AI Configuration

Overview

The AI Configuration page is organized into three groups, shown in the sidebar:

• Build is the AI you are shipping: Identity, Knowledge, and Behavior. Most of your setup happens here.
• Extend adds optional capabilities on paid plans: Media Library, File Handling, Follow-ups, and CSAT Surveys.
• Protect sets the guardrails: Restrictions and Blocked Users.

The single most useful idea to hold onto: facts go in Knowledge, behavior goes in Instructions. Your hours, services, prices, and FAQs belong in the Knowledge Base. How the AI should act, what to recommend, what to ask first, and any rules belong in your instructions. Keeping them separate is the difference between a bot that guesses and one that answers.

AI Readiness Score

At the top of the sidebar is an AI Ready meter with a percentage. It is a quick health check of how well your AI is set up. Click it to expand a checklist, and click any unfinished item to jump straight to the setting that fixes it.

The score rewards the things that make a bot actually useful:

• Website added and scanned
• Goals configured
• Instructions written (a real paragraph, not one line)
• At least 3 FAQs
• At least 1 service
• Business hours set
• A knowledge document uploaded (on plans that include document storage)
• File handling enabled (on plans that include it)
• Follow-ups enabled (on plans that include them)
• AI tone set

You do not need 100% to go live, but aiming high is the simplest way to make sure you have not left an obvious gap. Items that your plan does not include are left out of the calculation, so the target is always fair for your tier.

Identity

Identity is who your AI is: the source it learns your business from, the contact details it can share, its personality, an optional first greeting, and your custom rules.

Website Smart Setup

Paste your website URL and click Scan Website. ChatGenius reads your site and pulls out your business summary, services, FAQs, and contact details, then flows them into your Knowledge Base. The scan takes one to two minutes because it is thorough.

When it finishes, you get a review panel showing what it found. Check it before saving, then re-scan any time your site changes. This is the single biggest head start you can give a new bot.

Business contact. The email and phone you enter here are what the AI shares when a customer asks how to reach you. Leave them blank and the AI shares no contact details. Your account login email and phone are never exposed to customers.

Personality & Tone

Choose how your AI sounds. Tone shapes word choice and formality across every reply:

• Casual & Friendly: like texting a helpful friend, emojis welcome.
• Professional (recommended): warm but businesslike and approachable.
• Formal & Direct: minimal, to the point, no small talk.

You can also give the AI a name (optional) for a more personal touch, for example "Alex".

Welcome Message

An optional greeting (up to 500 characters) sent on the first message of every new conversation. It guarantees a consistent first impression. It has two behaviors:

• Combined with AI reply: the welcome and the AI's answer arrive in one message. Best when customers usually open with a question.
• Standalone: send only the welcome first, and let the AI engage on the customer's next message. This mimics a human receptionist who says hello before getting down to business.

Leave it blank for no set greeting, in which case the AI just answers naturally.

Custom Instructions

This is the heart of your bot's behavior. The Custom Rules & Guidelines box (up to 15,000 characters) is where you put basic business info the AI should always have on hand (phone, website, address) plus any specific rules for how it should handle conversations.

Good instructions are specific. For example:

• "Always ask for their zip code before giving a quote."
• "Recommend the premium package first."
• "We don't offer same-day appointments."

Remember the rule from the overview: services, pricing, and FAQs live in the Knowledge tab, not here. Instructions are for behavior, not for facts you will keep updating.

Two tools help you write them:

• Describe Your AI (powered by Claude): tell it about your business in plain English and watch your instructions build live, with a side-by-side test of the bot before you save. This is a desktop feature, covered in the dedicated AI Instruction Builder guide.
• The magic wand next to the box rewrites what you already have using AI best practices. It works on mobile too.

