AI behaviour: hand-off, hours & routing

AI behaviour: hand-off, hours & routing

Set when the AI hands off to a human, your business hours, and how conversations are assigned to your team.

The Settings area of your dashboard is where you control how your AI assistant behaves: when it works alone, when it hands a visitor to a person, and who on your team picks that conversation up. Every field here saves to your account and applies across your connected channels.

If you are still connecting your first channel, start with getting started — this page assumes the assistant is already live.

<!-- SCREENSHOT: The Settings page showing the AI & Commerce block, Business Hours, and Conversation Routing cards -->

Two kinds of setting, one Save button

The page mixes two config stores:

• AI Assist config — store connection, Sales Agent Mode, social credentials, and conversation routing. These live in one JSON record on your account.
• Widget / conversation config — business hours, escalation mode, quick replies, and triggers. These live on your chat widget config.

Most widget settings (business hours, escalation, triggers, quick replies) save the moment you change them. The AI Assist settings — routing, your sales pitch, store connection, and social keys — only persist when you click Save All Settings near the top of the AI & Commerce block. If you change your routing mode and navigate away without hitting that button, the change is lost. The Sales Agent on/off toggle is the exception: it saves the instant you flip it.

Your plan (Lite / Pro / Enterprise) is shown here read-only and gates some features — cards you can't use on your plan carry a Pro+ or Enterprise badge.

Business hours

Turn on Business Hours to tell the assistant when a human is actually available.

• Timezone — choose from UTC, America/New_York, America/Los_Angeles, Europe/London, Europe/Paris, Asia/Tokyo, or Australia/Sydney.
• Weekly schedule — enable each day from Monday to Sunday independently and set a start and end time (defaults 09:00–17:00). Any day left disabled is treated as closed.
• Out-of-office message — shown in the widget when you're closed. Default: *"We're currently closed. We'll reply when we return!"*
• Offline ticket message — shown when a visitor is escalated outside your hours. Default: *"We are currently offline. Please leave a message."*

Business hours do not switch the AI off. It keeps answering questions around the clock from your knowledge base. Hours only change what happens when a visitor needs a person.

Escalation — when the AI hands off

Escalation Mode decides what happens the moment a visitor asks to speak to a human. There are three options:

• Follow business hours (default) — on the web widget the visitor is shown a ticket form so they can leave an email for follow-up; it does not currently connect them to a live agent, even during your open hours.
• Always create ticket — never connect live. The visitor is asked for their email and a support ticket is opened for you to answer later.
• Always connect to agent — 24/7 human support. Escalations always try to reach a live agent regardless of your business hours.

Tickets raised this way appear in your ticket queue, and live hand-offs land in your unified inbox.

Conversation routing

Conversation Routing decides which teammate an incoming or escalated conversation is auto-assigned to. This card is only visible to the account owner — invited team members don't see it.

• Manual (default) — nothing is auto-assigned. Agents pick conversations up themselves from the inbox.
• Round Robin — rotate through your team evenly, in a stable order.
• Least Busy — assign to the agent with the fewest open, in-progress, or escalated conversations.

The Only assign to online agents toggle (on by default) restricts assignment to agents whose status is online. If nobody is online, Wallu falls back to assigning across all eligible agents so conversations aren't stranded. Only owners, admins, and agents are eligible — viewers are never auto-assigned.

Routing is part of the AI Assist config, so remember to click Save All Settings after changing the mode.

Sales Agent Mode

Available on Pro plans and above. When enabled, the assistant watches for purchase intent and weaves your sales pitch into its replies. Enter your value proposition in the Sales Pitch box. The on/off toggle saves immediately; the pitch text saves with Save All Settings.

The model, the name, and the tone

These come up a lot, so to be precise about what Settings does and doesn't expose:

• Model — you don't choose one. Wallu selects and manages the underlying model for each feature. There is no model dropdown in Settings.
• Name — in the chat widget the assistant is labelled Wallu AI by default. That name (plus its subtitle and avatar) is a display label configured with the rest of your widget appearance — see channels.
• Tone — there is no separate personality or tone slider for the support assistant. Its voice comes from the wording and facts in your knowledge base, plus your Sales Pitch when Sales Agent Mode is on. Write your knowledge base the way you want the assistant to sound.

Team, account & automation settings

Invite teammates and set their roles, auto-close stale chats, connect commerce, and manage account-level options.

Beyond the AI behaviour controls, the Settings page holds your team, your commerce connections, and a set of account-level and widget-helper options. Most of these save as soon as you change them; store connection and social keys save with Save All Settings.

Team members

Invite teammates from the Team Members card (owner only).

• Enter a name and email, then pick a role: Agent, Admin, or Viewer.
• An email invite is sent. New members show as Pending until they accept, then Active once they're online. (Tell them to check Spam/Promotions if the invite doesn't arrive.)
• Admins are marked with a crown. Remove anyone with the trash icon — you can't remove the owner-admin.

Roles affect routing: Agents and Admins can be auto-assigned conversations; Viewers cannot. Invited team members also see a reduced Settings page — conversation routing, account name, team management, and the danger zone are all hidden from them.

<!-- SCREENSHOT: Team Members card with an invite form (name, email, role dropdown) and a member list showing Pending/Active status -->

Account name

Sets the name shown in your sidebar and to your team (for example, "Tomorrow Hub"). Type it and it saves when you click away or press Enter.

Auto-close inactive conversations

Under Conversation Automation, set Auto-close after (days) between 0 and 365. Conversations with no activity for that many days are closed automatically. Set it to 0 to disable auto-close entirely.

Store connection & commerce

• Store Connection (Pro+) — connect WooCommerce so the assistant can look up orders. Enter your store URL, consumer key, and consumer secret; Wallu validates the connection when you save. See WooCommerce for the full walkthrough.
• Stripe Connect — link a Stripe account for payment and checkout flows. Once connected, the card shows your connected account ID.
• SMS Sender ID (Enterprise) — set a custom sender name (max 11 characters) for SMS. Usage is shown as *used / 500*.
• Social — store a Discord webhook plus Twitter/X and Facebook credentials for cross-posting and auto-replies.

Widget helpers

These are configured in Settings and pushed to your chat widget:

• Quick Replies — canned responses (a label plus the message text) that agents can drop into a conversation.
• Help Center — turn on an in-widget help centre backed by your knowledge base articles and FAQs.
• Smart Triggers — automatically send a message or open the chat based on page URL or time on page. Presets are included, such as an exit-intent nudge after 30 seconds.
• Auto-Translate & Force Voice Language — auto-translate replies into the visitor's browser language, and optionally force a language code (for example ro-RO) for microphone transcription. More detail in languages.
• Banned IPs — block abusive visitors by IP address.

Danger zone

Delete your account (owner only). You must re-enter your password and confirm a second time. This is permanent and cannot be undone.

How settings are saved (for API users)

If you build against the API, these are the endpoints behind the Settings screen:

• AI Assist config (store connection, Sales Agent, social, routing) → PUT /api/ai/config, stored as a JSON blob on your account. Your plan is injected read-only in the response and stripped before saving. WooCommerce settings are validated and mirrored to your integration record, and follow-up settings sync to their own table.
• Widget / conversation config (business hours, escalation, quick replies, triggers, help centre) → POST /api/widget/config.
• Account name and auto-close days → your user profile.
• Team members → GET / POST / DELETE /api/agents.

Reading the same config back is a GET /api/ai/config, which returns your saved JSON plus the read-only plan and SMS usage fields.