User guide

Part 1

How it fits together

One assistant on your business number. It reads three things and writes to three places.

Think of it as a front desk that never closes, plus four add-on modules. Front Desk is always on. Each module switches on a specific behaviour; during your trial all four are on, and afterwards you keep the ones you tick under Your plan. The modules are drawn in Fig. 7.

Part 2

Going live in four steps

Documents first, voice second, the number last. The assistant answers only once you switch it on, so give it something to answer from before you do.

1. 1Sign inwith the Google account you were onboarded with
2. 2Link your two documentsone Sheet for numbers, one Doc for sentences
3. 3Set the voice and the alertswho it sounds like and who it pages
4. 4Connect your numberthen switch the assistant on

Part 3

What happens when someone writes in

Every message passes five gates, in this order. Pick a situation to watch it go through.

Part 4

How your assistant works

It only says what your documents say

Two files, checked for changes every five minutes, verified before they are used. A bad edit can never take the assistant offline.

When a customer asks something the documents do not answer, the assistant says "Let me check with someone and get back to you" and pages your team. It never says what it is missing, and it never guesses. If someone asks whether they are talking to a bot, it answers honestly. It states days, dates and times in full, for example "Saturday 20 September, 10:00", so nobody has to interpret "tomorrow".

After you edit a file. Each file is checked every five minutes, and an edit is picked up once the file has held still for about ten minutes, so usually within ten to fifteen minutes of your last edit. Keep editing and it is read after at most thirty minutes. If an update has a problem, the assistant keeps answering from the last good version, the status line turns red, and you get an email titled "Action needed: your [business] update couldn't be used" listing exactly what to fix.

A first visit is booked in one place, and you choose it

In chat, at your booking link, or by your team.

Every step of your customer's journey happens in exactly one place: questions are answered from your documents, signing up happens at your Signup link, paying follows your Payment details, reviews happen at your Review link. Booking a first visit (a trial, visit, assessment or appointment) works the same way. Under Assistant setup, "How do customers book a first visit?" has three answers:

• My assistant books them in chat. For a business with no booking system of its own: the assistant's word is the booking. The rest of this section describes it.
• They book at my booking link. For a business that already uses SimplyBook, Calendly, Fresha or similar. The assistant answers the question, sends your link and never says "you're booked", because the place is given by your booking system, which the assistant cannot see. Nothing appears under Your bookings unless your team confirms a booking in the chat. If the customer then goes quiet, the assistant's one follow-up asks whether they managed to book at your link and offers no time of its own. A customer who says they did shows as trial booked under Your leads; the reminder is your booking system's to send.
• My team arranges it. The assistant takes the details, tells the customer the team will confirm, and hands over. The request shows as Unsettled until your team confirms it in the chat.

Whatever you choose, a booking your staff confirm in the chat is recorded and earns its reminder. Two places claiming the same booking is how a customer ends up told "you're booked" by one and "please register" by the other; one choice prevents it.

In chat: your team is told, not asked. When a customer confirms a slot that your Sheet lists, the assistant closes the booking right there in the conversation and emails your booking address the details: attendee, class or slot, Branch, contact. The customer hears that the team will contact them only if anything changes. Before saying "you're booked", the assistant always asks for the attendee's name and the purpose of the visit.

Behind that last message: your booking email received the full request, the row appeared under Your bookings, and (with the Bookings module on) a reminder is scheduled for the morning before.

Cancellations work the same way: handled in chat, in whatever words the customer uses, and emailed to you. Moving a booking is recorded as rescheduled and emailed to you as "Booking rescheduled" with the old and new times; the reminder follows the new date. If your staff propose a change in the chat, or the customer asks for a slot your documents cannot promise, the booking shows as Unsettled until someone settles it in the chat (Fig. 8, under Your bookings).

With the Bookings module on, the attendee gets a WhatsApp reminder the morning of the day before their visit. A booking made or moved on the day before is reminded on the morning of the visit instead. No reminder goes out for a booking made or moved on the day of the visit, since they just spoke to us, for a visit that starts before 9am, or while the booking is unsettled.

When a human is needed

Who is writing decides where the alert goes.

A conversation that needs you raises an alert. That includes someone asking for a person, a complaint, a question your documents cannot answer, and anything only a person can do.

