Frequently asked questions
The AI
Will it send wrong answers to my customers?
Not if you introduce it the way it is designed to be introduced. The assistant answers only from your knowledge base, hands over anything it cannot cover, and does not act at all when its confidence is below your threshold.
On top of that, draft only exists precisely so you can watch it for a fortnight before letting anything through. See Automatic replies.
What does it do when it does not know?
It says so and escalates. The conversation goes to high priority, no reply is sent, and the reason is recorded. On website chat the visitor is told a person will take over and, if anonymous, asked for a name and email.
It does not guess. That is the property that makes automation safe here.
Can I turn the AI off entirely?
Yes. Turn off automatic replies and drafts on every classification, and optionally automatic classification for the workspace. FirstReply then works as a plain shared inbox, and the AI tools stay available on demand — Draft reply, Find answer, Summarize — when someone asks for them.
Which languages does it answer in?
Whatever the customer wrote in. This is independent of your interface language and of the workspace default.
Does it learn from my corrections?
Classification does. A classification a person sets by hand becomes a verified example and carries more weight than an AI-set one when similar messages arrive later.
Reply quality is not learned from edits. Fix those in the knowledge base for facts and in prompts for tone.
Channels
Do I have to change my support email address?
No. FirstReply connects to the mailbox you already have over IMAP and SMTP. Customers keep writing to the same address.
Does FirstReply delete mail from my mailbox?
No. Messages are read and left in place.
Can I connect several mailboxes?
Yes, up to your plan's inbox limit. Each is its own inbox and everything lands in the same conversation list.
Why is my reply shorter than what I typed?
Every channel except email has a length limit imposed by the platform — 350 characters on Google Play, 1,000 on Instagram, 4,096 on WhatsApp. The editor shows the limit for the channel you are replying on. See Channels.
Why did my formatting disappear?
Email is the only channel that carries rich text. Everywhere else the platform API accepts plain text, and formatting is stripped on the way out.
The knowledge base
How much do I need before it is useful?
Five to ten articles covering the questions you answer every week. That is enough to see whether it works on your traffic.
Can I use my existing help center?
Yes, and you should. Connect it as a website source and it stays in sync automatically.
What if my help center is wrong?
Fix it there. The knowledge base and your help center answering differently is worse than either one alone. If a page cannot be fixed, exclude it from the crawl and write a manual article instead.
Team and workspaces
How many workspaces do I need?
Almost certainly one. See Your workspace.
What happens to conversations when someone leaves?
They stay. The ones assigned to that person become unassigned rather than disappearing.
Can two people answer the same conversation at once?
Nothing stops them, but the conversation shows who it is assigned to, which is what assignment is for. Assign before you start typing on a busy queue.
Data
Where is the data stored?
In the European Union.
Can I export my data?
Yes, through the API.
How do I handle a deletion request?
Delete the contact, which removes the personal data held about that person. If the conversations themselves must go too, delete those as well.
What happens if I cancel?
The workspace becomes read-only at the end of the paid period. Nothing is deleted, and resubscribing restores it. See Subscription.