Agent Training

This is the full agent walkthrough: everything a front-line agent needs to work the Sift inbox, end to end. Share this single page with a new teammate and they can learn the whole job, from picking up their first conversation to resolving it. Each section also has its own focused page, linked along the way, if you want to go deeper.

At a glance

What an agent does

In Sift, every customer interaction from every connected source, an X reply, an Instagram DM, an App Store review, a Discord thread, a form submission, lands in one inbox as a conversation you can read, respond to, and resolve. Your job as an agent is to work through the conversations assigned to you: read the context Sift has gathered, reply on the customer's original platform, and set the status so the rest of the team knows where things stand.

You never tab between platforms or copy-paste between tools. Everything happens in the inbox.

1. The inbox

The inbox has three columns.

• Left, the conversation list. Every open conversation assigned to you (or available in your queue), newest activity first. Each row shows the AI-generated title, a snippet, the source platform, and how long it has been waiting.
• Center, the conversation. The full back-and-forth with the customer, in order, with your reply composer at the bottom.
• Right, the details panel. Title, summary, tags, assignee, status, queue, and the customer's profile, everything you need to act without leaving the conversation.

Queues and "next conversation"

Conversations live in queues, buckets that route work to the right team (for example Billing, Fraud, General). Your inbox shows the queues you belong to.

The fastest way to work is next conversation: press N and Sift assigns you the most important open item from your queue automatically, based on priority and how long it has been waiting. Resolve it, hit next conversation again, and keep moving. This keeps the team pulling from the top of the queue instead of cherry-picking the easy ones.

Filtering

The list can be filtered so you only see what is relevant right now: by status (only Open, only Waiting for User, or Closed to review past work), by watched or snoozed, or by a search for a specific customer, keyword, or content.

2. Working a conversation, end to end

The everyday loop is:

1. Pick up the next conversation (N) or click one in the list.
2. Read the context. The AI title and summary tell you what it is about at a glance; the full thread and the customer's profile are right there.
3. Reply from the composer (covered next).
4. Set the outcome: change the status, add tags, reassign or move queue if needed.
5. Move on to the next conversation.

3. Responding to customers

Replies you send from Sift post back to the customer's original platform automatically. The composer at the bottom of every conversation adapts to the kind of reply the situation calls for, and it is color-coded so a private note never goes out in public by accident.

Three reply types:

• Public reply posts publicly on the source platform (a reply to a tweet, a comment on a post).
• Private message / DM goes directly to the customer (Instagram DM, WhatsApp, Messenger). Only they see it.
• Internal comment is a note for your team that the customer never sees. Use it to hand off context or flag something for a manager.

Saved responses are pre-written templates for questions you answer constantly. Press V, search by title or body, pick one, edit if needed, and send. AI-assisted drafts start you from a solid first pass based on the conversation and your team's knowledge base; you always review and edit before sending. You can attach media (images, and video or files where the platform supports it).

4. Managing a conversation

A few fields on every conversation drive how it is routed, who owns it, and how it shows up in reporting. Each has a one-key shortcut.

Status (S) tracks where a conversation is: Open, Waiting for User, Closed, and any custom statuses. Keeping it accurate is what makes the queue and every dashboard trustworthy.

Assignee (A): unassign to release a conversation back to the queue, or assign to a teammate for a handoff or escalation.

Queue (Q): move a conversation to another team's queue when it landed in the wrong place.

Tags (T): the AI tags conversations automatically as they develop; add your own to categorize by topic, product area, or sentiment.

Due dates (Shift+D): set when a conversation needs resolving by a specific time, such as an SLA commitment.

5. Conversation actions

Past the everyday fields, each conversation has extra actions in the conversation menu (the icon next to the status): Watch, Snooze, Set due date, Link, Merge, and Export.

• Watch keeps an eye on a conversation without owning it; watched items are filterable.
• Snooze (Shift+S) removes it from your queue for a set time, then it reappears. Use it for "waiting on the customer" or "circle back tomorrow."
• Link connects two related conversations without closing either one.
• Merge links two related conversations and closes one, for true duplicates.
• Export writes a conversation to a JSON file to share internally, for example handing a bug report to engineering.

6. Keyboard shortcuts

The inbox is built to be worked from the keyboard. The essentials:

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