Tags and lifecycle stages

Getting here

The contact panel beside a conversation, the full profile page, or the Tags and Lifecycle cells in the contacts list. Stages themselves are managed under Settings → Lifecycle stages. On the app: open the contact and use Tags, Conversation tags and Lifecycle.

Before you start

• Owners, admins and agents can apply tags and change a stage. A viewer sees them and cannot change them.
• Managing the stage list — adding, renaming, reordering, deleting — is an owner, admin or agent action on the web.
• A workspace with no stages yet says No lifecycle stages defined for this workspace yet. on the app, and offers nothing to pick.

Fields

Tags

Labels on the person. They follow them into every conversation.

Conversation tags

Labels on one conversation only. The same person can carry different ones on different conversations.

Lifecycle

One stage at a time, or No stage.

Stage name

Up to 64 characters.

Stage emoji

Optional, shown in front of the name everywhere the stage appears.

Lost stage

Marks a stage as an ending rather than a step.

Limits: Those stages are listed separately under Lost stages in the contacts rail.

How it works

• The tag picker shows your workspace's tag list in the order an admin arranged, with the ones already on this person ticked where they sit.
• Typing a name that is not in the list offers to create it. Choosing that puts the name on the contact straight away.
• A name created that way is also added to the workspace tag list, with a colour picked from its name and no description. An admin can change both under Settings → Tags.
• Every add and every remove saves the whole list at once. The chips move first, and go back if the save fails.
• Adding a tag can start a workflow. Only what actually changed counts, so re-saving an unchanged list starts nothing, and a removal is reported as a removal.
• Conversation tags belong to the conversation, so they appear in the inbox rail and in inbox filters rather than in a contact filter.
• A lifecycle stage is one value on the person. Setting a new one replaces the old one, and No stage clears it.
• Inside an open conversation the stage picker and the header chip share one value, so changing it in one place moves the other immediately.
• In the contacts list you can change the stage from the row itself, without opening anybody.
• The left rail counts contacts per stage, and clicking a stage filters the list to it.
• Settings → Lifecycle stages lists the stages in their own order. Drag to reorder, click a name to rename it, tick Lost stage to mark it as an ending, and use the bin to delete one.
• Deleting a stage does not delete anybody. The contacts on it become unstaged, which is what the confirmation says before you agree.

When it fails

• A stage saved with an empty name: Stage name can't be empty.
• A name another stage already uses: A stage with this name already exists.
• A stage change the server refuses: Could not update lifecycle stage.
• A tag change the server refuses: Could not update tags., and the chips go back to what they were.
• A conversation tag that will not save says it could not be added, or could not be removed, naming the tag.
• Creating, renaming or deleting a stage can fail with Could not create stage., Could not update stage. or Could not delete stage.

Limits

• A stage change sends the customer nothing on its own. A workflow listening for a lifecycle change is what turns a stage into a message.
• A person is on one stage at a time. Use tags when somebody needs to be several things at once.
• A tag typed into the picker joins the workspace tag list with an automatic colour and no description until an admin sets them.
• Conversation tags do not roll up onto the person, and contact tags do not appear as conversation tags.
• Deleting a tag is not done from a contact. It is a Settings → Tags action, and it asks you to confirm how many contacts carry it.
• The app can apply both kinds of tag and set a stage, but cannot add, rename, reorder or delete a stage.

Best practices

• Keep tags few, and spell them the same way every time. Two spellings are two filters, and a broadcast will find only one of them.
• Use stages for the path everybody walks, and tags for everything else. A stage nobody ever leaves is really a tag.
• Give a tag typed in the picker a colour and a description in Settings → Tags, so teammates know what it means.
• Before deleting a stage, filter the list by it and move those people somewhere else, so nobody is quietly unstaged.
• Put a tag on everything one import or one campaign brought in. It is the cheapest way to undo a mistake later.

Use cases

• Sarah Chen asks about wholesale: tag the conversation, so the next person to open it knows what it is about.
• A customer buys: move them to your Customer stage, and let a workflow listening for that stage send the thank-you.
• You want to stop messaging a group: tag them, then build a segment that leaves anybody with that tag out.
• A stage has grown into three steps: add two more stages and drag them into order.

FAQ and troubleshooting

What is the difference between a tag and a stage?

A tag is a label and you can have many. A stage is where the person is in your funnel, and there is only one.

I added a tag on the contact and it did not appear on the conversation.

Those are two lists. Tags follow the person; Conversation tags belong to one conversation.

If I delete a stage, do I lose the contacts on it?

No. They stay and become unstaged. The confirmation says so before you agree.

Does changing a stage message the customer?

Not by itself. It can start a workflow if one listens for that stage, and the workflow does the messaging.

Why does my new tag have a colour I did not choose?

A tag created from the contact picker gets a colour picked from its name. Change it under Settings → Tags.

Related

• The contacts list — One table of everyone who has ever messaged you, with the headings, sort and saved field setups you choose.
• Filter contacts and save a segment — Build a filter on any contact detail, watch the count change, then save it as a segment a broadcast can send to.
• Everything you know about a contact — The panel beside a conversation and the full profile page show one record — details, notes, files, activity and calls.
• Add, edit and merge a contact — Create somebody by hand, correct their details, and join two records that turn out to be the same person.
• Update Lifecycle — Move the contact to another lifecycle stage, or clear it — read by the dashboard's lifecycle counts, and able to move a deal forward.
• Tag Contact — Add tags to the person behind this conversation — read by Contacts, segments, broadcasts, and able to move a deal via a pipeline rule.