# What Is a Fallback Intent? Chatbot Fallbacks

Source: https://insertchat.com/glossary/fallback-intent

> A fallback intent is what a chatbot or voice assistant does when it can’t understand or answer. Learn good fallback design and why guessing is the worst one.

A fallback intent is the response a chatbot or voice assistant uses when it can’t match a message to anything it knows how to handle, or doesn’t have the answer. A good fallback admits the gap, asks the customer to rephrase or offers a person, and records the question so the business can fill the gap later.

## How fallbacks work

In intent-based chatbots, the fallback fires when no intent scores above a confidence threshold. The classic reply, “Sorry, I didn’t get that,” repeated twice, is what makes customers hate bots. Better designs escalate after a second miss and log every fallback for review.

Language-model assistants rarely fail to understand, so the modern fallback problem is missing information. When the knowledge base doesn’t cover a question, the right fallback is “I don’t have that information” plus a next step. The wrong one is a confident guess, which is how [AI hallucination](https://insertchat.com/glossary/ai-hallucination) reaches customers.

## Example: a pet groomer asked about cats

A pet grooming salon’s website chat gets asked, “Do you groom Persian cats?” The salon’s knowledge only covers dogs. A good fallback says it doesn’t have information about cat grooming, offers to have the salon confirm, and takes the visitor’s contact details. The owner sees the question in a list of knowledge gaps and adds the answer. This scenario is illustrative.

## Fallbacks in InsertChat

InsertChat’s assistant is set to say when information is not available, a setting you cannot turn off, and it is instructed never to invent business facts, prices, policies, or availability. By default it asks a person for help when an answer is uncertain, and after a customer says twice that an answer didn’t help.

Unanswered or weak questions from real conversations appear under Knowledge gaps in [knowledge and answers](https://insertchat.com/product/knowledge), with how many times each was asked. Read [how to set up human handoff](https://insertchat.com/blog/set-up-human-handoff), or see the [pet grooming setup](https://insertchat.com/industries/pet-grooming).

## What should a chatbot say when it doesn’t know?

Say plainly that it doesn’t have the information, then offer a next step: a person, a callback, or a link. Never guess at prices, policies, or availability.

## How many fallbacks before handing off to a person?

Two is a common limit. After that, repeating the same reply only frustrates the customer, so the conversation should go to a person.

## Related terms

- [AI hallucination](https://insertchat.com/glossary/ai-hallucination): An AI hallucination is a response from an AI system that sounds confident but is false, made up, or unsupported by its sources, such as an invented price, policy, or appointment time.
- [Human handoff](https://insertchat.com/glossary/human-handoff): Human handoff is the point where an AI assistant passes a customer conversation to a person, along with everything said so far.
- [Knowledge base](https://insertchat.com/glossary/knowledge-base): A knowledge base is an organized collection of information that people or software use to answer questions.
- [Intent recognition](https://insertchat.com/glossary/intent-recognition): Intent recognition is the step where an AI system identifies what a person is trying to do, such as book an appointment, ask a price, cancel, complain, or report an emergency.
- [Escalation](https://insertchat.com/glossary/escalation): Escalation is moving a customer issue to someone with more authority, expertise, or urgency than the first point of contact, such as from a chatbot to staff, or from staff to the owner.

## Related InsertChat pages

- [Knowledge and answers](https://insertchat.com/product/knowledge)
- [How to set up human handoff](https://insertchat.com/blog/set-up-human-handoff)
- [AI receptionist for pet groomers](https://insertchat.com/industries/pet-grooming)