Sometimes your customers can and will reach you through multiple messaging channels. Freshchat supports incoming conversations from social media, email, telephony, and more. To provide contextual and quick support, you need to know who these customers are — and understand what contextual information you already have access to.


Your customers will have a better experience when they reach out for help if you have all context and history of their interactions. Freshchat makes reaching and using that context easier during the conversation by showing the necessary contact info within the Team Inbox on Freshchat.



This information includes but is not limited to their username, email address, phone numbers, the website from which they initiated the conversation, transaction statuses, and other details from your helpdesk, CRM, or any other third-party app. 


Using the contact info tab in the sidebar



  • Click conversation history to quickly look at all the conversations associated with this Contact and switch between them whenever necessary. 

  • Click on the contact name to get a much more detailed view of the Contact — this includes their contact details, activities across multiple touchpoints, recent conversations, files shared, information from their integrations, and so on

Editing contact info from the Team Inbox

Agents can also edit the contact information without navigating away from the Inbox. 

  • Click on the Edit button next to the Contact's name to access updating the fields present for the Contact.





Note: In addition to the default contact fields, you can create custom fields to add relevant information in your contact profile. Click here to know more.


Customizing the contact info section

Admins and account admins can decide which information to display to their agents in the Team Inbox. They can also reorder this information in the contact card on the sidebar without navigating away from the Inbox.

  • Navigate to the Team Inbox > Open any customer conversation > Manage. You can add, rearrange, or remove customer fields from this section.

  • You can select up to 15 fields to display in your Team Inbox for your agents to equip them with extensive context to provide quick and personalized support.



  • If a contact field is empty, it will not appear in the contact info pane, even if marked as visible. It will be visible only after an agent edits the contact info and fills up the specific contact field (either from Team Inbox or Contact Fields).


Unique identifiers (unique IDs)

It is important to set up a unique ID for each Contact. Freshchat will use these unique identifiers to easily identify that Contact across the Unified Customer Record (UCR) from all the different customer touchpoints.


  • Navigate to Admin Settings > Contacts to see the complete list of contact fields which can be filled up with information for each Contact. 
  • You can make any text contact field as the unique identifiers. You can define up to 4 unique identifiers in your contact form.



  • By default, Freshchat has email and phone numbers as unique identifiers. You can feel free to edit this and add or create new unique identifiers that are relevant to your business.
  • Once you set a field as the unique ID, the change will apply across the UCR, your integrations, and the mobile app. You'll get an email when this is done.
  • You need to have at least one unique identifier visible in your contact info section. If you have not set up any unique ID other than the default options, you must configure the email address or the phone number under Contact info.


How to associate a contact with a conversation

There are multiple ways in which your agents can understand if the conversation is from an existing contact or a new one.

  • If your customer is logged in to your website or app, you can use the widget script or the SDK to share information about the customer to Freshchat. Learn how to set this up. Freshchat will then be able to map the customer to an existing contact or create a new Contact. 
  • You can configure your bots to collect information about the customers before transferring the chat to a Freshchat agent.
  • Agents can also associate a customer with an existing contact or create a new contact for the customer without leaving the Team Inbox.


You can create a contact using unique identifiers such as email addresses, phone numbers, or any custom identifier your business uses. Agents and admins can associate contacts, identify duplicates, and merge them from the comfort of the Team inbox.


Adding a new contact from the Team Inbox

  • Navigate to the Team Inbox > Open the customer conversation > Add Contact from the sidebar.


  • Freshchat will check the customer details to confirm whether they are existing or new contacts.
  • Once confirmed that there are no existing contact records against the same email address, phone number, or any custom identifier your business uses, add them as a new contact by clicking the Add Contact button.


  • You can add details like their First and Last Name to give them a personalized support experience.


Associating a customer with an existing contact

Your customers will be reaching out to you from all their favorite channels. It is important to associate their Contact across multiple conversations and channels with the same Contact.

  • Navigate to the Team Inbox > Open the customer conversation > Add Contact from the sidebar.
  • If the email address, phone number, or any custom identifier your business uses is already present for the Contact; you can associate the conversation with the existing Contact by clicking Associate contact instead.



Note: Since this action cannot be reversed, you should review the details before associating the contact.


Merging multiple contacts

  • Navigate to the Team Inbox > Open the customer conversation > Add Contact from the sidebar.
  • You'll be shown all the associated contacts if the email address, phone number, or custom identifier is associated with multiple records.
  • Choose one Contact as your primary Contact and click Merge contacts to combine them. In the case of overlapping details, information from your primary Contact will be retained.
  • The primary Contact is the base of the merged contacts by retaining the basic details such as name, phone number, address, and other details. Merging moves all the conversations and contact information from the secondary Contact(s) into the primary Contact. The secondary Contact(s) will be deleted after merging and cannot be restored.



All these actions can be performed while you converse with your customers without navigating away from your Inbox.


Capturing the user details in Freshchat

The user details can be captured and shown in the Freshchat Team Inbox in the following ways:

  • Pre-chat forms: You can embed a Pre-chat form in the Freshchat widget so that every time the customer reaches out, they will have to fill in the details and the entered details will be captured under Contact details in Conversations Inbox.
  • Bots: You can configure a Bot flow to collect the details from the customer and subsequently store the information in Freshchat.
  • Logged-in user: You can pass details of your logged-in users via the Freshchat widget script embedded on your website.