Knowledge

The Knowledge Base is everything the AI knows about your business as fact. It holds three kinds of items, all counting toward one plan limit shown at the top of the tab:

• FAQs: a question and answer. The AI pulls from these for common questions, and shows you how often each one gets used.
• Services: a menu item with a name, price, price unit (fixed, hourly, per unit, or quote required), optional duration, and description. If you connect Google Calendar and enable Meet, a service can be marked virtual so a booking sends a Google Meet invite.
• Documents: PDF or TXT files (up to 5MB each) on plans that include document storage. The AI reads them and answers from their content.

Every item can be turned on or off, edited, or deleted, and you can bulk-select items to remove several at once. The website scan populates most of this for you automatically.

Behavior

Behavior controls how the AI engages: what it is trying to accomplish, when you are open, when it should hand off to a person, and how it handles rapid-fire messages.

Goals

Tell the AI what to focus on. You can select any combination of:

• Answer questions about your business
• Book appointments
• Capture leads (name, email, phone)
• Qualify prospects with questions

Goals steer the conversation. If you turn on lead capture, the AI works toward collecting contact details; if you turn on booking, it steers toward scheduling.

Business Hours

Set your open and close times per day, or mark a day closed. If you are always available, check Always Open 24/7 and every day is set to round-the-clock. Hours let the AI answer "are you open?" correctly and inform how handoff behaves when no one is around. Hours use your account timezone.

Human Handoff

AI Human Handoff is on by default. With it on, the AI can pause and hand a conversation to your team when a customer asks for a person, shows frustration, or the AI does not have enough information to answer well.

With it off, the AI will not pause the chat or notify your team. Instead it falls back to the contact method in your instructions, knowledge base, or business contact info. The dedicated Escalation & Human Handoff guide covers how alerts reach your team and how to take over.

Message Batching

People often send several short messages in a row. Smart Message Batching makes the AI wait a few seconds to gather the full thought before replying once, instead of firing off a separate answer to each fragment.

You set a batch window from 5 to 15 seconds. Shorter feels faster; longer catches more of a multi-message thought. The AI also watches for signals that someone is still typing, like messages ending in "..." or quick follow-ons such as "Also" and "Oh wait."

Media Library (Creator and up)

Upload images and videos the AI can send during a conversation: before-and-after photos, testimonial screenshots, pricing sheets, product shots, and the like. The AI reads each item's name and description and decides when to send it based on what the customer is asking about, so clear descriptions matter.

Library items are sent on Facebook and Instagram DMs only. On WhatsApp, Telegram, and SMS the customer still gets the AI's text reply, just without the attachment. Your plan sets how many items the library can hold.

File Handling (Professional and up)

By default the AI works with text. Turn on File Processing and it can analyze what customers send you: images (photos, screenshots) and documents (PDF, CSV, XLSX). It uses your Knowledge Base and instructions to respond in context, for example reading a screenshot of an order number or a photo of a damaged item.

You can also add auto-escalation rules that hand the conversation to your team whenever a customer sends a given media type:

• Escalate when an image is received (useful for inspections, damage photos, quotes).
• Escalate when a document is received (contracts, invoices, data sheets).
• Escalate when a video is received (demos, walkthroughs).

An optional Only escalate if a team member is online switch applies to all of these: if no one is available, the AI keeps handling the conversation instead of leaving the customer waiting. Enabling File Processing also turns on Message Batching automatically.

Follow-ups (Creator and up)

When a customer goes quiet, AI Follow-ups send a short, contextual nudge to re-engage them. You can send up to two follow-ups per conversation:

• The first after a delay you set in minutes (5 to 60).
• The second after a delay you set in hours (1 to 23).

Both must land inside Meta's 24-hour messaging window, and anything past that window is expired automatically to stay policy compliant. An optional Quiet Hours setting pauses follow-ups overnight or during any window you choose, based on your timezone.

Follow-ups are skipped intelligently when they would be unwelcome: the conversation has been claimed by your team, a booking is complete, or the customer already said goodbye. The tab shows 30-day stats (sent, cancelled, skipped, expired, pending) and recent activity so you can see what is working.

