A contact is a person you are allowed to message. Everything outbound — a reply, a campaign, an API send — resolves to one. Contacts are created three ways: by hand here, in bulk from a file, or automatically the first time an unknown number messages you.
When you'd use it #
Before a campaign
Clean the list — block the spammers, honour the opt-outs — so a broadcast does not burn your quality rating.
Account ownership
Give named customers a named owner so replies always come from the person who knows them.
Working leads
Filter by stage and by the Leads chip, which covers Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn and website-form leads together.
Protecting a relationship
Switch the AI agent off for one contact, so an important customer only ever hears from a person.
Adding a contact #
-
Press New contact
The form opens inline above the table. -
Enter the phone number in international format
Country code included. Numbers are normalised on save, so+91 99758 88110and919975888110become the same contact rather than two. -
Add a name and email
Both optional, both worth filling in — the name is what your team sees in the inbox, and both can personalise campaign variables.
For more than a handful, use bulk import instead.
Blocking, opting out and the bot switch #
Three different controls that are easy to confuse:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Block | You do not want to hear from them. Their inbound messages stop reaching your inbox. Reversible. |
| Opt-out | They do not want to hear from you. They are excluded from campaigns. This is the one with legal weight — record it the moment someone asks to stop. |
| Bot off | A standing instruction that the AI agent must never answer this person, across every conversation, now and in future. The conversation header's AI menu offers the same switch, so there is one setting and not two. |
Stage and owner #
Each row has a Stage picker and an Owner. Blocked, opted-out and bot-off contacts are marked on a separate line under the stage, because those are a different thing from where someone stands. See Stages for the list.
The owner can be set in the Owner field of the edit form, in bulk across a selection with Set owner, or automatically — Auto-assign distributes contacts without an owner across your active team members, which is useful after a large import. Whatever you choose, the contact's existing conversations follow the new owner unless someone else was handed that chat.