Automations, flows and AI answers

Automations → Opening hours sets when your business is open, day by day (up to three stretches a day, so a lunch break is easy), or Closed all day. Add the days you are closed, such as public holidays, under A date you are closed. The page says whether you are Open now or Closed now, by your workspace’s time zone.

The hours decide when the away message goes out, and, if you choose, when AI may answer. Press Save hours and messages when done.

• Away message: tick Send the away message outside opening hours. It goes out at most once in 12 hours per conversation, and not while someone on your team has written in the last hour.
• Welcome message: tick Welcome customers writing for the first time. Once per customer, ever. Outside opening hours a new customer gets the away message instead.

Both can greet people by name: {{first_name}} or {{name}}. “Karibu {{first_name}}! Tell us what you need and we will reply shortly.”

A keyword reply answers the same question the same way, every time: someone sends “bei” and gets your price list; “location” and gets your directions.

1. + Keyword reply, and type the word under When a customer sends.
2. Choose how it matches: As the whole message, or Anywhere in a message. The first is safer: “bei” anywhere would also answer “bei gani ya delivery?”.
3. Write the answer under Reply with, and save. Turn it off or on from the list.

STOP, START and the other opt-out words cannot have a keyword reply: they always do what they say. See when someone says STOP.

A flow is a conversation that runs itself when a customer sends its keyword: it asks, waits for the answer, and goes on. It can book a slot, take an order, or sort a question before a person picks it up. Make one with + New flow.

Its steps:

• Say: send a message and go on.
• Ask: ask, with up to three buttons, and wait for the answer.
• Branch: go one way or another on an answer.
• Ask your system: post to your own web address and use what comes back, such as stock, a balance or a booking. Signed, so your system knows it is Sema.
• Hand over: give the conversation to your team. The flow ends.
• End: the flow is finished.

Each save is kept as a revision you can go back to. The moment someone on your team replies in the conversation, the flow stops, so a person is never talked over.

A follow-up is for a customer who has gone quiet after asking about something. You write it once, on Automations, under Follow-ups. It has up to five steps. Each waits for a time you choose, then sends one of two things:

• a saved reply, if the customer's 24-hour window is still open;
• an approved template, if the window has closed.

Give a step both and it uses whichever it can. A step with only a saved reply is skipped if the window has closed by then.

1. In a conversation, under the customer's name, choose the follow-up next to If they do not answer and press Follow up.
2. The conversation then shows where the follow-up is and when its next step goes, for example Follow-up 2 of 3, Friday 10:00. Press Stop to end it.

It stops by itself when the customer writes, opts out, or the conversation is resolved. A marketing template never goes out during the rest you set between marketing messages; that step waits a day and tries again. Owners, admins and managers write follow-ups. Anyone who replies to customers can start one.

A customer who writes “our email is down” at night should not wait for the office to open. On Automations, under When something stops working, name who is alerted: up to three WhatsApp numbers and three email addresses.

When a customer's message has one of your words outside opening hours (down, outage, not working and the like, which you can change), Sema at once:

• tells the customer, in your words, that the person on call has been alerted;
• emails each address, with a link to the conversation;
• sends each number a WhatsApp alert;
• notifies your team's phones.

A WhatsApp alert to a number needs a Utility template approved by Meta, with two values: who wrote, and what they said. Until it is approved, a number is alerted only if it has written to your number in the last 24 hours, and the email still goes. If nobody on your team has replied after 30 minutes, everyone is alerted once more. A reply in the conversation answers the alert. Words count only as whole words: down does not match download. Tick In opening hours too to be alerted at any time.

A lead form welcomes people on WhatsApp the moment they sign up, wherever that happens. Make one on Automations, under Welcome new leads. Choose:

• the number the welcome comes from;
• an approved template for the welcome;
• a follow-up to start after it, if you want one;
• what the page says, and the words people agree to.

Each form can be reached four ways:

• a link, for your Instagram bio, a post or an email;
• a QR code, for the till, receipts or a flyer;
• a button for your own website;
• the API, for sign-ups and orders from your own system or through Zapier (see the API).

Someone gives their number and ticks the box. Within seconds your welcome reaches them, their yes is kept with the form's own words, and the follow-up starts.

