What happens while a customer is in a flow
2 min readManagers and owners
Summary
When the bot waits for a reply, how long it waits, and what happens if the customer asks for something else.
Steps that wait for a reply
- Ask a question, List, the booking steps (Book, Reschedule, Cancel), Buttons, and a WhatsApp template with buttons wait for the customer.
- Every other step runs straight away and carries on to the next.
How long the bot waits
- A waiting step expires after 12 hours. After that, the customer's next message is answered fresh, as if no flow had started.
- To nudge them once, set If they stop replying on the trigger. See Triggers.
- If you pause or delete the flow, or remove the step they were waiting at, the wait is dropped.
If the customer asks for something else
- A clear request to cancel, move a booking or talk to a person leaves the flow and goes to the booking assistant or your team. The exception is when that request is one of the step's own buttons or choices.
- At Ask a question, other messages are taken as the answer.
- At Buttons or List, a reply that matches nothing is answered as if no flow were running, unless you set a retry line or a number of tries.
How a flow ends
- At an End flow or Hand over to team step.
- At a way out set to Nothing.
- At an AI answer step whose Answered leads nowhere: the AI then keeps answering.
- A customer part-way through finishes the version they started, even if you publish a new one.
Related articles
The Buttons step
Sends a message with up to 3 tap-able buttons. Each button leads to its own next step.
The Ask a question step
Asks the customer something, checks the kind of answer, and saves it as an @word for later steps.
The Hand over to team and End flow steps
Two ways to finish a flow: pass the chat to a person, or stop and let the assistant carry on.
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