Auto responder
Coming soon. This isn't available to customers yet.
Hand conversations to a responder that answers customers for you.
What you can do
- Add a responder another feature offers: Website sale from Agency, or Customer support from Store, which answers customers after they buy from their recent orders.
- Give a conversation to a responder from any automation with Give this to an auto responder, or by hand from Inbox: given by hand, it answers the newest message on the thread at once.
- Choose which Inbox tags start a responder: a message given one of them, by a person or by Sort what comes in, becomes a conversation of that responder.
- Sort what comes in: give each new message a tag by your own rules (sender, address it was sent to, subject words or Inbox's own category), and let AI pick one of your tags for what the rules leave once GrowLocal has turned AI choosing on for your business; until then it says so and only your rules tag.
- Change what a responder does at each stage: on its Stages and playbook tab, press a stage to change what it is trying to do, what it does when they write back and what it writes when they go quiet; what else it may do there is under What else it may do. Saved changes apply to conversations that start after you save.
- See each conversation's stage, what it is about, its thread and every stage it moved to.
- Move a conversation to another stage yourself; only the moves its responder allows are accepted.
- Answer a conversation yourself: sending your own words on its thread from Inbox takes it over, and its steps wait until it is handed back to them.
- Leave your team a note on a conversation: it shows on the conversation's page with who left it, and is never sent.
- Give a conversation to one of your agents whose role is Conversation responder, if you can read its thread: the agent answers it from then on, its responder's steps draft nothing and its follow-ups wait. Each new message or fact wakes the same agent; its drafts wait in Needs you like any other. Taking it over, handing it back (to its steps or to an agent) or giving it to another agent stops the agent's work, saying who and why; a draft a person changed is kept.
- Answer an agent's send: when an agent asks to send, the conversation's page and Needs you show "<Agent> drafted it" with the exact words and who they go to, to anyone who can send from that thread. Send sends it as you; Edit sends your own words instead, as you. The agent is told what became of it.
- When a reply did not send, Didn’t send replaces Reply ready in the conversation, Needs you and its board card while those words remain the open draft. The reply stays yours to edit; the reason says what to fix, with a press to the mailbox connection, Email sender settings or Inbox when that can help. A person who asked not to be contacted is never offered a retry.
What you can add
- Customer support: Answer customers after they buy, from what Store knows of their orders
- Website sale: Take a conversation with someone interested in the website made for them to a paid sale
Built-in automation
- Auto responder: Gives each new message a tag by your rules, or by AI for what they leave, so the auto responder that tag starts picks it up. Nothing is sent.
Settings
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Auto responders | The responders this business added. | |
| Playbooks | The playbook this business saved for a responder, by responder: what its new conversations follow when whatever gives them pins none. | |
| Tags that start a responder | The tags that start each responder's conversations, by responder: a message given one of them in Inbox gives its thread to that responder. | |
| Responders whose tags are switched off | The responders whose starting tags are kept but start nothing, switched off on What starts it. | |
| Sort what comes in | Sort what comes in: the business's rules, tried in order, and whether AI chooses a tag for a message no rule matches. | |
| Revision | How many times these settings have been saved. |
Limits
- Nothing is sent by itself: what a responder writes is a draft in Inbox for a person to check and send.
- One conversation per email thread: a thread one responder holds is not given to another.
- Sort what comes in never tags automatic mail (an out-of-office, a bounce, bulk mail) or someone on your do-not-contact list, and AI only picks among the tags you listed.
- A message asking to stop always ends the conversation; no move is offered after it, whoever holds it.
- While a person holds a conversation its steps draft nothing and choose no move, and follow-ups wait. Handed back, it answers their waiting message once, or waits again from the last reply sent.
- A draft its steps wrote, changed or not, and another automation's draft sent unchanged take nothing over.
- Someone on your do-not-contact list, or who asked Email not to be emailed, gets no draft, whoever gave the conversation. When Email can't be checked, nothing is drafted for them until it can.
- Only a person can add a responder, and a conversation can only be given to a responder this business added. Adding one again changes nothing. A responder is added only where the feature that offers it is on.
- Customer support finds a customer only by the address they wrote from, and only when their mail provider confirmed that address sent it, never by an order number typed in the email; its answers are written from their orders without any payment detail. When we could not confirm who sent it, nothing about any order is read and a person answers. Anyone Store doesn't know, and anything about money back, a change to an order or a payment, goes to a person. It never refunds, charges or changes an order.
- Conversations keep references to the thread and the record they are about, never the words of the mail.
- An agent on your team that answers conversations (its role is Conversation responder) works under the access of the person it is accountable to, whoever gave it the conversation, and only on the one conversation it was given: it reads its page, saves the reply draft, leaves a note, moves the stage or hands it to a person. What anyone wrote on the conversation is data to it, never instructions. It never sends: its attempt to send waits for a person, showing the exact words and who they go to; approved, it is sent once as the person who approved it, through the same Inbox reply and checks as their own Send, and never to someone on the do-not-contact list. It never refunds, charges or changes an order, a customer or an account. When that person loses their access, it stops, and it can't be given a conversation. A message asking to stop ends its work.
- Only a person who can read a conversation's thread can give it to an agent or stop the agent answering it.
- An agent's send waiting for a person is shown only to someone who can send from the conversation's thread; someone who can't read the thread sees nothing of it. A message that arrives while the agent is working reaches it in that turn, or right after it, once.