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Phases: the stages of a customer conversation

Phases represent the different stages of a customer's lifecycle with your business (such as moving from a new lead to a qualified prospect, and eventually to a closed sale). Each conversation sits in exactly one phase at a time.

Because phases are configured per playbook, all senders linked to the same playbook share the same conversation flow, while different playbooks operate independently.

The Phases Page

The Phases page in the dashboard allows you to track and manage your customer journeys:

• Track stages: View a summary of how many conversations sit in each defined phase.
• Filter by phase: View a list of customers currently in a specific phase to focus on a particular stage of your pipeline.
• Manage transition requests: View pending phase transition requests proposed by the assistant, and either approve or reject them.
• Manual transitions: Manually move a customer to a different stage in their lifecycle from the customer's detail view.

How Conversations Move Between Phases

Conversations transition automatically based on rules you define, or through manual actions:

• Inbound message triggers: Move the customer to the next phase as soon as they send a message on any connected channel (such as WhatsApp or Instagram). Note that this advances the customer on their next message regardless of the message content.
• Inactivity rules: Move the customer if they remain silent for a specified duration after the assistant sends a reply.
• Phase duration rules: Move the customer after a set total elapsed time since entering the phase, regardless of whether they send messages.
• Assistant transition requests: The assistant can propose a phase change if it detects the conversation needs to move (for example, when a human needs to intervene). This creates a pending request on your dashboard for a team member to approve or reject, and routes the conversation to a human.
• Manual moves: A team member can manually change a customer's phase at any time from the dashboard.

Tip: avoid configuring both inactivity and phase duration rules on the same phase. To prevent conflicting transition logic, give each phase a single timed rule.

Phase Side Effects

You can configure automatic actions to occur when a customer transitions to a new phase:

• Proactive openers: A new phase can automatically send a greeting or opening message to the customer. If a phase should enter silently, you can turn this greeting off.
• Phase summaries: When a customer leaves a phase, the assistant generates a summary of what occurred during that phase and saves it directly to the customer's history.

The WhatsApp 24-Hour Window Limit

If the WhatsApp customer service window is closed (more than 24 hours since the customer's last message, or if they have not messaged you yet), the assistant cannot send a free-form proactive opener. Instead, it will automatically send a pre-approved template message to re-engage the customer.

This template must be approved in your Meta account before it can be used. If the template has not yet been approved, the message will fail to send.

Draft Phases and Escalation

• Draft phases: A phase with no instructions (an empty prompt) is considered a draft. Customers cannot transition into draft phases.
• Missing instructions: If a playbook or the customer's active phase lacks instruction prompts, the assistant will not auto-reply. The conversation is immediately escalated to your team.
• Opener delivery blocks: If a proactive opener message is pending or fails to deliver, any new incoming customer messages are temporarily held. If the delivery fails completely, the system auto-replies are paused, and the conversation is escalated to your team.
• Playbook editor warnings: The playbook editor highlights draft phases and transitions leading into drafts with warning badges and dashed lines so you can easily fix them.

Silent Holding Phases

You can configure a phase to act as a silent, back-office holding state (such as "Won" or "On Hold") by combining two settings:

1. Send entry message: Set this to off so the customer enters the phase silently without receiving a proactive opener.
2. Inbound policy: Change this to escalate. When a customer sends a message while in this phase, the assistant will not auto-reply and will hand the conversation off to your team.

This combination ensures the assistant never reaches out to the customer and hands any new incoming messages directly to a human team member.