Configuring When and How Your Agents Reach Out

Some of how your agents reach out is yours to change on the spot, and some of it we set up with you. This article covers both, so you know which is a two-click job and which is an email.

Agent vs. campaign, quickly

An agent is the worker that texts customers (Mollie, Lenny, Ellie…). A campaign is the job you assign it — which customers, and when. Pausing an agent stops everything it does; pausing a campaign stops one specific send while the agent keeps running.

What you can change yourself

• Pause and resume sends — any time, from the agent's own page. See below.

• Send time — when a scheduled campaign goes out each day, on the agent's Settings tab under Schedule & limits. Keep it before 4:00 pm your time; a campaign set for 4:00 pm or later won't go out.

• Daily limit, send days and wait between contacts — in the same Schedule & limits section: Max sends per day (the most customers a scheduled campaign texts in a day), Days of week, and Cooldown (the minimum time before the same customer is contacted again). Click Save settings and confirm; changes take effect straight away. See Why Your Agent Sent Fewer Messages Than You Expected.

• Follow-ups — on the agent's Follow-ups tab: how many follow-ups go out, how far apart, the hours they can send, and what stops them. The switch turns them on or off straight away; after editing the sequence, click Save changes. A campaign with none yet shows Set up follow-ups. Changes only reach conversations that start from now on.

• Campaign targeting and timing — who a campaign goes to and on which days, by asking Jenny. See Build & Edit Campaigns with Ask Jenny.

• Who an agent won't contact — stop or resume outreach to one customer. See Do Not Contact.

What we set up with you

• Outreach windows — the days and hours an agent is allowed to message at all, matched to your business hours. Follow-ups also have their own sending hours, which you can set on the Follow-ups tab. Windows govern outreach only: when a customer replies, the agent answers whenever the reply comes in, including outside these hours.

• Blackout periods — stretches when no agent should reach out (holidays, closures, special events).

For any of these, see How to request a change below.

Pausing and resuming sends

If you need outreach to stop — during a system issue on your end, a staffing crunch, a holiday, or while you rethink a campaign — you can do it yourself. Open the agent and click Pause sends in the header. Nothing is lost; your configuration stays exactly as it was.

When you're ready, click Resume sends and choose how today should be handled:

• Next scheduled run — skip any send scheduled earlier today — the default. If today's send time has already passed, today is skipped and it picks up tomorrow.

• Today — include today's send if its sending window is still open — un-skips today. It's not a guarantee: if the window has closed, it still waits for tomorrow.

Event-triggered campaigns — the ones that fire when something happens, like a missed call or a new lead, rather than at a set time — aren't affected by either choice. They pick up as soon as sends resume.

Changing the send time

Open the agent, go to the Settings tab, and find Send time under Schedule & limits.

Send time is your shop's local time. The field is labelled "Local time" followed by your organization's timezone — not your computer's, and not UTC — so it reads the same for someone on your team travelling out of state. If the timezone shown isn't where your shop is, email us; that's set on your account, not on the agent.

Stopping outreach isn't the same as stopping bookings

Pausing sends or setting a blackout stops your agents messaging people. It doesn't stop them booking a day if a customer asks for it. To keep agents off a day or a stretch of dates, block the availability instead — see Block bookings for specific dates. For a holiday you usually want both: no outreach, and no bookings.

How to request a change

For outreach windows or blackout periods, email support@upsmith.com with which agent, what to change, and when it should take effect. Timing and pacing changes are usually quick to apply. For a blackout, give us the dates well ahead so it's in place before the first send it needs to stop.

You don't need to email us to pause — use Pause sends and it takes effect straight away.

A note on stop requests

Setting an outreach window is different from honoring a customer's "stop." When a customer asks to stop, that should be handled as a do-not-contact stop so it holds across every future trigger — see Do Not Contact.

If a customer asked to stop and still heard from an agent afterwards, email support@upsmith.com straight away and mark it urgent. Include the customer, the agent, and the messages with their times, so we can fix the stop at the source rather than just for that one thread.

When a change to a customer record looks unauthorized

Your agents work inside the permissions your account has in ServiceTitan, and they write back what their job calls for — a confirmed appointment, a new time, an updated contact. When a change looks like an agent went off-script, it's usually one of three things:

• It was part of the agent's normal job — updating an appointment time after the customer rescheduled, say — and the person who saw it wasn't expecting it.

• The customer gave the agent new information by text, like a corrected phone number, and the agent updated the record.

• A real misconfiguration let the agent write something it shouldn't have.

The first two are working as designed. The third is one we want to hear about: email support@upsmith.com with the customer record, what the value was before and what it is now, when you noticed, and which agent you think was involved. We'll correct the record if it was an error and close the gap so it can't happen again. If there are fields or actions you never want an agent to touch, tell us and we'll lock them down.

Common questions

I resumed an agent and nothing went out today. You resumed after today's send time with the default option, so today was skipped. Next time pick Today when you resume — as long as the sending window is still open, today's send goes out.

Can I pause one campaign and leave the rest of the agent running? Yes — that's the difference between pausing a campaign and pausing an agent. If you can't see how to do it for the campaign you mean, email us with its name.

Will pausing lose my settings or my customer list? No. Pausing only stops sending. Everything else is exactly where you left it.

An agent replied to a customer at 10pm. Isn't that outside our hours? Outreach windows only cover the agent starting or following up on a conversation. If the customer texts first, the agent answers — at any hour — so they aren't left waiting.

Where to go next

• Build & Edit Campaigns with Ask Jenny — changing who a campaign targets

• Do Not Contact — who gets contacted and who doesn't

• Block bookings for specific dates — keeping agents from booking a day