3 numbers or more. Splitting channels between departments

While a company has one number for everyone, a sales rep explains where a package is in between two deals, and a support agent finds a two-hour-old lead in the shared feed. The customer doesn't care who answered. The manager does, because the report lumps sales, complaints, and delivery questions together, and there's no way to tell how each team is doing.

Splitting by department brings order, but it raises new questions right away. Who writes to a customer who has an open deal and a return at the same time, where do delivery notifications come from if the new number has a strict limit on first messages, and how does a person keep track of three chats from the same company.

Key takeaways

• E-chat allows any number of managers per number, and you pay only for numbers, so you count them by departments and messengers, not by people.

• Logistics, which messages customers about delivery on its own, hits the limits on new contacts before anyone else. The first notification is safer to send from a chat where a conversation is already going.

• A customer who deals with two departments is handled by whoever has an open task for them.

• Build reports by pipeline and measure first response time separately for leads and for service, otherwise fast support replies hide slow sales replies.

• Three WhatsApp numbers on the standard plan cost $47.97 a month.

When a shared number starts getting in the way

One number for everyone works while the feed has a few dozen conversations a day and everyone on staff knows each other. Then a wholesale inquiry, a defect complaint, and a question about why the courier never showed up all land in the same chat, and every manager scrolls through everything to find their own.

What you see in the chats

Sales reps start answering delivery questions. They don't know the status, so they go to logistics, come back, and meanwhile the deal the rep is actually on the line for sits waiting. At the same time, fresh leads get buried. A person writes to the same place where forty customers are chasing their orders, and their first message slides down before anyone opens it.

The third problem shows up only in reports. First response time looks fine, yet sales complains about slow replies. The average is calculated across all conversations at once, and dozens of quick support answers to simple questions cover up leads that got a reply an hour later.

Why adding more people doesn't help

E-chat doesn't limit the number of managers, so the first impulse is to add two more support agents to the shared chat. There are more people, but still one feed. Someone has to sort conversations by department by hand every morning, and the report still can't be split. A separate number per department fixes this at the entry point. The customer chooses where to write, and the CRM knows which pipeline the conversation goes to.

One number per department

For a company with sales, support, and delivery, the baseline is three numbers. What sets them apart is mainly who starts the conversation. Sales often writes first, customers write to support themselves, and logistics sends status updates to people who have never written to it. That determines what goes where.

Sales

Leads from the website and ads come in here, and this is also where a manager reaches out first to people who left a phone number in a form. In E-chat you can write first even with no prior conversation, but messengers treat such messages as conversation initiations and limit them. According to the E-chat help center, Telegram's recommendation is no more than 20 new contacts a day, up to 40 for older active accounts. On WhatsApp, older active accounts can handle 20-30 new conversations a day, new ones 5-10.

The solution follows from that. Sales gets the number the company has used to message customers the longest, and the new ones go to everyone else.

Support

Customers write to support themselves, so limits on new contacts barely affect it. WhatsApp puts no restrictions on ongoing conversations, and on Viber no limit has been observed once the customer has replied at least once. A new number can safely go here, as long as it's placed where people will see it when they have a question. On the order page, in the receipt email, in the returns section.

Logistics

Logistics is the easiest place to get it wrong. The logistics team tells the customer the order has been handed over for delivery, and for them it's a first message to someone who has never written to them. Take a store that ships 50 orders a day as an example. For a new WhatsApp number, the E-chat help center gives 5-10 new conversations a day, and on Viber a block can happen as early as the fifth message to unknown contacts in a day. Fifty notifications on day one will end in a ban.

There are two ways out. The first delivery notification is sent from the sales chat, where a conversation already exists, and in that same chat the customer gets the logistics contact. From then on the person writes there themselves, and it's a regular conversation with no initiation limits. The second path takes longer. Logistics is connected a few weeks before launch, and the number of first messages is raised gradually, within the help center's recommendations.

How many messengers a department needs

You end up with three numbers if the company works in one messenger. In Ukraine, according to a survey published by Ukrainski Novyny, 74% of respondents use Telegram and 59% use Viber, so sales reps with only Telegram lose people who are only on Viber.

