In this article, you will learn about some of the most frequently asked questions related to Genius Answering.

Genius Answering is an AI-powered answering service capable of picking up incoming calls, speaking with your customers about the services they need, and even adding jobs to your schedule. Genius Answering is a powerful AI tool built right into Workiz, eliminating the need for manual training.

After activating Genius Answering, "Jessica" — your business's AI answering assistant — will automatically know a lot about your business based on your Workiz account. You can further configure Jessica to only offer certain services, ask specific questions, and even limit the sort of actions she can take during calls, including:

• Creating a new job
• Taking a message
• Rescheduling an existing job (verified clients only)
• Canceling an existing job (verified clients only)
• Adding a note to an existing job (verified clients only)

To learn more about getting started with Genius Answering, please see this article.

Frequently asked questions

Overview & setup

• An AI agent is a virtual assistant that uses artificial intelligence to communicate with your clients. In Workiz, it can answer calls, reply to messages, book jobs, and handle incoming questions just like a member of your team would.

  Each agent can handle one call at a time. If your plan includes more than one agent, multiple calls can be answered simultaenously. For example, a plan with 3 agents can handle up to 3 incoming calls at once before calls are sent to the next step in your call flow.

• Jessica is the default voice for your AI agent for Genius Answering. She will be the assistant that clients communicate with during phone and text conversations. She is capable of booking new jobs, rescheduling jobs, providing information based on your settings, and more.

  Jessica is one of several voices you can use for Genius Answering. To learn more about choosing a different voice for your AI agent, please see this article.

• Yes, a Genius Phone plan is required in order to use Genius Answering.

Call handling & job booking

• Yes! Your AI agent can be configured from the Genius Answering settings page. There, you can decide what types of jobs your AI agent can book, what questions you want it to ask, and more.

• Yes, if you'd prefer to have your AI agent book leads instead of jobs, you can update your Genius Answering settings. To learn more about enabling leads for Genius Answering, please see this article.

• By default, your AI agent knows to ask for your client's name, phone number, service address, and service time/date when booking jobs.

  If you have extra questions you want it to ask when booking jobs, you can provide those as custom questions in your Genius Answering settings. After providing the questions, you need to map them to your custom fields to ensure the information is properly stored in the right place.

  To learn more about creating custom questions, please see this article.

• Your AI agent will decide when and how to book jobs based on the availability preferences you have saved on your online booking settings page.

  Here are the three different options available:

  • Based on tech's availability:Only allow clients to schedule appointments based on your team's availability
  • Set number of jobs per slot:Only allow your clients to schedule a certain number of appointments per time slot
  • Allow double booking: Allow clients to schedule appointments regardless of existing availability

  If your online booking settings allow for double booking, your AI agent will do the same.

• No, your AI agent will only allow callers to cancel existing jobs if the caller dialed from a number that matches an existing job on your account. Calls from numbers that aren’t saved to existing jobs will be limited to booking new jobs or leaving a message.

• Your AI agent will only allow clients to book services that match the job types you selected when customizing your settings If the requested service doesn’t match one of your chosen job types, your AI agent will clearly explain that it can only book certain types of jobs before listing some of those jobs to the caller.

• Yes, your AI agent will only offer the job types you've added to your Genius Answering settings. To learn more about limiting the job types your AI agent can offer, please see this article.

• Calls answered by your AI agent count as answered calls and will trigger any applicable automation rules — such as sending a follow-up message once the call is completed.

Pricing, language, & scripting

• Your AI agent’s responses to pricing questions are based on your Genius Answering settings. You can keep it simple — letting customers know if estimates are free or if a minimum fee applies — or set up more advanced pricing by assigning fixed prices or ranges for specific services.

  To learn more about pricing settings with Genius Answering, please see this article.

• You can’t provide a strict script for your AI agent to follow. While you’re able to customize its greeting, set answers to common questions, and provide pricing details, the AI is designed to stay flexible during conversations to ensure more natural and effective responses.

• Your AI agent can communicate in both English and Spanish. Support for Spanish must be enabled from your Genius Answering settings.

• In your Genius Answering settings, you have the option of having your AI provide set times and dates or arrival windows when confirming the appointment time over the phone. Arrival windows are determined by the booking slot duration you have for online booking. For example, if your booking slot duration is set to 3 hours, your arrival window will be set to 3 hours.

• Workiz makes it easy to equip your AI agent with answers to common customer questions by setting up custom answers in your Genius Answering settings. Your AI agent is designed to follow the answers you provide and not create answers of its own.

Call volume, limits, & after hours

• If you exceed the monthly conversation limits for your Genius Answering plan, your AI agent will no longer answer calls. The call will skip Genius Answering and go to the next step in your call flow (possibly your voicemail).

• Genius Answering can only answer one call at a time per agent on your plan. So if your plan includes 1 agent, it can answer 1 call at a time. If you have 2 agents, it can answer 2 calls at once — and so on. Any extra calls will go to the next step in your call flow.

• Yes! Simply insert Genius Answering as a step within the closed-hours section of your call flow and your AI agent will answer all calls that come in outside of your business hours.

• No, on-demand billing cannot support Genius Answering.

  Once you reach your monthly conversation totals, your AI agent will no longer respond to messages or answer incoming calls. Calls will skip Genius Answering and go to the next step in the call flow (likely your voicemail).

Messages, humans, & recording

• You can enable this capability when customizing your script. When enabled, your AI agent will provide you with a written message you can access from the Message Center.

• If your call flow is set up to record calls, calls answered by Genius Answering will be recorded. To learn more about recording calls, please see this article.

  You also have the option of receiving an email summarizing an AI-answered call. To learn more about setting up this email alert, please see this article.

• If a caller asks to speak with a human, your AI agent will reply with the message you’ve set in your Genius Answering settings. It can take a message that you receive in the Message Center, but it cannot transfer the call to a member of your team.

  To learn more about setting your default reply for these scenarios, please see this article.

Written messages

• Yes! When set up accordingly, your AI agent can also respond to incoming texts and emails.

  When receiving texts, your AI agent will respond directly to the number the message was sent from.

  When receiving emails, your AI agent will respond via text message based on the phone number that was provided in the email. This applies to service requests from sources like your website form, Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp, Nextdoor, and other similar services. If no phone number was provided, your AI agent will not send a response.

  To learn more about setting up Genius Answering to respond to written messages, please see this article.

• How quickly your AI agent replies to texts will depend on your Genius Answering settings. You can give your team as much or as little time as you'd like to respond to written messages before your AI agent takes control.

  To learn more about how to configure this setting, please see this article.

• No, Genius Answering cannot review or respond to images sent through your Message Center. If a client includes a photo in their message, the image will be ignored, and only the text (if any) will be used to generate a response.