Under Journeys on Automations are three you can turn on without building anything. Choose the number, the approved template it sends and its values, and Save:

• An order update, then an offer: some days after an order is shipped (or placed), an offer. It can also start when your order update template goes out, as the WooCommerce plugin sends it.
• Back in stock: when your shop says something a customer asked about is back.
• A cart left: an hour after a cart is left. If they order first, nothing is sent.

Your shop starts them by telling Sema what happened, through the API or Zapier, Make or n8n. A template can say what the shop sent with it, such as {{event.product}} or {{event.url}}.

Each journey holds back a share of the people who enter it (10% unless you change it) and sends them nothing. Its page compares the two groups: how many ordered, what they spent, and what the messages cost. When there are enough people in each, it says how much more the journey earned than sending nothing, and whether the difference is more than chance. An order is one your shop reports, with what it was worth, or an M-Pesa payment a customer makes in a chat.

A WhatsApp form (Meta calls them Flows) lets a customer answer a few questions without leaving the chat. Under Forms customers fill in on WhatsApp on the Automations page, Sema has four ready to use:

• Loan pre-check, for SACCOs and lenders: the amount, what it is for, how long to pay it back and the member's income, so the credit officer calls back ready.
• Insurance quote: the cover, its value and when it should start.
• Clinic booking request: the service, the day and the time of day, and how the patient pays.
• Admission enquiry, for schools: the child, the grade, when they would join, and day or boarding.

Press Set it up, change the words, the questions' labels and the choices, and watch the phone beside it. Questions a form does not need can be left out. WhatsApp keeps labels short (20 characters), and Sema says so as you type. Publish it puts it on your WhatsApp account in a few seconds; then send it from a conversation (the form button in the inbox) or as a template's button. The answers arrive in the inbox as a submitted form. A change is published as a new form, and the old one still opens for anyone it was already sent to.

Owners and admins decide, in Settings → AI, whether AI may answer customers on its own: No, drafts only, Outside opening hours, or Always. When it may:

• It answers only what no flow, keyword reply, away or welcome message did, and only from the answers you have written down.
• Every answer is marked Answered by AI in the inbox. It writes like your team, and if a customer asks whether they are talking to a person, it says it is your assistant.
• Never to someone who opted out, and three an hour at most in one conversation.

Every plan includes AI requests each month, for drafts, summaries and answers alike: Solo 25, Starter 100, Growth 1,000 and Scale 5,000. Beyond them, KES 3.00 each from your credit; one the model fails to answer is given back.

What it cannot answer, it takes the details of: it tells the customer that a person will reply, and when (shortly while you are open, or when you open next, from your opening hours), and asks their name if you do not have it. Their question goes into your pipeline as a lead, the people who answer the chat are told on their phones, and the AI leaves the chat to your team. Untick When it cannot answer, take their details in Settings → AI to have it hand over in silence instead. When you take appointments, it also tells customers how to book.

A person on your team takes a chat by writing in it, or by pressing Stop it in this chat under the customer's name. The AI then stays quiet there for as long as you choose in Settings → AI: an hour of quiet from the team, 4, 12 or 24 hours, or until someone presses Switch it back on.

What the AI did, and cost, in Settings → AI, shows the last 7 and 30 days and this month: requests, tokens, what came from your credit, the conversations it answered with nobody on the team writing that day, and the ones it handed to your team. Day by day underneath.

Give the AI a name and a tone (friendly, professional or playful) under AI in this workspace. With a name, it says it is that name, an automated assistant, when a customer asks. Under More assistants you can add one for a channel (WhatsApp, the website chat, Instagram or Messenger), a number, a team or a language, each with its own name, tone, notes, opening hours and choice of when it answers. One for the website chat that always answers, beside one that answers WhatsApp only out of hours, means a visitor on your site never waits. An answer under What your business knows can be for one assistant only. The assistant that matches a conversation most closely answers it, drafts there take its tone, and the rest go to the workspace's own. The language is the one set on the contact, or the one they write in: English or Kiswahili.

In Settings → AI:

• What your business knows: press + Answer for each thing customers ask, such as delivery areas and charges, opening hours, how to pay, returns. AI answers on its own only from these.
• What drafts should know: how to sound, in up to 2,000 characters, such as “Reply in the language the customer writes in. Keep it short. Sign off as Duka la Mama.”
• Drafts a day, at most: a ceiling for the whole workspace, 200 unless you change it.