Part of the AI assistant.
Video: The chat inbox: when the assistant hands over to a person (2:46) — it plays at the top of Operators, Conversations & Blocking.
AI Chat → Settings → Behaviour is what the assistant can do, how it talks, what it must never say, when it offers a meeting, and what happens when it cannot answer. It is set once for the account, because it is the part
that is expensive to get wrong.
What it can do
- An online shop (it may search the catalogue and recommend) or Questions only.
- Reply language — leave empty to follow the visitor.
- Most turns in one conversation.
- Model — a faster one, or a more capable and slower one.
- Most conversations per billing cycle — the ceiling on what a cycle can cost: past it the assistant stops answering new conversations. Support sets it, 1,000 for a new chat, and only support can change it (“Only support can change this.”) — ask them to raise it.
How it should behave
Instructions are written as though you were briefing a new starter. Whatever you write, it cannot
invent a discount, a price or a promise — it only repeats what your catalogue, your sources and your
offers actually contain.
Never do these is kept deliberately separate. These are the rules you will be asked about if
something goes wrong, and they reach the assistant as numbered rules it may not talk its way out of.
When a campaign opens with its own question — for a chat that opens with an opening line worked out per visitor: Answer straight away (the default), or Say why it is raising it first, which adds one short clause (“Since you were reading about …”). That clause only uses something the visitor already knows you know, like the page they are on — never their company or their job — and a line written this way is kept per page, so it always names the page the visitor is actually on.
Offering a meeting
A meeting is kept apart from handing over: somebody chasing a damaged order wants a person, not a demo. When it may offer to book a meeting:
- Never — this assistant does not book meetings.
- Only in the situations I name below — listed under Offer a meeting when…, written as situations rather than keywords (“they ask to see the product”). The assistant reads them and judges; it never matches them word for word.
- Whenever it judges a call would help.
Never offer one when… is checked either way, even when a situation above also applies — “they are asking about the free plan”.
Your meeting types, hosts and availability come from the Meetings screens. With no meeting type that can be booked, the assistant never offers one, whatever this says.
When it offers a meeting, the calendar opens in the conversation: a strip of days with how many times each has, then the chosen day’s times. The visitor books without leaving the chat, and no suggested questions are shown beside the calendar. Conversations → More filters → Booked a meeting lists the conversations that ended in a booking.
A chat placement can switch meetings off for its own pages (Offers and meetings → Do not offer meetings on these pages), never on. An AI finder offers one only with May offer a meeting ticked — see AI finders.
When it does not know
You choose what it says, and then what it does: offer a person, take an email address, or apologise and stop. You can
also list words that skip straight to a person — refund is most people’s
first.
Handing over to a person
What it asks for first
Before handing over to a person decides whether a human costs an email address:
- Hand over straight away — ask for an email only if they offer one. Fastest for the visitor,
and the reason a case can reach the queue with nobody to reply to. - Hand over, then ask once.
- Require an email address first — no case is opened without one. It also turns “let me
talk to a person” into a form, and some people will leave rather than fill it in.
This is enforced on the server, not merely suggested to the assistant.
Out of hours
When nobody is signed in: pass it on anyway and email the team, or ask for an email address first.
Either way the team is emailed — the difference is whether a case is opened before there is any way to reply to
it.
Asking for more than a name
Also ask for, when handing over takes up to six things in your own words — an order number, a
postcode. The assistant works out how to ask them in conversation rather than as a form, and the answers are saved as an
internal note the visitor never sees.
Whether a placement may hand over at all
Each placement carries Can it hand over to a person? — on by default for a chat,
off by default for an ask box. With it off the assistant never offers a person and never opens a case,
and says so plainly rather than promising a follow-up that will not come.
still leaves you a way to reach them.
An address becomes a lead
An email captured at handover is written to the visitor’s profile, not just onto the ticket. If
that address already belongs to a profile, the two merge — the anonymous chatter becomes the
person they already were — and the tracker recognises them on their next visit. From then on they are segmentable,
targetable and syncable like any other known visitor.
create one.
Saved replies
Saved replies for your team are the answers your operators type over and over. They appear as a
picker in the reply box on the operator screen. The assistant never sees them and never says them to a
visitor.