Design AI and human service in Apple Messages

Ground assistance in approved business context, connect authorized actions and give people a clear handoff.

Define the supported tasks, approved knowledge, available business tools and human service team. Apple requires a route to a live agent; a bot-only experience does not qualify, as explained in Apple’s FAQ.

Identify the assistant as automated, explain what it can help with and define when clarification or a person is needed. Provide only the information and permissions necessary for the supported tasks.

Retrieve the relevant order, product or appointment through authorized access. Use native choices or a short form where they clarify the customer’s goal. Treat customer input as input, not authority to bypass access rules.

Explain the proposed change and obtain the required confirmation. Invoke the business operation through its normal permission checks, then make the assistant’s reply reflect the recorded result.

Transfer the customer’s goal, relevant references and attempted steps to the operating team. Make it clear which actor owns the next reply so the assistant and person do not conflict. Pause automated replies when a person takes ownership, and define the deliberate action that returns the conversation to the assistant. Test both transitions with the original conversation history intact.

Review completed tasks, repeated contact, unresolved requests and escalation. Test incorrect knowledge, ambiguous requests, refused access and an uncertain operation response.

Choose a request the assistant can complete and one that needs a specialist. For the first, inspect the knowledge used, the customer’s authorization and the recorded business action. For the second, inspect the handoff summary, assignment and assistant pause. Use redacted examples when reviewing conversation content.

If an answer is confident but incorrect, inspect the approved source and retrieved context. If an action is uncertain, inspect the original operation before retrying. If handoff stalls, verify the actual team and response path rather than only the route label.