AI front desk
Hand-offs & pausing
The assistant knows when to step back. When it does, it stops replying in that conversation until someone on your team hands it back.
When the assistant hands off
- The client asks for a person, is upset, or complains.
- The client asks for a refund, a discount or an exception.
- The topic is on your “Always hand these to a person” list.
- It can’t answer, or is still unsure after one clarifying question.
- A safety topic is detected: health or allergies, legal threats, disputed charges, harassment, a minor, or self-harm.
- A reply failed the accuracy check.
- The client already has the maximum number of upcoming bookings.
- A voice note couldn’t be transcribed, or you chose Always pass them to a person for voice notes.
- The client asked, in their own words, to stop getting messages.
The assistant tells the client a person will follow up, writes a short summary for your team, and flags the chat Needs you.
Important
If a client mentions self-harm, they immediately get a message pointing them to emergency help (911 and the 988 crisis line in Canada and the US) and the chat goes to your team.
Who gets told
Owners, managers and front desk get an alert in the app and by email right away; a provider is told in the app when it’s their client. Alerts about the same chat are sent at most once every 10 minutes. See Notifications.
Taking over and handing back
| What you do | What the assistant does | Until |
|---|---|---|
| Reply from the Inbox | Stays quiet in that chat | The client writes again after your quiet time (3 hours by default). Nothing is sent when the timer ends — it simply answers the next message. |
| Reply from the WhatsApp Business or Instagram app | Same as above | Same as above |
| Press Take over | Stays quiet | Someone presses Hand back or Resolve |
| The assistant handed off | Stays quiet | Someone presses Hand back or Resolve |
| A safety topic came up | Stays quiet | Someone presses Hand back or Resolve |
Resolve closes the chat’s flag and ends any pause. If the client writes again, the assistant answers. A reply from your team never shortens a stronger pause — replying in a complaint chat doesn’t let the assistant back in on its own.
The status strip
Each conversation shows who is answering: “Assistant is handling this”, “You’re handling this”, “Waiting for you”, “Paused automatically for …” or “Resolved”. The Inbox tabs are All, Needs you, Handling, Unread and Resolved.
Other reasons a chat needs you
- The assistant is switched off.
- A message couldn’t be delivered.
- A client gave a low rating after a visit.
- The assistant hit an error. The client gets “A member of our team will get back to you shortly.”
- One conversation reached its daily AI limit and switched to guided mode.
- The whole business reached its daily AI limit, or used up the month’s AI conversations (you’re told once a day).