Contacts

Import, organise, and segment your contacts so automations and broadcasts reach the right people.

Add contacts

CSV import — the fastest way to bulk-add. Export a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel) and upload it from the Contacts page. Match columns to phone, name, email, and custom fields.
From conversations — anyone who messages your WhatsApp number is automatically added as a contact.
Manual — click + Add Contact to create one at a time.

Organise with tags

Tags let you group contacts in flexible, overlapping ways — e.g. lead, vip, student_class_5. Apply tags in bulk from the contact list, or let automations tag contacts automatically when certain conditions are met.

Create and manage tags from Settings → Tags. Tag names are freeform strings — use whatever vocabulary your team already uses.

Custom fields

Beyond the standard fields (name, phone, email, notes), you can add any number of custom fields — e.g. Grade, Course, Purchase date. Custom fields can be referenced in automations for conditional routing and used in template variable substitution.

Dedupe

HopeChat identifies contacts by phone number. If you import a CSV with duplicate numbers, only the latest row is kept and existing data is updated — no duplicate conversations are created.

Use contacts in automations

Tags and custom fields are the primary filters in automations. For example, an automation trigger can watch for a keyword like "pricing" and only send a reply when the contact has the lead tag. Routing rules in entry tests also use intro-answer values (which become temporary contact attributes) to decide which test to send next.

Import your contact list before building automations — automations use contact attributes (tags, custom fields, answers) to decide who gets what.

Next guide

Automations

Set up no-code workflows that reply to customers instantly.