• Prospective and existing customers (an enquiry, a booking, a payment, a complaint) reach your Handover WhatsApp numbers at once. Only if no WhatsApp alert can be delivered is the handover emailed instead, to your handover email (or the alert email when that is empty).
• Job applicants and suppliers go by email only, to the addresses in Where things reach you. They never message your staff WhatsApp.
• Anything else that needs a person, including a message the assistant cannot place, pages your Handover WhatsApp numbers the way a customer's does. A missed page costs more than a needless one.
• A live problem (a class not running, nobody at the centre) pages your staff again every 15 minutes, up to three more times, until someone replies.
• A booked customer at the door is an arrival: it pages your staff once and also emails your booking address. It pages again only if the customer writes again.

If the customer writes again before your staff have replied, the assistant pages again and says which message it is and since when, for example "3rd message since Tue 22 Sep, 2:02 pm, still unanswered". The alerts arrive from your own business number. Where an alert number is your business number itself, the alert comes from Conciergr's number instead, because a number cannot message itself.

An unanswered ask is chased. When the assistant has told a customer "let me check with someone" and your team has not answered, it chases your team: first 30 minutes after the page, then after gaps of 1, 2, 4 and 8 hours. Five chases, then it stops. Chases go out only between 9am and 8pm, and one that has waited through the night is never sent less than an hour after the last. Each chase says how long the ask has been open, for example "Still unanswered after 2 hours 30 minutes (asked Mon 7 Sep, 8:30 pm)". Any reply from your team in the customer's chat stops the chase.

Who picked it up

Optional: your team taps their name on an alert, and your weekly report shows who took what.

Several people often share one WhatsApp Business app, and WhatsApp does not tell us which of them replied to a customer. If you want to see who picks up what, switch on Let your team claim each request in Assistant setup and list your team's first names. It is off unless you switch it on.

1. Each handover alert then arrives with one button, I've got it.
2. Tapping it brings one question under that alert, "Who's taking this one? (+65 …)" with the customer's number, and your team's names to tap. With four or more names, the names sit in a list behind a Choose button.
3. The person taking the request taps their own name. That is the claim. Nothing more is sent: the tap already shows in the chat for everyone to see.

The first name tapped stands. If someone else taps a name on the same alert later, they are told who took it and when, for example "Anis took this one at 2:31pm". A claim cannot be undone or passed to someone else.

This is an honour system. Your team taps their own name. We record the name tapped. When several people share one app, every tap arrives from the same number, so we cannot check who was holding the phone, and we never call a claim proof.

A claim changes nothing about your alerts. It does not stop the repeat alerts or the follow-up, and the customer is told nothing. Only a reply to the customer in their own chat settles a request, because a tap with no reply behind it must never hide a waiting customer. There is no "done" button either: your reply to the customer already is one.

You can step in any time

A human talking always outranks the bot.

Reply to any customer yourself and your assistant steps back in that conversation for the next 10 minutes. Every message you send restarts the 10 minutes. Once you have been quiet for 10 minutes, the assistant answers new messages again. Anything the customer wrote while you held the chat is picked up 10 minutes after that, about 20 minutes after your last message: the assistant reads it and answers only if a real question is still open, continuing the same conversation without a fresh greeting. If you already answered it, the assistant sends nothing. This catch-up happens only within 24 hours, and a further message from you cancels it.

This is by design, and it is also why the auto-reply warning above matters: a Greeting or Away message from the WhatsApp Business app counts as you stepping in, so it mutes your assistant for every new customer.

That is the assistant stepping back in one conversation, for ten minutes at a time. To take it out of every conversation until you say otherwise, for example while you fix a document, use the Pause button instead: see Pausing your assistant.

Follow-ups, reminders and review asks

Three clocks, each started by something the customer did.

With the Follow-Up Nudges module on, the assistant keeps warm enquiries moving:

