What are private notes?
Private notes are messages you write inside a conversation that are only visible to your team. The visitor never sees them. Use them to share context, ask a colleague for advice, or leave information for whoever picks the conversation up next.
They sit in the same message thread as everything else, on a different background, so you can tell them apart at a glance. Some private notes are written by the AI rather than by you: AI Summary posts its summary as one, AI Context posts the answer it found as one, and — if your organization uses Agent monitoring — an amber possible-inaccuracy card appears when a reply contradicts your knowledge base.
How to write a private note
- Open the conversation.
- In the input bar, click the Public button — the plain-text Public/Private switch — to turn it to Private. The input bar changes to show you are in private mode.
- Type your note and press Enter to send.
The toggle stays on private until you switch it back, so you can write several notes in a row without toggling each time.
Where private notes never appear
- In the visitor's chat. A private note is stored as private and is never delivered on any channel.
- In an emailed transcript. The Send transcript action only includes public messages.
- At the top of everyone's conversation list. A private note does not move the conversation up the list for the rest of the team the way a real message does.
Auto translation is skipped for private notes
If you have auto translation switched on for the conversation, outgoing translation is skipped for private notes — they are sent exactly in the language you typed. Incoming translation of the visitor's public messages carries on as normal.
What's next
For pre-written responses you can drop in with a single keystroke, see Use saved replies.