Why do messaging conversations contain old and previous messages?

Question

How come my customer messaging conversation includes ten old messages?

Answer

Bots consider a conversation expired after 72 hours of inactivity and deletes metadata for the message in the back-end, but not the message itself.

If there isn't a point of pass-off to an agent after 72 hours, since there are still messages within the messaging infrastructure, when the customer reaches back out, Zendesk will look for essential, missing metadata in the back-end, such as first_message_id. Since there is no first_message_id, the system grabs the last ten messages from the previous interactions of the user and appends them into the ticket to attempt to provide some context.

Tip: Admins can configure messaging inactivity reminders to automatically notify customers before a conversation expires and, if needed, add tags to those reminder tickets. These tags help identify inactive conversations and connect them with reporting or follow‑up workflows.

For more information, see these articles:

Creating a conversation bot for your web and mobile channels

Viewing and editing general bot settings

Note: This functionality is part of AI agents - Essential.