Why is my AI assistant not answering customers?
Quick answer
Start with the chat itself: if the AI Assistant switch is off, or the chat was handed to your team, the assistant stays quiet in that chat. If it is on, check that the answer is in a published Instant Answers section or a trained Knowledge Hub document.
A customer asked whether you do corporate catering, and nobody replied for an hour. You open the chat expecting to find your assistant's answer, and there is nothing there.
Most of the time, the assistant is doing what it was set up to do: it is switched off for that chat, it passed the question to your team, or the answer is not somewhere it can read yet. The checks below are ordered from the most common cause to the least. Stop at the first one that matches.
Your AI assistant is switched off for that chat
How to confirm: Open the chat. The AI Assistant switch at the top of the chat window is off, or the chat is assigned to a team member instead of AI Assistant.
When your assistant hands a chat to your team, or someone on your team takes it over, the assistant stops replying in that chat. That is deliberate, so it does not talk over the person helping the customer.
How to fix:
- Turn the AI Assistant switch on. HeyBirdy confirms with AI Assistant is now enabled.
- Or open the assignment menu at the top of the chat and choose AI Assistant.
The switch is locked, and your assistant stays on, once the chat has closed or the 24-hour customer service window has passed. See Turn the AI assistant off for one chat.
The answer is still in Draft
How to confirm: Go to AI Management, then Instant Answers, and find the answer. If it sits in Draft, or in a section marked Unpublished, your assistant cannot use it.
How to fix: Use Move to Another Section to file the answer in a proper section, then select Publish on that section. The steps are in Instant Answers.
The document is uploaded but not trained
How to confirm: Go to AI Management, then Knowledge Hub. Find the document and check the Status column. Not Trained means your assistant cannot read it. Last Trained At tells you whether it is working from an older version.
How to fix: Open the row menu and select Train. If you replaced the file, upload the new version and train that one. See Knowledge Hub.
The question was never taught
How to confirm: Go to AI Management, then Unanswered Questions. If the customer's question appears there, your assistant had no answer to give.
How to fix: Select Add to Instant Answers on that row and write the answer, then make sure its section is published. Unanswered Questions walks you through it.
The question needed a person
How to confirm: Go to Chat Alerts. If there is an alert for this customer, your assistant recognised it could not handle the request and passed it to your team.
This is correct behaviour. A booking for the whole restaurant, a complaint, or a question no one has written an answer for should reach a person.
How to fix: Nothing is broken. Pick up the alert and reply. See Chat Alerts. If the same kind of question keeps raising alerts and has a standard answer, add it to Instant Answers.
The off-hours message went out instead
How to confirm: The customer received your off-hours message rather than an answer.
When your assistant hands a chat to your team outside your working hours, HeyBirdy sends the message set under Automated Messages, then Off-Hours Reply, so the customer knows when to expect a reply. The assistant still answers what it can at night. This message goes out only for questions it passed on.
How to fix:
- If the question has a standard answer, teach it through Instant Answers so it is answered at any hour.
- If the timing is wrong, check your working hours and Business Clock in Workspace Settings.
- To change the wording, see Set the off-hours reply.
A Response Policy rule blocks the topic
How to confirm: Go to AI Management, then AI Assistant Settings, and open Response Policy. Check whether Restriction Rules is switched on and whether a ticked rule covers the question, for example Don't answer off-topic questions or Don't promise pricing or availability. Check Additional rules too.
How to fix: Untick or reword the rule, select Generate Instructions, then Save Settings. See AI Assistant Settings.
WhatsApp Business is disconnected
How to confirm: A banner across the top of the portal asks you to connect your WhatsApp Business account, or Settings, then WhatsApp Business, does not show your account as connected. Open the Phone Status tab to check your number.
How to fix: Reconnect your account and check the phone number's status. See WhatsApp Business.
The AI budget has run out
How to confirm: A banner across the top of the portal says API requests are disabled until your limit is increased or your quota resets. The playground in AI Management shows OpenAI Budget Depleted.
How to fix: Contact the HeyBirdy team through Something's Wrong? in the sidebar. Your assistant starts replying again once the budget is restored.
The data needs re-indexing
How to confirm: You have published new answers or made large changes, and your assistant still gives older answers or misses new ones.
How to fix:
- Go to Settings, then Data Indexing.
- Open the Instant Answers tab.
- Select Re-index and wait for it to finish.
See Data Indexing for when each tab is worth running.
Still not answering
Ask the same question in the AI Assistant Playground on any AI Management page. If the playground answers correctly but live chats do not, the cause is in the chat itself, so go back to the first check. If neither answers, report it through Something's Wrong? with the customer's question and the time it was sent.