Reply times and customers

Turn it on

Reply times are off until you turn them on for a mailbox. Only new mail starts a countdown, so turning them on never flags old conversations as late.

1. Open the mailbox's Settings and find Reply times.
2. Choose how fast you reply, for example within 1 business day, and whether the clock runs around the clock or during business hours only.
3. Save. That reply time is now the mailbox default.

Business hours are Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 in your organization's time zone unless you change the days. With business hours, a customer who writes on Friday at 16:00 with a 1 business day reply time must hear back by Monday at 16:00.

What your team sees

• A countdown on each conversation waiting for your reply, such as Reply in 52m, or Reply by Mon 11:30 when more than a day is left.
• The countdown turns amber when a quarter of the time is left, and the assignee gets a notification. With nobody assigned, everyone with access to the mailbox gets it.
• After the deadline it reads Late by 1h 05m in red, and a second notification goes out.
• The Reply due view lists every waiting conversation, late ones first.

The countdown starts when a customer writes and stops when someone on your team replies, or when the conversation is marked done, muted, or moved to Junk or Trash. Automatic replies and assistant sends do not stop it.

Customers

Some customers deserve a faster answer. Add them under Contacts, Customers, or from the customer panel next to a conversation. A customer has a name, a company, an optional reply time, notes, and custom fields you define under Settings, Customer fields, such as plan or renewal date. Your team sees all of it next to the customer's conversations. For a sender who is not a customer yet, the panel shows their card from the mailbox's address book when there is one, and Add as customer starts from it.

A customer matches mail from one email address, or from anyone at their domain. Free email domains such as gmail.com, throwaway domains and your own domains can only be matched by exact address. A customer without a reply time gets the mailbox default.

Sync customers from your CRM

Keep customers in step with a CRM or billing system through the API. One call creates the customer the first time and updates them after that, so you can send it on every change. An address or domain that already belongs to another customer is refused, never moved.

curl -X PUT https://shipmail.to/api/v1/customers/external/hubspot/contact%2F42 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sm_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Jane Doe",
    "company": "Acme",
    "service_level_id": "svl_...",
    "fields": { "plan": "enterprise" },
    "identifiers": [{ "kind": "domain", "value": "acme.com" }],
    "url": "https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/42"
  }'

The key needs the customers:write scope and must not be limited to some mailboxes or domains, since customers belong to the whole organization. The Customers API reference lists every endpoint, and the webhooks conversation.reply_target_at_risk and conversation.reply_target_missed let your own tools react to a reply that is running late.