State Type: Assisting

The Assisting state is the agent's general-purpose "stay and help" state. It is the default conversational state — broad in scope, liberal with tools, and the place most calls spend the majority of their time.

What It Does

Assisting is what it sounds like: the agent is helping the caller. It answers questions, looks things up, reads from the knowledge base, finds people in the phone directory, and transfers the call when asked. It is an open-ended working state, not a narrow step.

Technically, Assisting is identical to Greeting in how it runs — same prompt + tools + transitions shape. The difference is context and intent. Greeting is for the opening of the call; Assisting is for ongoing purposed help after the opening (or in flows where there is no meaningful distinction between the two).

When to Use It

You want a dedicated state for ongoing help, separate from the opening greeting.
The call returns to general help after a specialized state finishes (e.g. booking completes, transfer is cancelled, caller says "actually, one more thing").
The flow has multiple entry points that all funnel into the same "keep helping" logic.

For simple flows, you do not need a separate Assisting state — the Greeting state does double duty. Reach for Assisting when you want the opening line to fire only once.

Writing the Description

Assisting prompts should focus on how the agent helps, not on the opening line:

Be liberal with the scope. List the categories of request the agent can handle here — questions, transfers, lookups.
Spell out how the agent should hand off. "If the caller asks to book, transition to scheduling." "If the caller sounds frustrated or asks for a person, transfer."

Example:

Tools to Include

A typical Assisting state carries the same broad toolkit as Greeting:

Get Company Info, Search Knowledge Base — answer questions.
Search Phone Directory, Transfer Call — connect to people.
Transitions into Collect Information, Call Routing, or other focused states when the caller's need narrows.

If you have integration tools enabled on the agent's domain (Calendly, Google Calendar, Zoho, Heartland, etc.), Assisting is a reasonable state to put them in too — the agent can decide to use them when the caller asks.

If you are not sure whether to use Greeting or Assisting, pick Greeting. For a single-state flow, Greeting is always the right answer — Assisting is only worth a separate state when the flow has multiple entry or re-entry points.

Returning to Assisting

A common pattern is to transition back to Assisting after a specialized state finishes. For example, after a Collect Information state completes, a transition labeled "anything else?" brings the caller back to Assisting so they can ask a follow-up question. This keeps the conversation natural instead of ending abruptly.