Pipeline and owner: see every question through

Why	Keep a guest question visible until it lands somewhere: you can see who owns it, which stage it is at, and whether the response window has run out — then take it to a booking or a clean close.
Who	Front desk staff and administrators who answer guest emails and questions.
What you’ll get	The working cycle of a conversation: assign an owner, move it through the six pipeline stages, stay inside the response window, and archive what is done.
Limitations	Stages and the owner are changed by hand; there is no auto-archiving — only the “Archive” button. The response window is 8 hours by default; attachments are files up to 25 MB.

A guest question — an email to the hotel’s mailbox or a message from the Guest Portal — lands in “Messages” and stays there until it reaches a result. Every conversation has a thread, an owner, and a pipeline stage, and the response window is 8 hours by default. If the hotel’s mailbox is not connected yet, guest emails will not reach the Inbox — start with Connect the hotel mailbox.

The thread: what a conversation shows

Pick a conversation in the list on the left — the thread opens in the middle of the screen.

• Messages — the guest’s emails and questions, with your replies below them: each carries a “YOU” tag and a “Sent” mark. Attachments show up right in the thread: pictures open on click, files download.
• The team journal — service entries in italics, grouped by date: “Thread created”, “Stage: ”, “Owner assigned: ”, “Owner removed”. The journal tells the story of the question — who changed what — without reading every message.
• The header — the conversation’s subject, the “Contact” and “Archive” buttons, the stage badge, and the owner badge.

Questions from the Guest Portal arrive in the same Inbox and are handled the same way — what makes such a conversation different is covered in Questions from the Guest Portal.

Result: the thread answers three questions — what the guest wrote, who owns the question, and what has happened to it.

The owner: who is on it

1. Open the thread and click the owner badge under the header — for example, “Not assigned”.
2. In the “Choose owner” menu, find the staff member through the search and pick them.

Assigning and removing an owner are written to the thread’s journal: “Owner assigned: …”, “Owner removed”.

Above the conversation list sits the “Mine” segment: only the conversations assigned to you. Next to it, “Unassigned” — questions nobody is watching. Check that segment at the start of a shift so nothing stalls.

Result: every question has a name on it — the assigned staff member will find it in their “Mine” segment.

Six pipeline stages

The stage is a badge-button in the thread header. Clicking it opens the change menu: the current stage carries a checkmark, and the rest are grouped by meaning.

• Active — “New”, “In progress”, “Offer sent”, “Awaiting payment”: the question is still open.
• Completed — “Booking confirmed”: the question ended in a confirmed booking.
• Lost — “Lost”: the guest declined or never replied.

A typical path: you take the question on — “In progress”; you send options and a price — “Offer sent”; the guest is ready to pay — “Awaiting payment”. You change the stage yourself, through the same menu.

The same three groups sit in the segmented filter above the list, so the active group shows what is still open at the hotel.

Result: a stage is a short status for the whole team, and the group filter shows what is still open.

The response window: the 8-hour SLA

• By default, a guest gets an answer within 8 hours of asking.
• Missed windows show up in the conversation list: an overdue row grows a red indicator — a clock icon and the elapsed time (“3d”, “8d” — hours plus days).
• The “Overdue SLA only” toggle keeps nothing but overdue conversations in the list — a quick way to start the day with the most neglected question.
• There is no separate countdown inside the thread itself — read the clock from the list.

Result: eight hours is the default yardstick; what is overdue turns red and can be gathered with a single toggle.

Replying to the guest

1. Open the thread — below the messages sits an editor with the “Reply” and “Note” tabs.
2. On the “Reply” tab, check the address in the “From:” line and write your answer.
3. Format the text if needed: bold, italic, underline, links, lists.
4. Files go in with “Attach”: photos and PDFs, up to 25 MB per file.
5. The “Template” button drops in a draft letter — tweak it for the question at hand.
6. Click “Send”.

The “Note” tab is for the team: the guest will not see a note — it is kept in the thread’s journal.

Result: the reply goes out from the address in the “From:” line, files travel with the answer, and internal remarks live in “Note”.

From question to booking

To the right of the thread sits the contact card: the type (“Guest”), a “Linked to guest” block with a link to the profile and an “Unlink” button, and below it “Recent bookings” — dates, room type, status, and total. Look there before answering: if the guest is writing about an existing booking, the context is already in front of you.

Then follow the pipeline:

1. Answer the question — options, price, terms — and move the stage to “Offer sent”.
2. Once the booking is confirmed, come back to the thread and set the stage to “Booking confirmed” — the question has ended in a result.
3. If the guest needs a separate document confirming the stay, the voucher is sent from the booking card: The booking voucher: preview, print, language.

Result: the context lives in the contact card on the right, and the result is recorded as the “Booking confirmed” stage.

Archive: clearing finished questions

A conversation never leaves the list on its own — there is no auto-archiving. When you are done — the result is in, or the question is closed as “Lost” — click “Archive” in the thread header. The action is manual, so the judgment that a question is handled always stays with a person.

See also

• Guest messages: one Inbox — what lands in “Messages” and how the conversation list works.
• Inside the booking card — where to find the booking the guest is writing about.
• The booking voucher: preview, print, language — send the guest a confirmation of their stay.