--- title: "The customer inbox · BlastoClean docs" description: "Every email and text with a customer in one shared thread: where replies land, how to answer by email, text or internal note, and what the office can see." url: "https://www.blastoclean.com/docs/customer-conversations" --- # The customer inbox Running the company · Web and mobile · 4 min read · updated August 22, 2026 **Customer emails and texts arrive in one shared inbox, a reply to anything BlastoClean sent comes back into the same thread instead of one person’s mailbox, and you answer by email, by text or with an internal note from the same box.** BlastoClean has always sent the messages it writes itself — quotes, reminders, receipts, portal links. The messages your company actually needs to send went out of somebody's own phone and their own Gmail: "we're running an hour late", "the side gate was locked", "thank you, see you next month". The office never saw them, and the customer's history in BlastoClean had holes in it exactly where the conversation was. The inbox closes that. It is part of the **Starter, Pro and Business plans**. ## Where it is **Messages** in the web app, and **Messages** in the mobile app. Conversations are listed newest first, with three filters: - **All** — every conversation. - **Unread** — what nobody has opened yet. - **Unknown senders** — threads not attached to a customer, which in practice means a text from a number nobody recognizes. Choosing a conversation puts it in the address, so a link to one thread keeps working and a reload lands you back in it. ## What a conversation holds One thread per customer, holding both directions and both channels: what BlastoClean sent automatically, what your team typed, and what the customer replied — newest at the top, so what was said last is the first thing you read. The same thread appears on the customer's own page, so you can answer from wherever you were already looking, and the box to write in sits above the history rather than below it. ## Answering The composer offers three destinations, and the difference between them is a question about who reads it: - **Email** — the default, because it costs nothing and needs only an address. - **Text** — on the **Pro and Business plans**. Every reason a text might be refused (no consent on that number, quiet hours, a landline) is shown before you send rather than after. See [Text messages and consent](/docs/text-messages-and-consent). - **Internal note** — kept on the thread, never sent to anybody outside your company. Open a thread and the box is already set the way the conversation was going: the channel the customer last used, and their subject line carried over so an emailed answer files under the message it answers. ## Where replies come back to Every customer-facing email BlastoClean sends for you now carries a reply address that belongs to the conversation rather than to whoever pressed send. When your customer answers a quote, a reminder or a receipt, the answer lands in the thread where the rest of the office can see it — including when they answer from a different address than the one you wrote to. The colleague who wrote last is still emailed the reply as well, so nothing that used to reach a person's own mailbox stops reaching it. If your company sends through its own mailbox, see [Your own mailbox and calendar](/docs/your-own-mailbox-and-calendar). ## Threads that are not a customer yet A text from an unknown number is a real person waiting on a real answer, and it has no customer record to hang off. Those threads sit in the inbox like any other, can be answered there, and are attached to a customer once you work out who wrote. ## Claiming a thread Assign a conversation to yourself or to a colleague so two people do not each answer half of it. Assignment is a claim, not a restriction — anyone whose role and locations cover the customer can still read and reply. ## Attachments A customer can reply with photographs — the leak under the sink, the gate that was padlocked. Up to **ten files of up to 8 MB each** arrive in the thread with their message and download from the same page. ## A suggested reply Ask for a draft and one is written from the thread and from that customer's actual upcoming visits, so it can give the real date rather than a vague promise. It lands in the box for you to edit or delete; nothing is sent, and every consent and quiet-hours rule still applies to the send you make afterwards. A draft spends an AI credit, and is offered in the web app — see [AI assists](/docs/ai-assists). ## It is filed like everything else A message somebody types is an ordinary record in the same place as every reminder and receipt. It shows on the customer's timeline, in the email and text delivery log, and in [your export](/docs/exporting-your-data). There is no second place anybody has to remember to look. Conversations are not part of the global [search](/docs/search) yet — that answers over customers, properties, quotes and visits. Reach a thread from the inbox or from the customer. New replies also raise a [notification](/docs/notifications) for the people whose role covers the customer.