The assistant — the "auto-attendant" — answers visitor questions from your knowledge base. You decide when it steps in and when a human does.
Configure it under Settings → AI & Engagement → Chat Behaviour.
When does the AI answer instead of a person?
With Enable Auto-Attendant on, there are two cases:
- No operators online — the AI takes over immediately.
- Operators online but not responding — the AI takes over after the operator response timeout (default 30 seconds). If nobody accepts the chat in that window, the visitor stops waiting and starts getting answers.
An operator can always Take over a chat the AI is handling, from Queue or Chats.
What happens if I turn the auto-attendant off?
Visitors queue for a human. If nobody is available, they see your Offline Message and a leave-a-message form, so the lead is still captured. Set that message under Settings → AI & Engagement → Chat Behaviour, and see Business hours and offline coverage for scheduling it properly.
What does the AI actually do to produce an answer?
- It retrieves the most relevant content from your knowledge base.
- It calls any allowlisted live tools that the question needs.
- It applies your chatbot rules — tone, must-say, must-never-say.
- It answers in the visitor's language, if auto-translate is on.
If none of your knowledge and none of your tools can answer the question, it says so rather than guessing — and the question lands in Analytics → Answer gaps for you to fix.
You don't have to take any of this on faith: the test console shows how it would answer a single question right now, and the AI Trust Center replays whole past conversations against your current knowledge base and tracks your AI resolution rate.
Can visitors ask for a real person?
Yes, if you enable Let visitors ask to reach a human. When a visitor asks, your team is notified — including a push to operators' phones, even with the app closed — and the request is highlighted in the AI-handled list. The AI keeps the visitor company until someone joins.
By default these requests respect your business hours: outside them, the visitor gets your away message instead of your team getting woken up. Turn on Allow requests outside business hours to push regardless of the schedule.
You can also make the assistant escalate specific topics automatically, without the visitor having to ask — see Escalating to a human.
How many chats can one operator handle at once?
Set Max Concurrent Chats (per operator) under Chat Behaviour, and override it per person under Operators. Once an operator is at their limit, new visitors queue or go to the AI rather than piling up on them.