CSAT Surveys (Creator and up)

Collect a satisfaction rating after a conversation is resolved. ChatGenius sends a short survey with 1-to-5 star quick-reply buttons. Pick a pre-built message template or write your own (up to 500 characters), and a live preview shows exactly what the customer will see.

Surveys are only sent inside Meta's 24-hour window and never to blocked users. Settings save automatically as you change them.

Restrictions

Restrictions define what the AI refuses to engage with. They take priority over knowledge: even if the AI knows an answer, it will decline when a topic is off-limits.

Solicitation Guard (on by default) automatically pauses and flags conversations where someone is trying to sell to your business rather than buy from it. Flagged chats show up in your Conversations tab for review, so sales pitches do not eat your AI usage or your time.

Off-Limits Topics let you switch on categories the AI will politely decline and offer a human instead:

• Legal Advice and Medical Advice: redirect rather than answer.
• Competitor Talk: avoid discussing other businesses.
• Price Negotiation: no haggling or unauthorized discounts.
• Personal Opinions: stick to facts about your business.
• Off-Topic Questions: steer unrelated chatter back to your business.

Blocked Users

The AI Blocklist is a list of people who will not receive AI responses. Their messages are still stored, but no automations fire and no usage is counted against your plan.

You can pre-block an Instagram user by username before they ever message you, or block someone straight from the Conversations tab. Facebook users can only be blocked from inside a conversation. Unblock anyone at any time, and the AI resumes on their next message. This tab is available on every plan.

Best Practices

A few habits separate a bot that customers trust from one they fight with:

• Scan your website first. It seeds your Knowledge Base in one step. Then refine from there rather than typing everything by hand.
• Keep facts in Knowledge, rules in Instructions. Update prices and hours in the Knowledge tab so you never have to rewrite a long instruction block.
• Be specific in instructions. "Ask for the zip code before quoting" beats "be helpful." Concrete rules produce consistent behavior.
• Match goals to your real objective. If you want leads, turn on lead capture; if you want bookings, turn on booking. The AI works toward what you select.
• Set accurate hours. They drive both "are you open?" answers and how handoff behaves after hours.
• Use restrictions to stay on brand. Solicitation Guard and a couple of off-limits topics keep the AI out of conversations it should not be having.
• Test before you trust it. Use the side-by-side test in the Instruction Builder, or DM your account from a second profile, and watch how it answers your real questions.
• Watch the readiness score. It is the quickest way to spot a gap you missed.

FAQ

Do my changes apply instantly?

Yes. Once you save, the next message the AI handles uses your updated configuration. There is no separate publish step.

What is the difference between Instructions and the Knowledge Base?

Instructions tell the AI how to behave (rules, tone of guidance, what to prioritize). The Knowledge Base holds facts it answers from (FAQs, services, documents). Put changing details like prices in Knowledge, not Instructions.

The AI gave a wrong or made-up answer. How do I fix it?

Add the correct fact as an FAQ or service in the Knowledge tab, and if needed add a rule in your instructions. The more complete your knowledge, the less the AI has to improvise.

Why would I turn off Human Handoff?

Most businesses leave it on. Turn it off only if you have no team to take over and would rather the AI always point customers to your contact details instead of pausing the chat.

Does the AI work the same on every channel?

The text answers do. Some extras are channel-specific: Media Library items send on Facebook and Instagram DMs only, and follow-ups and surveys respect Meta's 24-hour messaging window.

Are the Extend features available on the free plan?

Media Library, Follow-ups, and CSAT are available on Creator and up, and File Handling on Professional and up. Identity, Knowledge, Behavior, Restrictions, and Blocked Users are available on every plan.

Next Steps

• Put the AI to work on real triggers: Comment Triggers & Rewind and Quick Replies.
• Build guided, multi-step conversations in the Visual Flow Builder.
• Fill out your Knowledge Base so the AI answers from your own content.
• New here? Start with Your First Automation, or browse the full documentation hub.
• Generate strong instructions fast with the AI Instruction Builder.
• A dedicated guide for Escalation & Human Handoff is on the way.