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.
