In this article6
This guide covers how permissions are divided, what each role sees, and how a response target and its breach alerts work — and why neither helps without the other.
Roles: who sees what
| Role | What they see | What they can change |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Everything in the workspace | Settings, numbers, the team and billing |
| Manager | All conversations and reports | Campaigns, templates and assignment |
| Agent | What is assigned to them, on the channels they are cleared for | Their own conversations, not anybody’s settings |
Assignment: a conversation with a name gets finished
A conversation assigned to a named member leaves the "everybody’s responsibility" zone. Assignment is not a lock on the rest: colleagues can still see it and help with an internal note the customer never sees.
And when it needs to move — leave, or a different speciality — the conversation transfers with its whole history, so whoever picks it up does not start from nothing and the customer is not asked the same thing twice.
The response target, and how it avoids becoming noise
- 1.Set one realistic targetA target your team cannot meet produces alerts that get ignored, which is worse than no target.
- 2.Route the alert to whoever owns the conversationAn alert that reaches everybody reaches nobody; one that reaches the owner gets read.
- 3.Separate first response from resolutionA target on the first reply serves the customer; resolution may legitimately take longer.
- 4.Review breaches weekly rather than dailyThe pattern says more than the incident: a peak hour, a channel with no owner, or somebody carrying more than they can.
What assignment alone does not solve
Three situations that need a human decision rather than a setting:
- A repeating peak at a known hour — that needs distribution, not an alert.
- A channel with no clear owner — the alert reaches somebody who cannot change anything.
- Repetitive questions consuming the team — those belong to a bot, not to a queue.
When the bot takes it first
Much of what consumes your team’s response time is repetitive questions a bot can take, handing over what it does not know. How that handover is built — and when — is in the bot-to-human handover guide.
Frequently asked questions
Does an agent see conversations not assigned to them?
That is governed by their role and the channels they are cleared for. The right default for most teams is seeing their channel rather than everything.
What happens to a conversation if its owner is on leave?
It transfers to somebody else with its full history. The target stays on the conversation rather than on the person, so a transfer does not reset it.
Does the customer see internal notes?
No. An internal note is for the team alone, and it is what makes a transfer possible without the customer being asked the same thing again.
Do alerts arrive on WhatsApp?
They arrive through whichever notification channels you have enabled, and they are routed to whoever owns the conversation rather than broadcast.
What target should I set?
Start with what your team meets today rather than what you wish for, then tighten it gradually. An unrealistic target produces alerts that get ignored.
Can conversations be distributed automatically?
Distribution follows the channel, the branch and whatever you define, and manual assignment stays available for the cases that deserve a named person.
