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Chat Desk is the operator workspace for reviewing conversations and handling supported replies. The website widget is the customer’s interface; the desk is your team’s view of the conversation, its ownership, and its operational context.
WORK INResponseCX · Chat Desk
BRING

Workspace access and a real test conversation

FINISH WITH

A reviewed thread and verified customer-visible result

New operator? Follow Your First Shift in Chat Desk for a website handoff, managed-email exercise, uncertain-send recovery, and a team handoff template.

Understand the workspace

The desktop layout places these tools alongside the conversation. On smaller screens, switch between the available panels. The desk receives conversation updates through its event stream with refresh support; use Refresh if the view appears stale.

Find the conversation that needs you

Use Active, Mine, Unassigned, Needs me, SLA risk, Waiting AI, Waiting customer, Takeover, Escalated, Reviewed, Resolved, or Snoozed to narrow the queue. Chat and Email select the supported channel views. A queue label helps triage; it is not proof that an external action completed. Read the thread and its available execution or delivery evidence. Check the selected organization before concluding that a conversation is missing, and load older messages when the transcript is paginated.

Handle your first conversation

1

Open and identify the thread

Select the intended conversation. Compare its customer message, channel, agent, and available identifiers with your test. A Response response ID and a widget thread UUID identify different records; preserve the identifiers shown for your conversation.
2

Coordinate ownership

Choose Claim to assign the conversation to yourself. If another operator owns it, coordinate before using Take over from …. Customer replies are locked while another operator is assigned. Release changes assignment; it is not the same as resuming AI.
3

Decide whether AI should continue

Use Pause AI / take over when a person should handle the exchange. Inspect the AI paused state and takeover signals. Assignment, escalation, and AI control are related but distinct; verify the actual state before assuming automation has stopped.
4

Reply or leave a note

Check the composer audience before sending. Send reply is customer-facing on a supported conversation. Add note is for your team on native chat threads. Managed email does not currently support desk internal notes. A disabled composer on a response-only record means that record does not provide a supported send path.
5

Verify, then organize the work

Inspect the delivery result and check the customer side where appropriate. Use Mark reviewed after reviewing the conversation, or Snooze to defer work until a chosen time. Neither a review marker nor a snooze is evidence that a reply was delivered.

Reply saved versus reply delivered

The composer supports attachments, subject to the send endpoint’s limits: up to five files, with a combined size of at most 5 MB. Channel support and delivery still need verification. If a send result is uncertain, inspect the existing transcript or provider result before starting another send. The app preserves send-attempt identity for protected retries; a successful HTTP response alone does not establish delivery.

Review held actions separately

An approval is a decision about a held action, not an ordinary chat reply. Inspect the reason, proposed action, and context before approving or denying it. After approval, inspect execution: the desk can report Approved, but the action did not run. Do not count approval as a completed refund, order change, or other business operation without its outcome evidence.

Troubleshooting

Next steps

Connect the website widget

Install the hosted widget and verify an AI-to-human exchange end to end.

Understand channel coverage

Compare chat, managed email, helpdesk integrations, and other channel runtimes.
Implementation checked against response-one-prod on 2026-09-20: pages/chat-desk.js, hooks/useChatDesk.js, the chat-desk components, and pages/api/chat-desk/.
Last modified on September 20, 2026