Conversation metrics
Volume, handoff rate, booking conversion — and what each one should make you do.
Four numbers that, read together, tell you whether your assistant is helping or generating work.
| Metric | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Total conversations | Demand. Compare against your website traffic before concluding anything about the assistant. |
| Handoff rate | How often it could not cope. The single most actionable number here. |
| Booking conversion | How many conversations ended in an appointment. |
| Average messages | How long it takes to get somewhere. Rising is usually bad. |
Handoff rate is the one to work on
A high handoff rate is not a failure of the assistant so much as a description of what it has not been told. Every handover is a question it could not answer.
- Read a week of handovers in the inbox.
- Group them. Usually three or four questions account for most of them.
- Write an FAQ entry for each, or a locked answer if the answer must be exact.
- Look again in a fortnight.
A handoff rate of zero is not the goal and is usually a warning — it means either nothing difficult is being asked, or the assistant is answering things it should be handing over.
Booking conversion
Read it against your own expectation, not against a benchmark. Many conversations are legitimately not bookings: opening hours, parking, "do you treat children". A clinic whose widget answers questions well will convert a smaller share and be better off.
If it is low and handoff is low, the assistant is answering everything and closing nothing — check that direct booking is on.
Average messages
A rising average means people are going round in circles. Look at routing first: a patient who cannot get to the right specialty asks the same thing three ways.
Common questions
- What is a good handoff rate?
- There is no universal number, and any figure quoted here would be invented. What matters is whether yours is falling as you feed the assistant answers.