What the assistant can do
An assistant that only answers is a brochure that talks. Yours does things: it books an appointment, asks a colleague when it does not know, takes down a contact, arranges a call back. This page lists those actions and, for each, what you decide.
One premise holds the whole page together: the assistant does not improvise an action. It only does the ones you switched on, and when it is unsure it asks instead of guessing.
Book an appointment
If you keep a calendar, the assistant checks what is free and books while the customer is still on the phone or in the chat. It never offers a time it cannot give.
What you decide: your opening hours, how long an appointment lasts, what is being booked (a person, a room, a table, a vehicle), and whether bookings confirm themselves or wait for you. You can also ask that only some of them wait: large groups, same-evening bookings, new customers.
What it will not do: move or cancel an existing appointment on its own. Those touch somebody else's day and stay yours.
Ask a colleague, while the customer waits
When a question is a person's to answer (an exception, a permission, something only you know), the assistant does not invent: it puts the customer on hold, sends the question to whoever is available, and comes back with the answer. On the phone the caller stays on the line with music; in a chat they get a holding line and then the answer.
If the customer names somebody ("I spoke to Mario about..."), the question goes to Mario. That is the most useful thing this can do: whoever already spoke to that customer is the one who knows the story. If Mario is not available right then, a colleague answers and the customer is told so, rather than believing Mario replied.
What you decide: who can receive requests, and what each person handles. In the Operators section you write each person's topics in your own words: "returns", "invoices", "German", "north side". There is no list to pick from, because a word that fits a salon is wrong for a law firm. Each person then decides for themselves, day to day, whether they are reachable by chat, by phone, or neither.
What never happens: a question that reaches nobody. If everyone is busy, or it is Sunday night, it still reaches somebody, ultimately whoever owns the account, and it is recorded that nobody was available.
Take a contact
When somebody asks for a quote, for commercial information, or to be contacted, the assistant collects the details through the conversation rather than reading out a form, and leaves them for you in Contacts.
About names and email addresses: on a phone line a foreign name or a dictated address arrives mangled, and the assistant knows it. It repeats what it understood and asks you to confirm, and if it still does not fit it asks you to spell it out or which language it comes from, rather than writing down something approximate. An appointment with no email is worth more than a wrong email.
Call back
If the customer would rather be called back, the assistant records it along with the reason and a good moment. It only does so after an explicit yes: it does not decide on its own that you will be calling somebody.
Pass a message to a person
The assistant can forward a request, or a customer's location, to a specific person: a colleague, a courier, the shift lead. It sends only to the addresses and numbers you saved, never to a contact it inferred from the conversation.
Search your own information
Everything it says about you comes from what you put in the Knowledge base. If something is not there, it says so and passes the question to you. The questions it could not answer are collected for you, so you know what to add.
What it never does
- It deletes nothing and cancels nothing.
- It promises no discount, deadline or exception you did not give it.
- It does not write to a customer on its own initiative: it answers whoever writes, and sends only what you asked it to send.
- It does not pretend to be a person. If asked, it answers honestly.
If you want behaviour of your own
The actions above are what the assistant knows how to do. When and how it uses them is yours to decide, in three places depending on the kind of thing:
- Information (hours, prices, rules) lives in the Knowledge base.
- The way it speaks (tone, formality, what never to say) lives in the assistant's settings, and you can also just ask for the change in words from the panel.
- Sequences ("when X arrives, tell Y and then do Z") are built in Automations.
If you need something that fits none of the three, write to us: almost always it is something everybody is missing, not just you.