Which of the three sentences a visitor is actually looking at

A visitor gets a stock apology rather than an answer, and it is not the one you expected to be there.

In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the answer. Work down rather than across: each carries a way to tell whether it is yours before you change anything.

• 1

  It is your refusal, and the assistant was never asked

  Why

  Retrieval runs, the closest passage is compared against your threshold, and below it the reply is your own sentence from When it has no answer on the Behaviour tab, served exactly as you typed it. Nothing is sent to the assistant, so no setting about how it writes can change any part of this.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Compare the reply against that box character for character. A match settles it, and the question will also be listed on the Insights tab under Unanswered questions, which records refusals from this path and no others.

  Fix

  Add the material, or lower the threshold a step. Rewriting the sentence changes what visitors read but nothing about when they read it.

• 2

  It is the offline message, and the workspace is out of replies

  Why

  The monthly reply allowance and the spending ceiling are checked before anything else happens, and past either one the reply is the offline message rather than an answer. This is the one that hits every visitor at once rather than one unlucky question.

  How to confirm it is this one

  In the network tab the chat request succeeds and streams normally, and the stream carries an error event whose code names the quota. That combination, a healthy request carrying a refusal inside it, belongs to this cause alone. Check the Usage screen alongside it.

  Fix

  Move up a plan or wait for the period to roll over. Note that refused and cached replies are counted but not billed, so the number on the Usage screen is replies actually produced.

• 3

  It is the offline message, and there is nothing to answer with

  Why

  Answering needs a credential. Where a workspace supplies its own and it has been marked invalid, or an install has none configured at all, there is nothing to ask. That is a configuration problem rather than a visitor problem, so it is logged loudly on our side and shown quietly as the offline message on theirs.

  How to confirm it is this one

  The same place as above and a different code: the stream carries an error event saying unavailable rather than naming a quota. Then open the Settings screen and look at whether a key is present and whether it is marked as no longer working.

  Fix

  Add or replace the key in Settings. A visitor sees no difference between this and an outage, which is why the network tab rather than the panel is where this gets settled.

• 4

  It is the offline message, and the request never returned an answer at all

  Why

  The panel falls back to your offline message whenever the request for a reply does not come back with one, whatever the reason. An expired session, a rate limit and a genuine outage all land in the same branch and produce the same sentence on screen.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Read the status on the chat request in the network tab. It separates them cleanly, and the body carries wording that the panel never displays. A request that never returned a stream at all is this cause; a request that streamed and carried an error inside it is one of the two above.

  Fix

  Depends entirely on the status, which is why reading it comes before changing anything. Word your offline message so that suggesting a page reload reads sensibly, because a reload is the fix for the most common of them.

• 5

  It is neither of your sentences, and the assistant declined on its own

  Why

  Above the threshold the assistant is asked, is shown the passages, and is under standing instructions to say it does not have the information and to suggest contacting the team rather than filling the gap. That refusal is composed fresh every time and is not stored anywhere as a setting.

  How to confirm it is this one

  It matches neither of your two boxes word for word, and the question does not appear under Unanswered questions, because only the gate path records anything there. Those two facts together identify it and nothing else does.

  Fix

  The question is passing the gate on one strong passage while the answer lives across several. Raise Passages it reads a little, or better, gather the answer into one place.

There is a fourth kind of reply that is easy to mistake for a refusal and is not one. Greetings, thanks, goodbyes, asking what this is and asking to speak to a person are recognised before retrieval runs and answered from a small set of fixed sentences that name your brand. That is why an assistant with nothing indexed at all still answers hello warmly and refuses everything else, and why those particular replies never carry a source under them.

Why is the visitor not told which of these happened?

Because the useful half of that information is about your account and none of their business, and the useless half would invite them to try again against something that is not going to change. One sentence you control is more honest than a code they cannot act on.

Do refusals cost me anything?

A refusal from the gate never reaches the assistant, so it is not billed. It is still counted, because you want to know how often it is happening, and the Insights tab is where that count turns into something you can act on.

Can I have different wording for out of scope and out of service?

You already do, and that is what these two boxes are. The refusal lives on the Behaviour tab and should point somewhere useful. The offline message is the one every other failure falls back to and should read sensibly for a reload.