversations.

Archiving a conversation

Done with a conversation? Hover a row and click the archive glyph (or open the row's three-dot menu), or use Archive conversation in the open conversation's menu. Archived conversations leave the list and stop counting toward Unread and the bell. They sit under the Archived filter, where Unarchive brings one back by hand. You never lose a customer in there: the moment they text or email again, the conversation comes back to the list on its own with the new message unread.

The conversation

Their messages sit on the left in a light gray bubble; yours sit on the right in blue. Hover a bubble (tap it on a phone) to see its time and delivery mark; the newest message you sent carries its state under it with how long ago it went out (Delivered · 1m, Sent · 2h; on email, Seen or Not seen yet). Messages from the AI receptionist, automations like appointment reminders, and your teammates are labeled with who sent them.
A centered day line separates the days (Today, Yesterday, then the date); there are no lines inside a day. Photos and short videos show inline.
Delivery marks on your texts: a clock while sending, one check when the carrier accepted it, two when it reports delivered, and "Not delivered" with Retry if it failed. Texts have no read receipts, so a text never claims "Read". Emails show "Read" when the customer opened them.
Scroll up and a small pill appears to jump back to the newest message, with the number that arrived while you were reading.

Replying

Type and press Enter. Shift+Enter starts a new line. The field itself says plainly which channel Send uses before you type, so a customer you both text and email never gets the wrong one:

"Text to (555) 123-4567" on a text conversation. The paperclip inside the field attaches a photo, video or PDF; carriers take JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and MP4, and an SVG or GIF you attach is converted to a PNG before it goes out. A video or a PDF rides the text as one link to a page with your shop's name on it (carriers do not carry clips or documents reliably); photos go as true picture messages. On an email the paperclip attaches photos and PDFs to the message itself (up to 25 MB together; anything past that, and every video, goes as a link under your words). Attachments upload straight to storage from the web and the app, so a full-size phone photo (up to 100 MB), a PDF (up to 200 MB) or a clip (up to 4 GB, sent as a link) goes through; anything over a limit or of another type is refused with the reason, never dropped quietly. Attachments preview at their real shape above the field before you send. The round Send stays quiet until there is something to send.
"Email to ana@example.com" on an email conversation, with the thread choice on the line above the field.

Email: reply in a thread, or start a new one

Above the field sits a small menu that reads Reply in: Brake estimate (the customer's newest thread). Open it to pick any of their recent threads by subject, or the last option, New email thread, which adds a Subject field. The choice is visible every time, before you type:

A reply goes out as "Re: <that subject>" with the headers that keep it inside the customer's existing thread in Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail. You never retype a subject on a reply.
A new thread goes out with your subject and no threading headers, so it opens as its own conversation in their inbox.

In the conversation itself, each thread's subject line appears whenever the subject changes, so you can always tell which email a message belongs to. "Reply in this thread" on a subject line is a shortcut for the same choice.

The moment you send a text yourself, the thread is yours: the AI receptionist steps back and stops texting that customer.

Starting a new conversation

Click the pencil at the top of the list, pick the customer, and choose Text or Email. A new email asks for a subject and starts a fresh thread in the customer's inbox. Inside an existing email conversation, pick New email thread in the composer's thread menu (the three-dot menu offers the same). Starting a message to an archived conversation unarchives it.

Customer details beside the chat

Click the small i in the conversation header (or Customer details in the menu) and a column opens on the right with the customer's contact details, tags, notes, and every vehicle on file: plate and mileage, whether it is in the shop or scheduled, visits and total charged, open work, and the last few visits with what was done and what it cost. Nothing to open in a new tab while you answer a text. The column stays open as you move between conversations until you close it; Open full profile goes to their client page when you need to edit something.

The three-dot menu in the conversation header opens the customer details column, opens the customer's page, opens the vehicle, schedules a visit, switches to the same customer's text or email conversation, starts a new email thread, and archives (or unarchives) the conversation. The phone glyph calls them.

Hard to read?

Turn on High contrast from your name bottom-left of the sidebar, under Display (Menu tab on mobile). Message bubbles get a visible edge and timestamps, dividers, and status colors darken across the whole app.

How it fits with Outreach and the Receptionist

Outreach decides who is worth contacting and drafts the message; the AI receptionist answers when you can't. Both write into these threads. The Receptionist console reviews what the AI handled and jumps here when a caller needs a human; the Outreach Follow Up tab sends the first message and points here when the customer replies. Leads from a connected inbox arrive here too, with the AI's draft reply ready to edit and send from your own mailbox. When a customer replies to an estimate, invoice, receipt, booking confirmation or review ask, the reply lands in their email conversation here, not in your mailbox (until CarSignal's inbound address is switched on for your account, replies fall back to the reply-to or email in your shop profile).