Automatic conversation closing by the bot

Overview

When the bot finishes helping someone, somebody has to state that the conversation is over. Otherwise it stays open in the queue, taking up room and distorting your reports.

Close the conversation when the service ends is the bot setting that handles this. It has three values:

• Leave the conversation as it is — the default. Nothing changes.
• Mark as resolved — the conversation leaves the queue and counts as resolved.
• Mark as pending (human triage) — the conversation leaves automatic handling and waits for a person to look at it.

Why this changed

Before, whoever wanted this behavior asked for it in the bot's prompt: "when you're done, resolve the conversation". It worked sometimes. The reason is honest: closing was one more action competing for the turn's action budget, and when the limit was reached the action was dropped silently — the bot answered nicely and the conversation stayed open, with no warning at all.

Now the platform performs the closing, after the reply has already been delivered to the contact. It doesn't compete for the budget, doesn't depend on the artificial intelligence remembering, and doesn't get lost.

Prerequisites

• Be an administrator of the account.
• A bot already created and connected to an inbox.
• A process decision on what "the end" means in your operation: resolved or pending.

Step by step

1. Go to Settings → Bots and open the bot you want to adjust.
2. Scroll to the Close the conversation when the service ends field (right above the Conversation & Context block).
3. Pick one of the three values.
4. Click Save.

It takes effect from the bot's next reply. Nothing needs restarting, and conversations already open are untouched.

Settings & options

Resolved and pending are not the same thing — this is a process choice, not a technical detail. Resolved ends it: out of the queue and counted in resolution, CSAT and handling-time numbers. Pending does not end it: it takes the conversation off autopilot and puts it in the reviewer's queue. If you mark everything as resolved with nobody checking, your reports look great and your operation goes blind.

Use cases

• FAQ and high-volume questions. The bot answers "what are your hours", "where is my order", "how do I cancel" and nobody else is needed. Resolved keeps the queue clean.
• Pre-service and qualification. The bot collects name, need and urgency, but the sales team decides the next step. Pending hands the case over ready for triage without it disappearing from anyone's view.
• An operation under audit. New bot, prompt still being tuned, team wanting to read everything it did before trusting it. Leave it as it is until confidence grows.

Tips, limits & best practices

Three situations where the bot does NOT close, even when configured:

1. The value is "Leave the conversation as it is". It's the default — nobody who never touched it sees any change.
2. The turn delivered nothing to the contact. If the bot never sent a message, there is no completed service to close. Closing a conversation without having spoken to anyone would be worse than leaving it open.
3. The turn ended in a handoff to a human. If the bot just asked for a person, closing the conversation would be the worst possible outcome: whoever was called would find it closed. The handoff destination policy still rules that case — this setting only acts when the turn did not end in a handoff.

Honest limit: there is no configurable delay. Closing happens right after the reply. You cannot ask for "close 10 minutes later, if the contact doesn't write again". If the bot closes too early, that is self-healing: as soon as the contact writes again, the conversation reopens on its own and the bot picks the service back up. Nobody is left without an answer because of an early close.

Consequence of closing early: the conversation reopens, but the "resolved → reopened → resolved" cycle shows up in the reports. If you see many reopens on the same bot, the signal isn't that closing is broken — it's that this conversation doesn't end where you thought it did. Pending is usually the better choice in those cases.

If you use satisfaction surveys (CSAT), ask for the rating together with the last reply, not after it. An already-closed conversation is not the best moment to ask for a score.

Troubleshooting

I set "Mark as resolved" and the conversation is still open. Check the three situations above, in this order: was the value saved? Did the bot actually send a message on that turn? Did the turn end in a handoff to a human? One of those three explains almost every case.

The conversation closes too early, before the contact is done. That's expected when the conversation goes back and forth. It reopens on its own with the next message and the bot continues where it stopped — nothing is lost. If it bothers the team, switch to pending or back to leave it as it is.

Resolution numbers jumped after I turned this on. Every automatic close counts. If nobody used to close conversations by hand, the jump is real and expected. Compare periods using the same criteria before drawing conclusions.

I can't find the field in the settings. It appears in the bot configuration, for administrators. If you opened the screen through another path or don't have administrator permission, the field isn't available.

See also

• Actions per reply: how much the bot does before answering
• Bot autonomy modes and human approval (HITL)