A customer texts “when are you coming Thursday?” or “what do I owe?” while you are on a mower. AI replies writes the answer from what ClippingCash already knows about that one customer: their next visit, open invoices and balance, their services and any open quotes. You pick how far it goes: it can only suggest, or it can answer by itself.
AI replies come with customer texting, so they are on the same plans as texting (Growing and up).
1 Pick a mode
Go to your Subscription page and open the Texting tab. Find the AI replies card, pick one of the three modes and click Save AI replies. Only the account owner can change it.
- Off. No AI. You write every reply.
- Draft (the default). A Draft reply button on the Messages page writes a suggested reply. Nothing goes out until you press Send.
- Auto-send. Replies to customer texts by itself, signed with your company name.
2 Draft: suggest, you send
Open Messages and select a conversation. Click Draft reply and the suggestion fills the reply box. Change whatever you like, then send it the normal way. If you do nothing, nothing is sent. Crew members get the same Draft reply button in the worker app’s Messages, for the customers on their jobs.
The reply uses only what ClippingCash has on file for that customer. When the answer is not there (a price you have never quoted, a date nobody scheduled), it does not make one up. It says you will check and get back to them, and you take it from there.
3 Auto-send: what it does
When a customer texts in, ClippingCash writes the reply and sends it, signed with your company name, for example “- Oak Street Lawn”. The conversation shows Auto-reply as the sender, so you can see which messages you did not type.
When it is not sure of an answer, it does not send. The suggested reply waits on the conversation in Messages under Needs your reply, with a Use draft button, and you get the same notification a new customer text gives you.
4 What Auto-send will never do
- Answer STOP, HELP or other keyword texts. Those have their own handling, and a customer who texts STOP is opted out, not replied to.
- Text during quiet hours. A text that comes in between 9 PM and 8 AM your time waits until 8 AM.
- Text a customer who has opted out or has no recorded consent, or send when you are out of text credits. It goes through the same checks as a reply you type.
- Send more than one reply per incoming text, or more than 3 auto replies to one customer in a day.
- Make things up. Prices, dates, balances and promises come only from your records. Anything else is handed to you.
Auto replies use your text credits like any other text you send. Replies customers send you are free, as always.
5 If your company name blocks auto replies
Auto replies end with your company name, and that name has to be safe to text. If it has a trademark symbol, a curly apostrophe, a long dash, letters outside the Latin alphabet or a web address, or it is very long, every auto reply would be held for you as a draft instead of sent. The AI replies card warns you when that is the case. Change the company name in Settings, or turn off text signatures (see handle text conversations).