Chat Question Rules

Question rules decide what happens when visitors ask about particular topics, instead of leaving it to a generated answer. For example, you can send every cancellation request straight to your billing team, reply to refund questions with your exact policy wording, or tell the AI how to answer questions about a sensitive topic.

Go to Inbox, then Messenger settings, then the Rules tab.

Add a rule

Click Add a rule, or Start from an example to begin with a ready-made cancellation rule.
Give it a short name, such as Cancellation. Your team sees this name in the inbox.
Under When a visitor…, describe the kind of question in plain words.
Under Then, choose what happens, and fill in the fields for that choice.
Click Save settings.

The Rules tab with three rules: a refund rule that hands off to the Support team, an enterprise pricing rule that replies with an exact message, and a security rule that answers following extra guidance — Messenger settings, Rules tab

Each rule has an on/off switch, so you can pause a rule without deleting it. A rule that's missing something it needs is marked Incomplete: not used yet. You can have up to 30 rules.

Describing the question

The AI matches on meaning, not exact words. A rule for "Wants to cancel, close or delete their account" catches "can u close my acct" and "I want to stop paying" too. Describe what the visitor wants, and list the variations you care about:

"Wants to cancel, close or delete their account, stop their subscription, or downgrade"
"Asks for a refund or disputes a charge"
"Reports a security issue or a suspected data breach"

What a rule can do

Then	What happens	Fields
Hand off to the team	The conversation goes to your team, as if the visitor had asked for a person.	Team: a team from Notifications, or Decide automatically. Message before the handoff (optional): said to the visitor first.
Reply with this exact message	The visitor gets your message exactly as written, with a Talk to a person button, instead of a generated answer.	Message
Answer, following this guidance	The AI still answers from your articles, following extra instructions for this topic.	Guidance for answers on this topic

Teams are set up on the Notifications tab. See Chat Notifications and Teams.

How rules fit with everything else

A matching rule wins over a normal answer, and over the frustration handoff.
Your AI agent tab's Guidance still applies to everything the AI writes. A rule's guidance is added on top, for its topic only.
Rules are applied by the AI agent, so they only work while Let the AI agent answer first is on.
Your team sees Rule: … with the rule's name on affected messages in the inbox. Visitors never see it.

Example: send cancellations to billing

Field	Value
Name	Cancellation
When a visitor…	Wants to cancel, close or delete their account, stop their subscription, or downgrade
Then	Hand off to the team
Team	Billing
Message before the handoff	I'm sorry to hear you're thinking of leaving. I'll bring in someone from our team who can help with your account.

A visitor who writes "how do I close my account?" gets your message, and the conversation goes to the Billing team's queue and alerts. The AI doesn't try to answer it.

If you'd rather let visitors help themselves, use Answer, following this guidance instead, with guidance such as "Before explaining how to cancel, mention they can pause their account instead, and link to the pause article."

Check your rules

Use the Test tab to confirm a rule catches the questions you expect, and doesn't catch ones it shouldn't. Each result shows the rule matched and the guidance used. Save your settings first, since tests use saved settings. See Testing the Chat AI.