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Contacts

Every visitor who writes in becomes a contact. Contacts collects them with their company, tags, custom data and conversation history, and takes a CSV in and out.

Overview

A contact is created the first time someone messages you on any channel, or when you add one by hand or import a file. The Contacts page lists them with the columns you choose (Choose columns), a search, a status and tag filter, and a details sheet that opens on the right with everything known about the person and their conversations. Contacts and conversations are unlimited on every plan.

What a contact holds

Identity
Name, email, phone, avatar. Email is the key that ties a widget visitor, an email thread and an imported row to one person.
Work
Company (linked to a company record), job title, website.
Place
Country, city, address, timezone. The widget fills country and city from the visitor's connection when nothing better is known.
Lifecycle
One of Lead, Active, Inactive or Churned, set by you or an automation; a filter on the list.
Tags
Free labels. Added from the sheet, from the inbox, or by the Tag the contact automation action.
Custom data
Key and value pairs of your own, such as plan or account id, edited on the sheet. The Set a contact field automation writes here.
Notes
A free-text note on the person, separate from conversation notes.
Social
LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Instagram handles, when you have them.
Device
For widget visitors, the browser, operating system and last pages visited, read from their session.

Companies

Companies group contacts. A company has a name, domain, logo, industry and employee count; contacts with a matching email domain can be attached to it. The Companies tab lists them with a contact count, and a company’s sheet shows everyone at it and their conversations.

Tags and segments

Both are labels on a contact, kept in two lists so they can mean different things: tags for what a person did or asked about (refund, bug, vip), segments for which group they belong to (trial, enterprise, newsletter). Add either from the list’s Add tag and Add segment, or from the details sheet; both are filters on the list. Tags also travel to the inbox, where a conversation shows its contact’s tags in the details rail, and an automation can add them.

Import a CSV

  1. 1
    On the Contacts page, open Import / Export and choose Import contacts.
  2. 2
    Pick a CSV file. It is parsed in your browser; nothing is uploaded until you confirm.
  3. 3
    Map the columns: point each of your headings at a Sellio field (name, email, phone, company, job title, and so on), or skip it. Unmapped columns can go into custom data under their own heading.
  4. 4
    Confirm. Rows are matched on email: an existing contact with that email is updated, a new one is created. Rows without an email, or with a malformed one, are skipped and listed with the reason at the end.
✦
Exports from Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, Help Scout and most CRMs are plain CSV with a header row, so they import as they are; only the column mapping differs.

Export, merge, delete

  • Export writes the current list, or the selected rows, to a CSV with every column. The owner can make export owner-only under Settings, then Members.
  • Merge joins two or more selected contacts into one: conversations, tags and fields are combined, and the duplicates removed.
  • Delete removes a contact and unlinks its conversations, which stay in the inbox. Bulk delete works on a selection. Owner-only when Prevent delete is on.

Contacts elsewhere

The inbox shows the contact beside every conversation and lets you edit the same fields there. The widget fills identity fields when your site calls setVisitor; see Widget JavaScript API and, to stop that being spoofed, Identity verification. Contacts are readable through the public API, and the Contacts page in Analytics shows how the list grows.

Updated . Something wrong or missing? Tell us.

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