• One nudge on a quiet enquiry. If the assistant replied to a prospective customer and they go silent, it sends one polite follow-up 20 hours 30 minutes after that reply, between 8am and 9pm in your timezone. A follow-up that would fall due at night waits for 8am; when 8am would be too late (a reply sent in the morning), it goes out the evening before at 8.59pm instead, so every quiet enquiry gets its follow-up. A message from the customer cancels it. A reply from your team pauses it while they hold the chat, and it still goes out afterwards. If your team answered first and the assistant never replied, your reply arms the one nudge instead, timed from the customer's message; so does a reply the assistant sends once your team has gone quiet. It is one nudge per conversation, and a conversation starts afresh after 14 days of silence. If your team has an open request on the chat, the nudge says once that the team still has it and proposes the next step; your team is chased separately (see When a human is needed).
• After a trial or first visit, it checks in 1, 4 and 8 days later. The check-ins stop the moment the customer is recorded as signed up, or writes anything after the visit. "Signed up" means recorded as enrolled, from the customer's or your staff's words in the chat. They are held while the booking is unsettled, and they never go out unless a Signup link or an enrolment form is configured.
• Future starts. If a contact named a start month and the assistant recorded it, it checks in 30 days before that month begins, or on the first day of the month when it was named with fewer than 30 days to go. A month that has already begun gets no check-in. This goes out only when a Signup link is configured.

Review asks. With the Review Engine module on, a customer who has signed up (recorded as enrolled from their or your staff's words) is asked for a review once, two days after their visit, in the morning. If they are not yet recorded as signed up that morning, the ask waits and checks again each day; it gives up ten days after the visit. The message carries the Branch's Review Link, or the business-wide one if the Branch has none. The assistant never asks which Branch was visited: with several Branches and a booking it cannot match to one, the ask is cancelled. With no link anywhere, the ask is held, and gives up ten days after the visit like the rest.

Fee check. With the Bookings module on, a confirmed visit that carries a fee still due gets one message two days before, at 9am, asking whether the fee has gone through, with two buttons: Already paid and Send the details again. It never names an amount and never calls anything unpaid. It is skipped once the customer is recorded as enrolled, or the chat plainly shows the fee settled.

Timing. Customer questions are answered at any hour. Reminders, check-ins and review asks only go out between 9am and 8pm in your timezone; one that falls due at night waits until 9am. The follow-up on a quiet enquiry uses its own hours, 8am to 9pm, as described above.

Job applicants and suppliers do not ring your staff

Answered, closed, and at most an email to you. Never a ping on your staff WhatsApp.

The assistant recognises when a message is a job application, a supplier pitch, or another non-customer enquiry, answers it, and closes it. It emails you for awareness only if you set an address for that category in Where things reach you. Leave a category email empty to disable awareness emails for enquiries the assistant answers and closes in that category. A job applicant or supplier who asks for a person is still emailed to you, at the alert email when that box is empty. Anything else that needs a person pages your Handover WhatsApp numbers. Job applications and supplier pitches never message your staff WhatsApp.

Your weekly report

Every Monday: what it handled, and the questions your documents could not answer.

Every Monday an email titled "[Your business] — your assistant's week" goes to your alert email and, if you have set one, your Documents email as well, both on the To line. It counts the contacts answered and the bookings made, and lists the things customers asked that your documents do not answer. That list is a to-do list for the Doc and the Sheet: add each answer, and the assistant stops having to check with your team about it. If someone other than you keeps the documents, put their address in Documents email so the list reaches them directly. If your team claims requests (Who picked it up), the email also shows how many requests each person claimed and, once a person has enough of them, how quickly they claimed and replied.

Part 5

Your dashboard, card by card

One page of cards, top to bottom. Tap a card here to jump to its explanation.

Your plan

Front Desk is always on. Tick the modules you want; Everything is all four for one price.

This card shows only if you signed up on conciergr.com. Customers billed by invoice do not see it. The tag next to the title tells you where you stand:

Assistant setup

The card headed with your business name: how it speaks, where things reach you, and one Save for everything.

Next to the name you see either WhatsApp connected with your number, or WhatsApp not connected yet. The card has four groups of fields and one Save button at the bottom. That one Save also covers the Payment details and Your branches cards below it.

A banner about staff numbers. Sometimes the card opens with a line saying "These numbers look like your own branches or staff", with a phone number and two buttons. It appears when a number behaves like one of your own lines, for example a branch phone forwarding messages. Press Exclude to make the assistant stay out of that number's chats for good. Press Not internal if it is a real customer; the number is left alone and the suggestion stays hidden for 90 days.

Saving. As soon as you edit any field, the Save button shows "- unsaved", and your browser will ask before you leave the page with unsaved changes. While anything in setup, Payment details or Your branches is unsaved, a bar at the foot of the window says so and carries the same Save, so you never scroll to find the button. Press it once for everything. The confirmation reads "Saved - changes apply from your assistant's next reply", and that is exactly when they apply.

