The inbox and tickets do different jobs. Most conversations stay in the inbox. You turn one into a ticket only when it becomes a piece of work someone has to follow through.
Use the inbox for live conversations
A customer is chatting now and expects a reply in the conversation.
The AI agent is handling it, or an agent takes over to answer.
It is done when the conversation ends. Nothing needs tracking afterward.
Use a ticket for tracked work
Someone needs to own it: a refund, a bug, a back-office task.
It moves through stages over days, not one sitting.
You want a status, a priority, and a record of what happened.
How they connect
You can turn an inbox chat into a ticket in one step. The ticket keeps a link back to the chat, so the conversation and the tracked work stay tied together. The chat itself stays in the inbox. See how in the article on turning a chat into a ticket.