Texts and Email

Choose which texts and emails are automatically assigned to the AI Receptionist.

The Texts and email tab picks which incoming conversations are automatically assigned to the receptionist. You can always assign any other conversation to it yourself from your Inbox - see Assigning conversations.

All three checkboxes start off. In setup they are on the last step, just before you turn the receptionist on. Ticking one changes nothing until the receptionist is on - and from that moment it answers those conversations for real, including replies to reminders going out that day, so the tab says so while it is still off.

Phone calls have tabs of their own - see Phone Calls.

Texts

Texts sent to your Apptoto number. Two checkboxes decide which text conversations are the receptionist’s.

New conversations

A text on a thread with no appointment behind it: someone new texting in, a past client coming back, or a conversation you started from the inbox.

A text that arrives more than 30 days after the last message on a thread also starts a new conversation, even if that thread began with a reminder. Someone texting a month after their appointment is not answering the reminder.

Replies to your reminders

An answer to an appointment reminder, confirmation, or other auto message, whether the schedule sent it or you clicked Send Now.

Replies to messages you composed yourself still come to you. A message written from the inbox or from an appointment, with or without a template, is yours to answer, and the receptionist stays out of it.

Note

With both of these off, the receptionist only answers texts on conversations you assign to it from the inbox.

Email

Replies to your reminder emails

Email replies from existing clients, in threads started by messages sent from Apptoto - an answer to a reminder, a confirmation, or any other auto message, whether the schedule sent it or you clicked Send Now. It does not answer email from someone who has never been messaged from your account.

Email replies stay in their original email thread, even after a long pause, so a client answering an old message does not start a second conversation.

Replies to emails you composed yourself still come to you. Somebody at your office wrote that message, so the answer to it is theirs to read.

Note

With this off, the receptionist only answers emails on conversations you assign to it from the inbox. That is also the only way it picks up an email conversation that did not start with one of your messages.

Notifications while the receptionist is answering

Conversations the receptionist handles are handled quietly. It answers without interrupting you, marks the conversation read, and only notifies you when it takes a message for you or cannot answer at all. If you currently get an email or text every time a client replies, you will see a note on the tab confirming this once one of the checkboxes is ticked.

Everything it handles is still recorded. You can read any conversation in full on the Activity tab or in your Inbox.

Stepping in yourself

You can reply from your Inbox to any conversation the receptionist has been answering. When you do, the conversation becomes yours: the receptionist stops answering it, and the client’s next message comes to you. Conversations someone handed to the receptionist on purpose work differently - see Replying to a conversation the AI Receptionist owns.