Pausing your assistant

One button takes it out of every conversation at once, with nothing to save and nothing lost.

Every new assistant starts paused: the box at the very top of your portal reads Your assistant is not switched on yet with a Switch on assistant button, and it replies to nobody until you press it. Do that once your documents are linked and the setup reads right. From then on the same box, at the top of the page above everything else, says either Your assistant is answering with a Pause assistant button, or, in amber, Your assistant is paused with who paused it, when, and a Resume assistant button. Pause it when you need it out of the way at once: the moment you notice a document says the wrong thing (a discount nobody approved, a price typed in wrongly, a policy someone rewrote), a day when your team wants to handle every chat themselves, or anything else you would rather fix before the assistant speaks again. It takes effect on the next message, with no Save needed.

While paused the assistant replies to nobody and sends no follow-ups or reminders; every message still arrives in your WhatsApp Business app as usual, so your team answers by hand exactly as before Conciergr. Your documents keep being read, so a fix you make while paused is in place when you resume. Because a forgotten pause costs you enquiries, we email you (and send one WhatsApp nudge) once a day while it stays paused. Resume with one click; follow-ups that came due during the pause are sent only if they still make sense.

Payment details

Quoted word for word when someone asks how to pay, so a digit can never come out wrong. It sits directly above Your branches because each Branch picks one of these accounts.

This is the only payment instruction the assistant will ever give. Type it in the box exactly as a customer should read it.

• Several accounts. + Add a different account is always under the box (up to 12), so you can set every account up here before you list your Branches below. You only need it if some Branches are paid into a different account; most businesses have just the one. Once you add one, or have two or more Branches, the first box is headed Account 1 (main). Added accounts are numbered Account 2, Account 3 and so on. Give one a name if it helps you tell them apart, for example "East outlet": only you see the name, and it appears next to the number where a Branch picks its account. A Branch with nothing picked uses Account 1. With several Branches, the assistant asks which Branch before sending payment details.
• The Preview box under the accounts shows the exact message a customer is sent when they ask how to pay: for the Branch you pick, including that Branch's extra payment instruction. It updates as you type, before you save. If it reads badly there, it reads badly on your customer's phone. It is a preview only, with nothing to fill in.
• "Nothing to send yet." The Preview says this when no payment details apply: the assistant gives no account details at all, tells the customer your team will confirm how to pay, and your booking email tells you to send it.

Payment details save with the same one Save as setup and Your branches.

Your branches

One row per Branch, spelt the way your Sheet spells it. Hours and fees stay in the Sheet.

Press + Add Branch for each one (up to 60) and Remove Branch to drop one. Each row has:

• Branch name, spelt the way it appears in your Sheet.
• Branch line (only if different from the main line). Given to customers who ask for that Branch, and treated as a staff number the assistant never replies to, the same as Numbers to ignore. The same number may appear on several Branches. Leave it empty when the Branch uses the main line.
• Address and Area (optional), so the assistant can say where each Branch is and match a customer's neighbourhood. Write the address as the street address with its postcode, keep the unit number, and put a building name or directions in brackets, for example 20 Example Road, #03-04 (Example Community Club), Singapore 123456. The assistant also uses the address to tell a customer which Branch is closest to a place they name. If an address can't be found on the map, that Branch is left out of those answers and you get an email saying what to change.
• Review Link (optional). Overrides the business-wide Review link for this Branch.
• Customers of this branch pay into. Which payment details to send for this Branch: "Account 1 (main)", or another account you added under Payment details, listed by its number and its name if you gave it one. Shown once you have two or more Branches, or have added a second account.
• Extra payment instruction for this branch (optional, shown once you have two or more Branches). One line sent right after your Payment details, only to customers of this Branch. Use it when every Branch is paid into the same account but the payment reference differs, for example Payment reference: your mobile number-TB. Then your Payment details need not list every Branch's code. Leave it blank if paying is the same at every Branch.

Hours and fees do not go here; keep them in your Sheet. Booking requests still go to your one booking email. If the card shows "Names in your Sheet we could not match", your Sheet uses a Branch name spelt differently from this list. Fix the spelling on either side. This card is saved by the same Save button as the setup card; pressing either one saves both.

Your documents

Exactly two files: one Google Sheet for numbers, one Google Doc for sentences. Fig. 3 shows what happens to them.

