Remembering that a customer "asked for a refund last time", working out again and again that "this one is a wholesaler", and typing the same price answer thirty times a day — the panel has a separate answer for each of those three chores. This guide covers notes, tags and saved replies one at a time.
In this article you will find:
Conversation notes
Tags
Saved replies
Using placeholders in a saved reply
Common mistakes
Conversation notes
Notes are internal records your team leaves each other. They never reach the person you are writing to: they do not appear as a message and they do not turn into a notification.
To add a note:
Open the conversation.
Open the contact panel with the person button in the header.
Tap the Notes section.
Type into the Write an internal note (the customer cannot see it)… field.
Press Add note.
Notes are listed newest first, each with the author's name and the date underneath. The number next to the section title is the note count for that conversation. A note can hold up to 2000 characters.
To remove one, press Delete under the note; the panel asks for confirmation.
Who can do what:
Read — everyone who can see the inbox.
Write and delete — anyone with reply permission. A Viewer reads notes but cannot add any.
A good note carries something the conversation does not: "spoke on the phone, promised Friday delivery", "return parcel arrived". Repeating what is already in the chat just takes up room.
Tags
A tag is a short marker stuck on a person: vip, wholesale, refund, istanbul. It belongs to the contact, not to a single conversation, so the same tags show up in every chat you have with that person.
Tags appear as chips under Tags in the Details section of the contact panel. They are read-only there. To add or remove them:
Press Open contact card in the contact panel.
Type the tags into the Tags field on the card, separated by commas (for example vip, wholesale).
Save.
Tags are lower-cased when saved, and different spellings of the same tag count as one: VIP, Vip and vip are the same thing. That keeps your tag list from splitting in two or three over time.
💡 Tags are not only for the eye: you can filter the contact list by tag and use "has this tag" as a condition in an automation. Keep the list short and consistent — thirty different tags do the same job as no tags at all.
Saved replies
A saved reply is an answer you type often, stored. Each one has a shortcut (for example pricing), a title and a text.
There are two ways to use one in a chat:
Type / in the message box; the list opens above the box and filters as you type. Enter picks the first entry, Esc closes the list.
Press the Saved reply button next to the message box and pick from the list.
The text of the reply lands in the message box. You can edit it before sending — a saved reply is a draft, not a locked message.
To create one:
Open Settings from the menu.
Go to the Saved replies page.
Type a one-word name into Shortcut. Only lowercase letters, digits and dashes are accepted, up to 30 characters.
Type the name that will show in the list into Title (up to 80 characters).
Type the answer itself into Text.
Save.
The list of stored replies sits at the bottom of the same page; each row comes with its own fields so you can edit or delete it there.
⚠️ Inbox permission is enough to see saved replies, but creating and editing them requires permission to change account settings. Someone in the Agent role uses saved replies but cannot add new ones.
Text length is checked against the strictest channel. Instagram counts bytes, not characters: accented letters take 2 and emoji take 4, and the limit is 1000 bytes. So a long, emoji-heavy reply can be refused even when the character count looks small. The rule is applied when you save, so Meta does not refuse the message at send time.
Using placeholders in a saved reply
You can put placeholders in the text; they are filled with the person's details at send time:
{{contact.first_name}} — the first word of the person's name. When there is no name, the handle is used.
{{contact.name}} — their full name.
{{contact.username}} — the Instagram handle.
{{contact.email}} and {{contact.phone}} — the email and phone, when stored.
{{field.city}} — one of the contact's custom fields (replace city with your own field name).
{{workspace.name}} — the name of your account.
To keep a sentence from breaking when a value is empty, give a fallback: {{contact.first_name|there}} sends "Hello there" to a person whose name you do not know.
⚠️ The {{input}} placeholder belongs to automation flows and is always empty in a saved reply sent from the inbox: there is no "what the person last typed" input on this screen.
A worked example
A hair salon sets up three saved replies:
/pricing — Price list: "Hi {{contact.first_name}}, a cut starts at 450 and colour at 1,200. Which one were you thinking of?"
/booking — How to book: "Just send a day and a time, {{contact.first_name}}. We are open 10:00–19:00 on weekdays and 10:00–17:00 on Saturdays."
/address — Address and parking.
The same salon separates customers with the vip and colour tags, and leaves an "allergy test done" note on a first-time client. When a different stylist opens that conversation the following week, the information is there without anyone asking again.
Common mistakes
Treating a note as a message. Notes never reach the customer; use the message box when you want to tell them something. The reverse matters too: do not send an explanation meant for your team as a message.
Thinking a tag sticks to the conversation. Tags belong to the person. If you want to say "this chat is about a refund", a note is the right tool.
Using accented letters in a shortcut. A shortcut accepts only lowercase letters, digits and dashes. order-tracking works; order tracking does not.
Reusing the same shortcut. A shortcut can exist once per account; saving a second one raises a warning.
Mistyping a placeholder. An unrecognised key is left empty and the customer gets an unfinished sentence. Using the placeholder buttons on the settings page is safer.
Related concepts
A saved reply travels the same path as any other message: when the 24-hour window is closed it cannot go out either — see The 24-hour messaging window. Another record not to confuse with notes is The conversation trail, which is where the system writes down who did what.
If any of these three tools leaves you stuck, contact our Support team.