Auto-close stale conversations

Auto-close keeps your inbox honest. Conversations idle for too long get closed automatically, with a system note in the thread and a CSAT survey sent to the customer. If the customer replies later, the conversation reopens.

This is mostly an inbox-hygiene feature, but it also affects how your team feels. An inbox with 800 stale "waiting on customer" threads feels different from an inbox with 80 active threads.

What auto-close does

A daily cron looks for open conversations that have been idle longer than the configured window. For each match:

1. The conversation status flips to closed (idempotent — already-closed is a no-op).
2. A "Conversation closed by Ochre AI" system note is inserted, visible in both the agent thread and the live-chat widget.
3. The CSAT survey is sent to the customer via the standard resolution-survey path. See CSAT.

If the customer replies later, the conversation flips back to open automatically and the SLA clock starts fresh on the new message.

Configuring the window

The control lives at Settings → Routing as a number of days of idle time. Default is 7 days.

• Aggressive (3 days). High-volume teams where pending conversations rarely come back to life.
• Conservative (14 days). Teams whose customers expect long async cycles.

There is no per-status or per-tag exemption today. If a conversation is open and idle longer than the window, it closes.

What auto-close does not do

• It is not a replacement for Pending or Snoozed — those statuses already carry their own meaning. Auto-close acts on open conversations only.
• It does not delete anything. All history is preserved. Search and reports still see closed conversations.
• It does not skip VIP customers automatically. To keep specific conversations alive, mark them pending or hand them to a human.

Reopening on reply

When a closed conversation gets a customer reply, it reopens. The conversation goes back to open with the existing assignment, tags, and history preserved. The customer never has to repeat themselves.

Common gotchas

• The cron runs once a day. Don't expect a conversation to close at the moment it crosses the idle threshold. It will close on the next sweep.
• Closing inserts a system note. The note text says the AI closed the conversation. A configurable closing message is roadmap, not v1.
• Closing fires CSAT. If you don't want a CSAT survey on auto-closed conversations, disable CSAT at the workspace level.

Related

• Conversation status for the status model.
• Snoozing conversations as an alternative to closing.
• Routing overview for the bigger picture.
• CSAT for the survey that fires on close.