The easiest way to work it out is on paper. Teams in rows, messengers in columns, yes or no in each cell. Based on these numbers, sales in Ukraine needs both messengers, support can make do with the one where the customer placed the order, and cells with only occasional requests stay empty, since a neighboring chat will pick those questions up.

[Expert insight] According to the E-chat help center, 90% of Viber blocks are caused by too many conversation initiations. For a per-department setup, this leads to a rule. Before giving a number a job, count how many first messages a day it will send to people who haven't written to it. The help center advises staying within 20 such messages a day and treating a number that has been blocked before as new, no matter how many years it has been in use. Spam complaints also lead to blocks, so a notification the person didn't expect is riskier than a reply in a live conversation.

A customer in two departments. Who writes to them

A customer is waiting for a package, has an open return on a previous order, and a sales rep is just about to offer them something new. Without rules, in a single day the person will get three messages from three chats and reply to the last one with a single annoyed word.

The open task rule

Whoever has the open task with the nearest due date for that customer is the one who writes. If a return is open, support does the talking, and the sales rep waits until it's closed. If the package is in transit and there are no questions, logistics sends the delivery update and no one else steps in. Sales gets the customer when nobody else has anything open for them. Checking the rule in the customer card takes half a minute, and there's nothing left to argue about over whose customer it is.

The customer card instead of a stand-up

E-chat saves all conversations to the CRM, including messages a manager sent straight from a phone. Before writing first, a sales rep opens the card and checks whether the customer has an open deal or request in another pipeline and when colleagues last talked to them. If support handled a complaint yesterday, the rep sets a task for next week and stays quiet today.

Handoffs between departments

When a question goes to another team, the customer is told who will write to them and from where. After payment, the sales rep sends something like this.

"Thank you for your order. Our logistics team will answer any questions about delivery and the tracking number, and I'll send you their contact in the next message. Please save it and write there if your address changes."

The contact card follows. If the customer writes to logistics themselves, the first-message limits won't come into play at all. And if they still ask the sales rep about delivery, the rep answers based on the status in the card instead of sending the person from chat to chat.

Pipelines, permissions, and reports in the CRM

E-chat connects numbers to the CRM, and distributing conversations is the CRM's job. In amoCRM, Bitrix24, Odoo, or NetHunt the settings have different names, but the logic is the same. Start with names. Name each connection so that six months from now a new hire can tell whose it is without asking. Sales Telegram, Service Viber, Delivery WhatsApp.

Incoming messages go to the right pipeline

A new incoming message in the sales chat creates a deal in the sales pipeline, in the support chat a request in the service pipeline, and for logistics a task or a comment on the order. The responsible person, by rotation or by workload, is assigned by a pipeline rule, not by the connection. That way, when the team changes, you won't have to touch the messenger settings.

Who sees what

Reading a customer's history is useful for everyone, but only the customer's own team should write from the chat. Support that can see a sales rep promised a discount a week ago won't be surprised by a complaint, but it has no reason to reply from the sales chat. In NetHunt, messenger access is granted to managers or workspace roles. In other systems, look for pipeline and channel permissions.

E-chat protects the customer base on its side. An employee can't take the number, export contacts, or move conversations to a personal chat, no matter which department they work in.

Separate reporting

For sales, track new conversations per day, the share that turned into deals, and time to first response on a lead. For support, first response time matters more, along with the number of questions resolved without a repeat request within a week.

For logistics, a different number tells the story - how many customers asked on their own where their order is. When there are many, status notifications aren't getting through or arrive late, and those are what need fixing, not response speed.

First response time is better tracked as a median. A single lead forgotten overnight inflates the average so much that the whole day looks like a failure, even though every other reply went out within five minutes.

Automated messages by stage

Robots and triggers live in the CRM, and E-chat delivers their messages to the messenger. With three numbers, every automated message raises the question of where it will be sent from. Order confirmations go out from the sales chat, where the conversation is already underway. Shipping notifications are assigned to logistics only for customers who have already written there. For everyone else it's once again a first message to an unknown contact, and the limits from the previous section still apply.

How to keep customers from getting lost in three chats

A customer doesn't have to know your org chart. They remember writing to you on Viber and will write there again, whatever the question is. The company's job is to make sure the right contact is at hand when the question comes up, and if the customer still writes to the wrong place, to answer them without forwarding them anywhere.

