Shopify Inbox

Inbox works well. The only down side is that it will be used to contact you about "helping your business". It cn be a bit of a back door for people trying to sell you stuff.
For client relations and contact it works great but be prepared to get spammed.

It has some additional features like customer details, customers activity on the website which are available as part of the conversation. This makes it easy to answer customer queries

it has not been working for a while and will not allow me to see messages to respond to customers

This app provides an additional way for customers to reach me and ask questions - particularly those who might be hesitant about sending an email and choose to scroll on by. I love that this app is simple to use, free, doesn't require my full attention or attendance, and allows both sides to upload photos, which is particularly handy with my business. (I sell mending supplies and it really helps to see what customers are trying to mend, in order to provide them with the best service.)

I also love the phone app in particular. I work part time and can easily respond to messages from my phone when I'm out and about. Or on my phone from bed (when I wake up and see messages from other time zones)! Not all Inbox conversations convert to sales, but I find that the questions people ask here are still useful and help me update my product descriptions, and I often use the Q&A as content for my newsletters and social media. People ask me questions via Inbox far more than via my product-page "ask a question" tabs.

AWFUL! Had SO many customers tell me that after opening an inquiry with this app that they couldn't get out of it no matter what they did, and they couldn't get back to my site. So I tried it myself and it happened to me too! I read in several groups that this has been an ongoing problem for 2 years!! So I uninstalled!

This is great for capturing people who have questions and they're sitting at the Cart page. I can answer questions quickly to help conversions.

It's great for a free service! You can set up automated questions and it suits our needs. Would be great if the alert when a customer asks a question worked better. It often doesn't work so you don't know someone is there, but we do have an email that comes through - so we try to watch the inbox. Still, we had this issue with our previous paid provider and this is free :)

I would like a PC/Mac app that pops up when there is a chat initiated.
The browser notifications are not enough.

Reply emails to customers are sent from a random generated email address causing them to end up in their spam folder. Unfortunately there is no functionality within the app to change to your own branding.
Example of 'sent from' email addess below.

xl9krl0ub6u4ftbrbxgzamce7bbo6x5lmdrcyeuw1fe0evhvwp7f.....lr321ih@messaging.shopifyemail.com

Works good mostly only issue is that every time a customer sends a reply it shows up as a separate email rather than just in the same thread wich is kind of bad