How does the order agent work?

The order agent looks after your customers on WhatsApp: it answers questions, quotes from your price tables and, once the customer confirms, records the order. Whatever it cannot solve, it hands to a person on your team.

One idea is enough to understand how it behaves: every conversation has three actors, and at any given moment only one of them owns the thread.

All of this works in full on channels with the Sales and orders template. See Channel use templates and, further down, “What changes with each template”.

The three actors

	Who	Writes from
The agent	The artificial intelligence that looks after the channel	Lolos
The salesperson	You or anyone on your team	The Lolos Inbox or the phone linked to the channel
The customer	The person writing to you on WhatsApp	Their WhatsApp

For Lolos, what you send from the Inbox and what you type directly on the channel's phone are the same thing: a message from a salesperson.

The three states of a conversation

State	When it happens	Does the agent answer?	Does it show in “Need help”?
The agent is handling it	The normal state	Yes	No
Waiting for a salesperson	The agent handed it off and nobody on the team has written to the customer yet	No	Yes: “Asked for help”, and “Wrote again” if the customer keeps writing
A salesperson is handling it	Someone on the team wrote to the customer	No	When the customer answers you: “Replied to you”

The agent is handling it

The agent answers on its own. It hands the conversation to a person when:

• the customer confirmed after receiving the full quote;
• the customer asks for something the agent can't answer;
• the customer asks for something custom (a logo, embroidery);
• or another reason you set in its instructions applies.

When it hands off, the agent:

1. Records the order in your orders table, when it applies.
2. Pauses itself in that conversation, so it stops answering.
3. Lets you know: the conversation shows up in “Need help” with the reason, a short sentence such as “customer confirmed they want to close the purchase of 3 jackets”.

Before handing off it can ask the customer for some details so you arrive prepared, such as the company's name or tax ID. You set that on the agent: see When the agent hands off.

The agent cannot say it passed the conversation to you without actually doing it. If its reply claims something like “I already passed you to a salesperson” without handing off, Lolos discards that reply and asks it to really hand off or to say something else. That's the No promete derivar sin derivar condition (“doesn't promise a handoff without doing it”), on for every agent.

Waiting for a salesperson

The customer is waiting for a person. Meanwhile:

• The agent doesn't answer them: the conversation is paused.
• If the customer writes again, the conversation stays in “Need help”, now as “Wrote again”, with their latest message.
• If the Remind if nobody answers within time passes (2 hours with the template) and nobody has written, Lolos reminds you once (below, in “The reminder”).
• The agent does not come back on its own here: it won't pick up a conversation it handed off precisely because it couldn't solve it.

A salesperson is handling it

As soon as someone on the team writes to the customer, the conversation belongs to that person:

• The agent doesn't answer that customer. That way it doesn't get in the way of what you're sorting out.
• When the customer answers you —a file you asked for, a confirmation, a question— the conversation shows up in “Need help” as “Replied to you”, with what they sent. If they sent a file, you also see a description of its contents.

When the agent comes back depends on how the conversation reached you:

How it reached you	When the agent comes back
You wrote without the agent having handed off	On its own, once Leave the thread to the team member for passes (24 h with the template) since your last message
The agent handed it off	The conversation was paused: it comes back when you click Resume agent, or on its own if the channel has Put the agent back on after and that much time passes with no messages. The template doesn't set it

So when you're done with a customer the agent handed you, click Resume agent if you want the agent to look after them again.

The “Need help” tab

It's in the Inbox, next to All, and gathers every conversation where a customer is waiting for a person. The whole team shares the list: whatever one person handles leaves the list for everyone.

Label	What it means
Asked for help	The agent handed off the conversation. The reason is shown next to it
Wrote again	The agent handed off, nobody has written yet and the customer sent another message
Replied to you	The customer answered in a conversation a salesperson is handling

When it leaves the list

• When someone on the team writes to the customer, from the Inbox or from the channel's phone. Opening the conversation isn't enough: seeing it isn't handling it.
• When someone clicks Resume agent.
• When someone clicks I handled it.

I handled it is for when you sorted it out some other way —a phone call, in the store—. It's at the top right of the conversation, next to Pause agent, and only shows while the conversation is in “Need help”.

