There are two inboxes in StudioOps:
- Enquiries — new customers reaching out for the first time. Someone fills in your booking form or asks a question through your website.
- Messages — ongoing conversations. Once a customer has replied to one of your emails, the thread lives in Messages, not Enquiries.
The distinction matters because new-enquiry alerts go to Telegram (so you don't miss a first contact), while customer replies surface as a bell-icon notification on the dashboard (so existing conversations don't spam your phone).
1. How customer replies get to you
When you send a customer an email from StudioOps — booking confirmation, quote, invoice, booking-link send, any of them — the email comes from your branded sender with a Reply-To address like cmreply+abc123@studioops.uk. That abc123 is the customer's unique reply token.
When the customer hits Reply in their email app and writes back, their email goes to that Reply-To address. StudioOps receives it, matches the token to the customer, and lands the reply in your Messages tab.
You don't need to set anything up — this works out of the box for every email StudioOps sends.
2. The bell icon
When a new customer reply lands, the bell icon at the top of your dashboard turns red and shows the count:
🔔 3
Click the bell to jump straight to Messages, or click into a specific message from the dropdown.
The bell stays red until you've opened each unread message. Marking a thread as read clears it from the count.
3. Replying
In the Messages tab, click any conversation. You'll see:
- The full thread (original email out + every reply since).
- The customer's profile (name, contact details, any labels) in a sidebar.
- A Reply box at the bottom.
Type your reply, click Send. It goes to the customer's email address from the same branded sender as before, with the same Reply-To address so their next reply also lands in the same thread.
If the customer originally received an invoice / quote / booking confirmation, the link to that record stays in the conversation context — handy when they're asking about something specific ("about my invoice, can I split it over two payments?") so you can jump straight to the record from the message.
4. Enquiries vs Messages — when each fires
| Customer action | Where it lands | What alerts you |
|---|---|---|
| Fills in your booking-page enquiry form | Enquiries (new thread) | Telegram + email to you |
| Replies to a booking confirmation | Messages (existing thread) | Bell icon on dashboard |
| Replies to a quote send | Messages (existing thread) | Bell icon |
| Replies to an invoice send | Messages (existing thread) | Bell icon |
| Replies to a booking-link send | Messages (existing thread) | Bell icon |
| Comments inside their customer-space page | Messages (existing thread) | Bell icon |
The general rule: anything where they're starting a conversation lands in Enquiries; anything where they're continuing one lands in Messages.
5. Filtering and searching
The Messages list shows the newest thread first. You can:
- Filter by status — Unread / All — to focus on what hasn't been touched.
- Search by customer name or email to find an older thread.
- Mark a thread as read or unread manually to manage your queue.
For a customer-specific view (everything they've ever messaged about), open their customer record from the Customers tab — all their threads are listed under "Conversation history".
6. WhatsApp + SMS replies
If you've connected Twilio for WhatsApp / SMS send (see the Connecting WhatsApp + SMS article), customer replies to WhatsApp or SMS messages do not land in StudioOps Messages — they go to your studio's WhatsApp / SMS phone directly. WhatsApp inbound routing into StudioOps is on the post-launch roadmap.
For now, treat WhatsApp / SMS as send-only and email as the two-way channel.
7. Telegram notifications stay focused on enquiries
A common question: "Why doesn't my Telegram bot ping me when a customer replies?"
By design. Telegram alerts are reserved for new enquiries — the moments where speed matters most because a slow first response is a lost lead. Customer replies to ongoing conversations don't get a Telegram alert because:
- You can answer them at the next break in your day, not within minutes.
- The Telegram channel would otherwise get noisy enough that you'd stop reading it carefully.
- The dashboard bell icon is a perfectly visible signal when you next check StudioOps.
If you want Telegram alerts for every reply too, that's a feature request — let us know via the help centre.
See also
- Connecting Telegram alerts — the bot you pair for new-enquiry notifications.
- Connecting WhatsApp + SMS to StudioOps — the send-only channels for booking-link sends and reminders.
Questions or stuck? Help centre at studioops.uk/help, or email help@studioops.uk.