AI assistant and handoff

On the Advanced plan, the AI assistant can answer clients in the Conversations inbox before anyone on your team does. It answers with your real catalog, prices and availability, can create bookings, and hands the conversation to your team when the client asks for a person or the question needs one.

On the Core plan, every conversation goes straight to your team. The settings page shows Let the AI assistant answer first with an Upgrade to Advanced button instead of the assistant settings.

On Advanced, the assistant is activated once with Generate public API token on the AI assistant tab, see Activate the AI assistant.

When the assistant answers

Pick the mode under Settings → Integrations → Omnichannel inbox → AI assistant, see Omnichannel inbox settings.

Each connected channel can follow this mode (Same as organization) or use its own, in the AI working hours column of the Channels table. For example, OLX buyers can get instant answers around the clock while Telegram clients reach your team during the day.

The website chat and the client portal chat have their own switch, AI assistant answers first, in the booking page settings and on the AI web widget page. When it is off, visitors chat with your team directly and the portal shows Chat with the team.

What the assistant does

• Answers questions about items, prices, deposits, availability and pickup using your organization's data.
• Can create bookings for the client when they agree.
• Never asks a client who is already linked to a client record for a phone number or email.
• When a client's request for a person is ambiguous, it asks one clarifying question, for example whether they want to talk to a manager in the chat or need an operator added to their booking.

Its replies appear in the thread under AI assistant. In messengers it writes short messages, and in channels that show plain text, such as Instagram, formatting is removed.

Reply language

• The assistant answers in the language of the client's latest message: a message in Polish gets a Polish answer, one in English an English answer.
• A message in Russian is answered in Ukrainian.
• When the client's messages show no language (only a name, a number, a link or an emoji), it answers in your organization's language.

Outside working hours requests

Clients often ask to pick up gear on a Sunday or return it at 22:00. Pickup or return outside working hours, in the How the assistant works section of the AI assistant tab, decides what the assistant does then. Hover the question mark to read What the AI does when a client asks to pick up or return gear on a closed day or outside your hours.

Choose Pass to the team to arrange if you sometimes hand out or take back gear outside your hours by arrangement. The setting also applies to the website chat and the booking page chat. Where the assistant cannot hand a chat over, for example while the Conversations inbox is off, it offers the nearest working time instead.

Your working hours come from Date & time. The setting is hidden while When the assistant answers is Never.

When it hands the conversation over

The assistant passes the conversation to your team when:

Before handing over, the assistant asks once for a phone number or email when Ask for a phone or email before handing over is on (the default), so your team can reach the client and find their record.

After a handoff:

• The conversation shows up for your team with the Handoff section: the reason and a one-paragraph summary of what the client wants.
• The client is told a team member will reply in the same chat.
• Team members who chose Handed off to the team under notifications get a push notification.

Taking over and handing back

• Take over. While the assistant answers, a note above the composer reads The AI assistant is answering. Your reply takes the conversation over. Press Take over or simply reply. In the mobile app, Take over is in the ⋯ menu.
• The client is told a person joined. When you take over by replying, the client first gets a short message in your organization's language, {first name} from our team has joined the chat., and the thread shows {name} joined the conversation. Pressing Take over before replying takes the conversation over quietly, without this message. See Who handles a conversation.
• Return to AI. Hands a conversation your team holds back to the assistant. The button sits in the conversation header on the web and in the ⋯ menu in the mobile app.
• Quiet conversations return by themselves. With Return quiet conversations to the assistant on (12 hours by default), a conversation your team handled that stays quiet that long goes back to the assistant at the client's next message.
• Closing a conversation also returns it to the assistant.

Common scenarios

• After-hours questions. Mode Outside working hours: the assistant answers at night and on weekends, collects a phone number for anything it cannot settle, and the morning shift finds the handoffs waiting.
• A busy OLX listing. The OLX channel set to Always while the organization uses During working hours: buyers asking "is it still available?" get an answer in seconds at any time.
• A Sunday pickup request. A client asks the assistant on Saturday to pick up a camera on Sunday at 10:00, when you are closed. With Offer the nearest working time, the assistant explains you are closed on Sunday and suggests 10:00 on Saturday or Monday, then uses the day the client picks. With Pass to the team to arrange, it checks the camera is free, quotes the price, and hands the chat to your team with Sunday 10:00 pickup in the summary, so a manager can decide whether someone can meet the client.
• A long negotiation. The assistant reaches Replies before handing over and passes the conversation on, so a person picks up a client who is not getting what they need.

Tips and cautions

• Set your working hours first. Without a schedule, During working hours never lets the assistant answer.
• Lower the reply limit if clients go in circles. A limit of 5 to 10 replies hands stuck conversations to your team sooner.
• Keep the contact question on for OLX. OLX does not share buyers' phone numbers, so the assistant's question is often the only way to get one.