Note: I handled it doesn't turn the agent back on. The conversation stays paused, because having dealt with the customer and deciding the agent should take them back are two different decisions. If the customer writes again, it comes back to the list as “Wrote again”. To give it back to the agent, click Resume agent.

The alert

Every time a conversation enters “Need help”, Lolos shows an alert at the bottom of the screen, with a sound and —if you turned them on— a browser notification:

• 🙋 The agent asked for help, 🙋 Replied to you or 🙋 Wrote again;
• the customer's name and their message or the agent's reason;
• the Open conversation button.

The alert doesn't close on its own. If there are several, they stack with +N pending handoffs. If the customer writes again in a conversation that was already alerted, the alert updates without sounding again.

The reminder

If a conversation sits in “Need help” for the time set in Remind if nobody answers within without anyone writing to the customer, Lolos shows an alert: “Waiting for 2 h” (with the hours you set), with the customer's name, the last thing they wrote —or the agent's reason— and a button to open the conversation.

• It shows at the bottom of the Lolos screen, to everyone on the team with access to that channel. If you turned on browser notifications, you get one too.
• It's only visible with Lolos open in the browser. It doesn't arrive by WhatsApp, email or on your phone. If nobody has Lolos open at that moment, the alert shows as soon as someone opens it.
• It fires once per wait. If the customer writes again, a new wait starts and, if it still goes unanswered, you're reminded again once that time passes.
• The Sales and orders template sets it to 2 hours. If you leave the setting empty, there's no reminder.

Pausing, resuming and stopping the agent in a chat

At the top of each conversation, and in the chat's ⋮ menu:

Action	What it does	Until when
Pause agent	The agent stops answering that customer	Until you click Resume agent, or until Put the agent back on after passes with no messages
Resume agent	Gives the conversation back to the agent right away, and takes it out of “Need help”	—
Stop agent in this chat	The agent never answers that customer again, on that channel	Until you click Reactivate agent in this chat. It doesn't come back on its own

Stop is for a contact the agent should never look after: a supplier, a relative, a teammate. A stopped contact doesn't raise “Need help” alerts. If you know them in advance, the owner can add them under Edit channel → Agent stopped in these chats.

Who can do what

	Owner	Member
See “Need help” and answer the customer	✅	✅ (on the channels they can see)
Pause, resume or stop the agent in a chat	✅	✅
I handled it	✅	✅
Choose the channel's template and times	✅	—
Change when the agent hands off	✅	—

What you set up on the channel

To open Edit channel: in the sidebar, under Channels, hover over the channel and click ··· → Edit channel. Only an owner sees it.

The quickest way is to apply the Sales and orders template from Edit channel → Channel use. Afterwards you can adjust each value by hand.

Under Edit channel → Handing off to people:

Setting	What it does
Leave the thread to the team member for	How many hours, since the last message from someone on the team, the agent stays quiet in that conversation. It's also what turns on “Replied to you” and “Wrote again”: empty, the agent answers anyway and only “Asked for help” exists. The template sets it to 24
Remind if nobody answers within	How long a contact can wait in “Need help” before you're alerted again, once. Empty: no reminder. The template sets it to 2

Under Edit channel → Conversation follow-up:

Setting	What it does
Put the agent back on after	How many hours without messages before a paused conversation goes back to the agent. It doesn't apply to handed-off conversations nobody has handled yet
Flag it if the customer does not reply within	How long our last message can go unanswered before the conversation moves to the Unattended tab, labeled The customer never replied
Stop flagging it as unattended after	How long it stays in Unattended before becoming a normal chat again

What changes with each template

	Just connect	Sales and orders
The agent hands off and the conversation shows as “Asked for help”	Yes, if the agent has the Derivar a una persona (hand off to a person) tool	Yes
The agent steps aside when someone on the team writes	No	Yes, 24 h
“Replied to you” and “Wrote again”	No	Yes
Reminder	No	Yes, at 2 h

Many agents can hand off even when the channel is on Just connect. In that case Channel use tells you so and suggests applying Sales and orders.

In short

• The agent answers until it hands off or until someone on the team writes.
• If you write, the agent steps aside. When you stop writing, it comes back on its own.
• If the agent handed off, the conversation stays paused until you resume it.
• Every customer waiting for a person is in “Need help”, until someone writes to them.