When AI SMS or AI email responses are enabled, customers can text or email your business and get an automatic reply from the same AI system that answers phone calls and website chats.
What Stays The Same Across Channels
Every AI channel pulls from your existing Answering Agent setup:- Business knowledge and location settings
- Team and phone-number AI instructions
- Integration context and safe customer-action rules
- Conversation history saved in the dashboard
- Task and question extraction after the conversation goes quiet
Channel Behavior
| Channel | Customer experience | Dashboard result |
|---|---|---|
| Phone | The AI answers live calls, uses approved integrations, and handles the conversation by voice. | Calls, transcripts, questions, tasks, and summaries are saved after the call. |
| Website chat | Visitors chat on your website using the same AI knowledge and eligible integrations. | Chat conversations are saved and extracted into dashboard tasks and questions after the thread goes quiet. |
| SMS | Customers can text your business number and receive AI replies when AI text responses are on. | SMS threads appear in Conversations. After 30 minutes of inactivity, Answering Agent extracts tasks and questions. |
| Customers can email or forward into your Answering Agent inbox and receive AI replies when AI email responses are on. | Email threads appear in Conversations. After 4 hours of inactivity, Answering Agent extracts tasks and questions. |
AI SMS Responses
AI SMS is built for short, back-and-forth customer questions. When a new inbound text arrives:Answering Agent receives the text
Twilio sends the inbound SMS to Answering Agent. The message is matched to the right team, location, and customer contact.
The AI checks whether it should reply
The AI replies only when AI text responses are enabled and the message is not part of an active human-handled task thread.
The same AI context is used
The reply is generated from your business knowledge, settings, and safe customer-action rules. SMS replies are kept short, direct, and plain text.
When AI SMS Will Not Reply
AI text responses are intentionally conservative. The AI will not send a new automatic reply when:- A team member has already replied from the dashboard in that conversation
- The text is tied to an active dashboard task or follow-up thread
- The customer has opted out of SMS
- The conversation has already moved into extraction or human handoff
- The conversation is marked as spam
AI Email Responses
AI email uses the same conversation engine, but gives the AI more room to write complete replies. When a new inbound email arrives:Answering Agent receives the email
The email is matched to your Answering Agent inbox and the enabled locations for that channel.
Sender authentication is checked
Answering Agent rejects unauthenticated provider verdicts so spoofed mail does not become an AI conversation.
The AI writes a channel-appropriate reply
Email replies can use complete sentences, paragraphs, and simple formatting. The AI still uses your same business settings and knowledge.
When AI Email Will Not Reply
AI email responses pause when a human has replied, the thread already has an active task, the conversation has started extraction, the customer requested human help, or the conversation is marked as spam.Human Replies Take Over The Thread
If your team replies from the dashboard and the customer responds, Answering Agent treats that as a human-owned conversation. The customer reply is still saved in the dashboard, but the AI does not jump back in with another automatic response. This is the key difference between AI-started conversations and team-started follow-up:- New inbound conversation: AI can respond if the channel is enabled.
- Dashboard reply thread: The customer response routes back to the team, not the AI.
Extraction Timing
Answering Agent waits until message-based conversations go quiet before creating dashboard work from them.| Channel | Quiet window before extraction | What gets extracted |
|---|---|---|
| SMS | 30 minutes | Tasks, unanswered questions, contact details, and useful follow-up context |
| Website chat | 3 minutes | Tasks, unanswered questions, handoff details, and chat context |
| 4 hours | Tasks, unanswered questions, and email-thread context |
Safe Integration Rules
Phone calls and website chat can use richer live interaction patterns. SMS and email are more restricted because they do not have the same live confirmation UI. For SMS and email:- Written replies use your integration-backed business context when it is included in the AI settings.
- Live account changes, bookings, refunds, transfers, and other customer-affecting actions are not executed directly from a written reply by default.
- Destructive or customer-affecting actions require confirmation before execution when a safe written-channel action is available.
- Prompt and settings mutations are blocked.
- If the AI cannot safely complete an action, it collects the details and creates follow-up work for your team.
Set Up AI Responses
Use the channel setup pages to turn on written AI responses:SMS Setup
Register texting, choose your sender number, and enable AI text responses.
Email Setup
Connect email forwarding, verify your sending domain, and enable AI email responses.