Your assistant answers only from two files you own in Google Drive. This card is where you connect them and see whether the assistant can read them.

The status line at the top of the card tells you where things stand:

Exactly two files, no more.

• One Google Sheet for everything with numbers: fees, schedules, locations, account details. One spreadsheet can hold as many tabs as you like, so add tabs instead of making more spreadsheets. To move a tab in from another spreadsheet: open it, right-click the tab name at the bottom, choose Copy to, then Existing spreadsheet, and pick your connected Sheet.
• One Google Doc for everything written in sentences: policies, FAQs, about-us, what to do in common situations.

There is nowhere to put a third file. If something is not a tab in your Sheet or a section in your Doc, the assistant does not know it.

After you edit a file. Each file is checked every five minutes, and an edit is picked up once the file has held still for about ten minutes, so usually within ten to fifteen minutes of your last edit. Keep editing and it is read after at most thirty minutes. A first link, and the retry after a problem, are read at once. If an update has a problem, the assistant keeps answering from the last good version, the status line turns red, and you get an email titled "Action needed: your [business] update couldn't be used" listing exactly what to fix. A bad edit can never take your assistant offline. We only ever read your documents; we never write into them.

What your assistant knows

Everything it currently answers from, rebuilt from your two documents. If it looks wrong here, it is wrong in the document.

This card shows everything the assistant currently answers from, rebuilt automatically from your two documents. Each section notes which document it came from. It is empty until your documents have been read the first time.

Three things look different here from your files, on purpose. A section headed Internal notes (staff only) holds facts the assistant uses to decide whom to hand a request to and never states to a customer. Where your Sheet or Doc held an account number, the card shows [account details omitted]: the only payment instruction the assistant gives is the one on the Payment details card. Branch phone numbers are removed too; they come from Your branches.

Use it as your check after every edit: if a fee or a rule looks wrong here, it is wrong in the document. Fix it there and this card updates usually within ten to fifteen minutes of your last edit. Your browser's find function (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) is the quickest way to look up one thing.

Your bookings

Every booking captured in chat, newest first. Phone, email and walk-in bookings are invisible to the assistant.

Every booking your assistant has captured in chat, newest first, with a count at the top; a second count above the table says how many were never confirmed. Only chat bookings appear here; a booking made by phone, email or in person is invisible to the assistant. Use Show visits from to look at a date onwards.

• Confirmed: the slot is settled and the attendee will get a reminder the day before (or on the visit morning, for a booking made the day before).
• Never confirmed: an Unsettled proposal whose visit date has passed. Nothing was ever scheduled for it: no reminder, no check-in.
• Cancelled (greyed out): cancelled in the chat, by the customer or by your staff. No reminder is sent.
• Unsettled: someone has proposed changing the time and nobody has settled it yet. "By staff" means your team asked to move it, for example "possible to resched?"; "by contact" means the customer did. It also covers a slot the assistant could not promise from your documents, such as a time outside listed hours, which waits for your staff to confirm in the chat. Reminders are held while a booking is unsettled. The moment someone settles it in the chat, the status updates.

Your leads

Every enquiry, where it came from, what they told the assistant, and whether they enrolled. Only with Know Your Pipeline.

This card appears only when the Know Your Pipeline module is on. It lists every enquiry the assistant has captured details for, newest first, with a count at the top.

Enrolled contacts are hidden by default so the list shows people still to win. Tick Show enrolled contacts to see everyone.

Who can sign in

Give a colleague their own way in. Each person signs in with their own Google account; nobody shares a password.

The card at the bottom of the page lists every address that opens your portal. The address the account was set up with is marked Owner. The owner types a colleague's address under Add a person and presses Add: it works at once, and we email that person the link.

• Use the address they sign in to Google with. A work address on Google Workspace or a Gmail both work. A shared mailbox or a group address (one that forwards to several people) cannot sign in to Google, so add each person instead.
• Everyone listed can change everything on the page, payment details and billing included. Add only people you would hand that to.
• Only the owner adds or removes people, and the owner cannot be removed. Everyone else sees the list without the buttons.
• Remove works at once: that person's next click in the portal signs them out.
• You can add up to 10 people. To change the owner address, email us.

Alerts are separate from sign-ins. Where alerts go is set in Assistant setup (the alert email and your staff WhatsApp numbers); a group address is a good fit there.