Lesson 1: Your first Chatwoot conversation

Welcome to Chatwoot! This is the first stop in a hands-on series that takes you from a brand-new account to a fully running support desk. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a working website inbox and you'll have replied to your very first customer message.

What you'll learn

What Chatwoot is and how it fits into your support stack
What channels and inboxes are, and how they relate
How a customer message becomes a conversation on your dashboard
How to set up a website live chat inbox in under five minutes
How to send your first reply and resolve the conversation

You'll need: A Chatwoot account (free trial works) and any website where you can paste a snippet of code. Don't have a site handy? You can test on a local HTML file.

What is Chatwoot?

Chatwoot is a single dashboard for every customer conversation your business has — email, website live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS, Telegram, and more. Instead of switching between five different apps and losing track of who said what, your team works out of one place, with shared context, history, and tools.

Think of it as your team's shared inbox for customers — but with the automation, reporting, and AI helpers a real support team needs.

Channels and inboxes (the one concept to understand first)

A channel is a type of communication — Email, Website, WhatsApp, SMS, etc.

An inbox is a specific instance of a channel that's connected to your account. For example:

"support[@]acme.com" is an email inbox
The chat widget on acme.com is a website inbox
Your +1-555-… WhatsApp number is a WhatsApp inbox

You can have as many inboxes as you need, even multiple of the same type (one website inbox for marketing, another for billing).

Every message that comes in lives inside an inbox, and every inbox can have its own agents, business hours, greeting, and routing rules.

Tip: Don't overthink your inbox layout on day one. Start with one, get comfortable, then split it up as your team grows.

How a message becomes a conversation

Here's the lifecycle of a single customer message — keep this in mind as you go through the rest of the product:

Customer sends a message on one of your channels (e.g. types into your website widget).
Chatwoot creates a conversation in the matching inbox. The conversation starts in the Open status or in Pending status if Captain is connected.
An agent is assigned — automatically (via assignment policy) or manually.
Agent replies from the dashboard. The reply goes back to the customer over the same channel they wrote in on.
The conversation is resolved when the issue is handled. It's not deleted — the full history stays searchable, attached to the contact.

Conversations have four common statuses: Open, Pending, Snoozed, and Resolved. You'll meet all of them as you go.

Set up your first inbox: Website live chat

We'll use the website channel because it's the fastest way to see Chatwoot working end-to-end.

Step 1 — Open the inbox setup

From the dashboard, go to Settings → Inboxes → Add Inbox.

Step 2 — Pick "Website"

You'll see a grid of channel types. Click the Website icon.

Step 3 — Fill in the basics

Website Name — what your customers will see at the top of the chat widget (e.g. Acme Support).
Website Domain — the URL where the widget will live (e.g. https://acme.com).
Widget Color — pick something on-brand.
Welcome Heading & Tagline — the first thing visitors read when they open the widget.

Step 4 — Add agents

Choose which teammates can reply to messages from this inbox. You can add or remove people later.

Step 5 — Install the snippet

Chatwoot will hand you a small JavaScript snippet. Paste it into your site's <head> (or just before </body>). Reload your page and you should see the chat bubble in the corner.

No website yet? You don't need one to test. Go to Settings → Inboxes, click the gear icon next to your new inbox to open its settings, then open the Configuration tab and click Open in Codepen on the script. A live widget will open in your browser where you can send messages straight away.

Step 6 — Send a test message

Click the chat bubble on your site, type "Hello from my first visitor!" and hit send.

Step 7 — Reply from the dashboard

Switch back to your Chatwoot dashboard. The new conversation will appear at the top of your conversation list with an unread badge. Click it, type your reply in the chat box at the bottom, and hit send. The customer will see it instantly in the widget.

🎉 You've just handled your first Chatwoot conversation.

A quick tour of the conversation view

Once you're inside a conversation, here's what each part does — at a glance:

Area	What it's for
Reply box	Send public replies to the customer
Private Notes	Discuss the conversation with teammates — the customer never sees these
Right sidebar	Customer details, conversation actions, custom attributes, and previous conversations
Conversation actions	Assign an agent, change status, snooze, add labels
Conversation list (left)	Filter by status, assignee, inbox, label, or saved folder

You don't need to use any of these on day one. Replying from the chat box is enough to support real customers.

Resolving the conversation

When you're done helping the customer:

Click Resolve at the top of the conversation.
The conversation moves out of your Open queue and into Resolved.
If you've enabled CSAT, the customer is automatically asked to rate the experience.

If the customer replies after resolving, the conversation automatically reopens — nothing falls through the cracks.

Try these next (optional, 1 minute each)

While you're here, poke at one or two of these so they're not strangers later:

Set your status to Online — top right avatar → Online / Busy / Offline.
Send a private note — type @teammate looks like a billing issue in the Private Notes tab.
Add a label — try bug-report or feature-request from the top bar.
Snooze the conversation — useful for "waiting on customer" cases.

Common first-day questions

Will the customer see my name?

Yes — your display name and avatar from Profile Settings appear on outgoing replies. Take a minute to set both before you reply to a real customer.

What if I reply to the wrong person?

You can delete a message you sent (on live chat widget, it is not supported in other channels). After that, send a follow-up correction — the original stays in dashboard with a deleted message for accuracy, the customer doesn't see it again.

Can two agents work on the same conversation?

Yes. One agent is the Assignee (owns the reply); others can be added as Conversation Participants to follow along and chime in.

Is anything I type in the chat box sent immediately?

No. Replies only send when you click Send (or hit ⌘/Ctrl+Enter). And if you navigate away mid-message, Chatwoot keeps a Draft Reply so you don't lose your work.

What's next

In Lesson 2, we'll go beyond the reply box: private notes, canned responses, labels, and how to keep your queue tidy as conversations pile up.

Until then, your homework is simple: send yourself three test messages from the widget and reply to each one. Muscle memory beats theory.

Welcome aboard. 👋