Chat Health

Every chat carries a health_status — the field you can check before sending to decide what to do with the next outbound on that conversation. While there isn’t a direct link between deliverability and chat health, it is a prediction and analysis of messaging behavior. You’ll see it on every chat-related webhook event and on every chat read. Treat it as a pre-send gate, not as much a report.

If you take one thing from this page: two-way engagement is among the strongest signals we use, and it rolls directly into your line’s reputation. Continuing to send messages into silence is one of the most common reasons a conversation — and its line — slides to AT_RISK or even CRITICAL.

So:

• Send messages built to get a reply. Lead with a question or a clear, relevant prompt.
• Let replies set your pace, and back off when they stop. See How many messages should I send? for the cadence and back-off ladder.

We recommend you do whatever is best for your messaging use case, but one example could be to cache the most recent health_status.status from your webhook stream and check it as a pre-flight before queueing each outbound:

switch (chat.health_status.status) {
  case 'HEALTHY':   send(message); break;
  case 'AT_RISK':   checkReplyRate(); break;
  case 'CRITICAL':  pause(chat); break;
  case 'OPTED_OUT': skip(chat); // terminal — never resume sending
}

Acting on the status before each send is what turns the signal into delivery improvement — ultimately leading to a healthier line.

The chat looks like a normal conversation. Replies are landing, delivery signals look good, and no opt-out language has been detected. No action needed.

One or more soft signals suggest this chat is heading in the wrong direction. Common drivers:

• Low engagement. The ratio of recipient replies to your sends is low.

AT_RISK is a warning, not a hard stop. What to do:

• Slow outbound and vary your content. Reduce send frequency; repeated near-identical messages amplify negative signal.
• Back off if replies have stopped. Don’t hold the same cadence into silence — see How many messages should I send?.

Watch for the chat moving back to HEALTHY (good) or down to CRITICAL (act fast).

Strong signals that messages on this chat aren’t reaching the recipient the way you expect. Continuing to send is unlikely to help and may make the situation worse for the broader line.

Recommended action: Pause this chat. Re-engage only after chat becomes healthy again.

The recipient sent an opt-out keyword on this chat. This is terminal: regardless of any other signals, do not send further outbound messages on this chat.

The full set of opt-out keywords:

STOP, UNSUBSCRIBE, OPTOUT, CANCEL, END, QUIT

Currently, matching is exact and case-sensitive against the inbound message.

If the recipient later sends the opt-in keyword OPTIN (same matching rules), the opt-out clears and the chat moves back to whichever health bucket current signals indicate.

Chat health is a leading signal for your line’s reputation: the health of the conversations on a line rolls up into the line’s overall reputation. Many AT_RISK or CRITICAL chats on a single line increase the chance that the line will be flagged by our systems or carriers.

That said, chat health is not the only thing that affects line reputation. We are continuously improving our models to create a healthy ecosystem. See the Phone Reputation guide for the line-level view.

• New chats start as HEALTHY and move to AT_RISK, CRITICAL, or OPTED_OUT as signals warrant.
• updated_at tells you when the status last changed; use it to detect rapid status drops in your dashboards.
• Switch on health_status according to the use cases above.

How many messages should I send to keep a chat healthy?

Let replies set the pace. A back-and-forth conversation can sustain a normal cadence; a one-sided one can’t. As a rule of thumb, keep at least 2–3 recipient replies flowing for the volume you send, and don’t send many messages a week into a chat that isn’t replying.

When a recipient goes quiet, slow down and eventually stop — sending harder into silence is one of the fastest ways to push a chat to AT_RISK or CRITICAL. Use an escalating back-off:

1. No reply? Wait about a day, then send one follow-up.
2. Still no reply? Wait a few days, then send one more.
3. Still nothing? Send a final message that gives the recipient an easy way out — for example, asking whether they’d like to stop receiving messages — then halt all outbound to that recipient.
4. Wait for a reply before sending again. When they respond, read it carefully: a clear “stop” (or an opt-out keyword) means you’re done; genuine interest means you can resume at a normal, reply-paced cadence.

Does chat health read message content or store any PII?

No. Evaluating health status runs on anonymous, aggregate signals — message volume, sends vs. receives, response cadence, and similar metadata. Inbound text is scanned at runtime (JIT) to detect opt-out language for OPTED_OUT signals, but message content is never collected, stored, or retained. No PII is persisted.