Name and avatar

Use the same avatar everywhere, with the logo, and put the department in the profile name. Store Sales, Store Service, Store Delivery. The customer's chat list shows three rows with the same logo, and the second word makes it clear which is which.

Where to place contacts

The sales number goes on product pages, in ads, and in the site header. The support contact lives in the customer account, in the receipt email, and on the returns page. The customer gets the logistics contact in the chat after payment and sees it again in the message saying the order has been handed over for delivery. Don't put three phone numbers side by side in the site header, since the customer will pick one at random and half the delivery questions will go to sales again.

If they wrote to the wrong chat

A reply like please write to another chat is a sure way to lose someone. The manager answers on their own if the answer is in the card, or passes the question to a colleague inside the CRM and promises a reply right there. A message for this case looks like this.

"I've passed your question to our delivery team and will send the answer here within an hour. Next time you'll get a faster reply about orders in the Store Delivery chat."

How much a setup with three or more numbers costs

In E-chat you pay per connected number, with any number of managers on it. The cost of the setup depends on the number of departments and messengers, and your headcount can grow at no extra charge. According to the pricing on the E-chat website, Telegram costs $16.99 a month, Viber $29.99, and WhatsApp $15.99.

Calculation at the standard price

Let's take two configurations as an example. The first has three WhatsApp numbers for sales, support, and logistics, which comes to $47.97 a month and $575.64 a year.

The second configuration is for a Ukrainian company. Sales works in Telegram and Viber, support in Telegram, logistics in Viber. Four numbers cost $93.96 a month. If the three departments have 14 people, that's less than $7 per employee, and a fifteenth manager won't add a cent to the bill. Both amounts are calculated at the standard price, without discounts.

Discounts for multiple numbers

If you pay for several numbers at once, the discount goes up to 26% for a month, up to 30% for three months, up to 34% for six months, and up to 40% for a year. The E-chat home page separately lists additional discounts when you connect 3 or more numbers, and special terms apply from 20. You reach twenty faster than you might think if a chain has five cities, each with its own sales, service, and delivery. E-chat support can tell you what your configuration will cost with the discount via the Telegram bot @echat_support_bot, and on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. it replies in 3 minutes on average.

Where to start

Separate first the department that clutters the shared feed the most. If that's delivery questions, start with logistics, but keep the new number's limits in mind.

Sign up in your account, add a number, and verify it from your phone by scanning a QR code, then after syncing connect the CRM following the guide for your system, which takes no more than a minute. Next, create the department's pipeline in the CRM and a rule that routes incoming messages from the new chat there. After activation, don't delete Viber from the phone or use its Change Number feature, but the device itself can be switched off and put away in a manager's drawer.

A seven-day free trial is enough to run a week of real requests through the new number and compare the median first response time with what it was before.

FAQ

Question: Do I need a separate phone for each number?

Answer: Each number is verified through a mobile device with a QR code, so each one needs a phone on which it's registered in the messenger. With Viber, the app isn't deleted from that phone after activation, but the device itself can be turned off, and this doesn't affect the service. WhatsApp works through a connection to the web version, and its limits are the same as for a personal account.

Question: Can one employee work in two departments?

Answer: Yes. E-chat doesn't limit the number of managers, and access to a specific chat and pipeline is granted through CRM permissions. A support lead who covers for a logistics specialist on weekends gets access to both numbers, and on Monday the logistics access is removed.

Question: What happens to conversations if two departments merge?

Answer: The history stays in the customer cards in the CRM. The closed department's number is either kept, with its incoming messages routed to the merged department's pipeline, or disconnected. If it's replaced with a new one, the conversations also stay in the customer card.

Question: Our CRM isn't on the integrations list. Will this setup work?

Answer: ApiX-Drive and Wepster connect Viber only, while Telegram and WhatsApp are connected through the E-chat API, with documentation in the help center. Routing departments to pipelines will then have to be done in the CRM or in the integration scenario.

Question: The manager who ran a department's chat has quit. What should we do?

Answer: There's nothing to rescue. An employee can't take the number, export the base, or move conversations to a personal chat, so the new person is given CRM access and continues the conversations with the same history.