What the AI Lead Agent does (and does not do)

The AI Lead Agent answers new inbound leads for you — by text, website form, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and more — asks qualifying questions one at a time, and hands anything urgent straight to your team. It never invents prices, never promises arrival times, and never claims a job is booked unless the customer explicitly confirms and the system passes a backend re-check. You choose how much it does per lead source, from drafting replies for your approval all the way to automatic qualification and booking.

Before you start

• The AI Lead Agent is included with the Phone Enterprise phone plan. On other plans the Leads page shows an upgrade prompt with a View Phone Plans button.
• Owners and admins configure the agent. Dispatchers work leads in the inbox; editing agent settings requires the lead-agent edit permission.

What the agent does

• Replies to new leads on every source you enable — Direct SMS, Google Maps texts, your website form, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and webhook sources like Yelp via Zapier (connect lead sources).
• Qualifies the lead by collecting the essentials: Service type, Service address or ZIP, Urgency, Photo when useful, Contact name, and Preferred day/time for non-urgent leads.
• Drafts or sends replies depending on the mode you picked for that source — drafts wait for your approval in the Leads inbox.
• Escalates urgent leads to a human instead of scheduling them itself.
• Books jobs only in the highest mode, and only after the customer explicitly confirms and a backend re-check passes.

The five automation modes

Each lead source gets its own mode, set in Leads → Configure → Sources:

Not every source supports every mode. Some channels are draft-only or first-reply-only until deeper support ships; the mode dropdown for each source only offers what that channel can actually do.

What the agent will never do

These rules are built in and always enforced — you cannot accidentally turn them off:

• "Ask one question at a time."
• "Do not quote prices unless verified tenant data exists."
• "Do not promise availability or arrival time unless verified."
• "Do not claim a booking is confirmed until the customer explicitly confirms and the backend re-check passes."
• "STOP, START, and HELP messages follow the existing SMS compliance flow."

The platform-level safety constraints go further: "No raw webhook creates a job.", "Bookings require explicit customer confirmation.", and "SMS sends use the existing billable SMS and compliance path." — meaning opted-out customers are never texted and every send counts against your normal SMS usage, exactly like a message you send yourself.

Urgent leads always go to a human

When a customer says the job is urgent, an emergency, ASAP, or needed today, the AI pauses itself and flags the conversation Needs Review. The conversation header shows "Urgent lead — AI is paused. Dispatcher review required." and your team takes over — see take over a conversation from the AI.

Troubleshooting

• The Leads page shows an upgrade prompt instead of the inbox — the AI Lead Agent needs the Phone Enterprise plan. Click View Phone Plans to upgrade.
• The pill in the header reads "AI Agent · Off" — the SMS channel is disabled or set to Off. Open Configure → Sources and enable it.
• The pill reads "AI Agent · Settings unavailable" — the settings could not be loaded. Refresh the page; if it persists, contact support.
• The AI wrote a reply but the customer never got it — the source is probably in Draft only mode. Drafts show an AI draft tag in the thread and wait for you; switch the source to an auto mode if you want them sent automatically.