Scale gives you three ways to make sure no customer is forgotten: automatic follow-up messages the AI sends to a customer who stopped replying, reminders that tell you or a team member to get back to a lead at a set time, and meetings the AI books during a chat and adds to Google Calendar. The Follow-ups screen in the dashboard sidebar keeps your reminders and meeting requests in one place, and the timing of automatic follow-ups is set under Settings → AI Assistant → Advanced settings.
This guide covers every tab and button on the Follow-ups screen, how reminders handle time zones and who is notified, when the AI sends a follow-up and how it respects the 24-hour messaging window, and how the meetings it books reach your calendar.
The three kinds of follow-up in Scale
| Type | Who acts | Does the customer receive a message |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic follow-up | The AI | Yes, one message inside the 24-hour window |
| Reminder | You or the team member assigned to the lead | No. A reminder is internal and sends nothing to the customer |
| Meeting | The AI records it from the chat | No extra message. The meeting appears on the Follow-ups screen and in Google Calendar when it is connected |
The Follow-ups screen and every option on it
Open Follow-ups from the sidebar. The red number next to its name counts the reminders that are overdue or due today. The line under the title shows how many reminders are overdue, how many are due today and how many meeting requests there are. A team member sees the reminders on leads assigned to them, and the owner sees every reminder in the workspace.
Each reminder row shows the customer's name and number, the reason you wrote and the time. When the 24-hour messaging window with that customer is closed, the row says so, which tells you before you open the chat that you will need an approved template to write to them.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| New reminder | Opens the reminder form with a list to choose the customer |
| Reminders | Every pending reminder with the count, split into three groups |
| Overdue | Reminders whose time has passed. They come first, each with how late it is |
| Today | Reminders due later today. A reminder with 30 minutes or less to go shows the time remaining |
| Upcoming | Reminders due after today |
| Open chat | Opens the customer's conversation in the Inbox |
| Done | Marks the reminder as handled and removes it from the list |
| Meetings | The latest meeting requests the AI recorded, with their count |
| Scheduled and Pending | Scheduled means a date and time are agreed. Pending means the customer asked for a meeting and no time is fixed yet |
| Calendar | Opens that day in Google Calendar. Shown to the owner on meetings that were added to the calendar |
| Delete meeting | Removes the meeting and deletes its Google Calendar event. Owner only |
| Delete all | Removes every meeting after a confirmation. Owner only |
| Google Calendar card | Shows whether the calendar is connected, with a Connect button for the owner when it is not |
| Right now | Three counters: overdue now, upcoming, meetings |
How to create a reminder to follow up with a lead
Start the reminder
On the Follow-ups screen click New reminder and choose the customer from the list. Or open the customer's conversation and click the bell icon at the top, or the Set a reminder button in the Lead details panel, and the reminder is for that customer.
Set the date and time
The field When should we remind you? opens on tomorrow at ten in the morning. Change it, or use the Add buttons: +1 hour, +3 hours, +1 day, +1 week. Each press adds to the time already in the field, so pressing +1 hour twice adds two hours.
Write the reason
The Reason is shown next to the customer's name in the reminders list and accepts up to 500 characters. Write what will remind you of what was said.
Save
Click Save reminder. The reminder appears on the Follow-ups screen and in a Follow-up reminders strip at the top of the customer's conversation.
| Action inside the conversation | What it does |
|---|---|
| Done | Marks the reminder as handled |
| Tomorrow | Pushes the reminder to 24 hours from now |
| Delete | Deletes the reminder after a confirmation |
Time zone of a reminder
The time you type is read on your own clock. If a team member has their own time zone in their working schedule on the Team screen, that one is used; otherwise Scale uses the business time zone the owner sets under Settings → Preferences → Business timezone. The Today group follows the same clock, so a reminder for tomorrow morning does not appear under Today. A reminder follows the lead: the owner and the team member assigned to the lead both see it, whoever created it, and when the lead is moved to another team member its reminders move with it. See Team and roles in Scale.
Notifications for reminders and meetings
A notification about a lead goes to the account owner and to the team member assigned to that lead, and not to the rest of the team.
The bell icon at the top of the dashboard opens the Notifications list with what needs your attention now: unread customer messages, unread internal comments, pending reminders with the overdue ones first, and meeting requests. View all activity opens the same list on the Home page under Needs attention.
If you use the Scale mobile app, the notifications below also arrive as push notifications on the devices where you are signed in.
| Notification | When it is sent |
|---|---|
| A follow-up is due | 30 minutes before the reminder's time, once. Pushing the reminder back arms the notification again for the new time |
| Overdue follow-ups | Once a day, with the number of reminders past their time |
| Booking confirmed | When the AI schedules a meeting with a date and time. It says whether the meeting was added to Google Calendar |
| Needs a human reply | When the AI hands a conversation over to your team |
| New message | When a customer writes to you. The notification names the sender only, without the text of the message, and repeats for the same conversation at most once every 3 minutes |
| A lead was assigned to you | When a lead is assigned to a team member |
Automatic AI follow-ups
An automatic follow-up is one message the AI sends to a customer who stopped replying in the middle of a conversation. After each AI reply, the AI judges whether the conversation needs a follow-up. If it does, Scale schedules one message, written by the AI in the customer's language from the recent conversation and sent on the same channel the customer used: WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger. The message appears in the conversation like any AI reply and uses 1 message from your plan.
Only one follow-up is scheduled at a time. If the customer replies before it is due, it is replaced by whatever the next AI reply decides. After a follow-up is sent, another one is scheduled only after the customer writes again. No follow-up is scheduled when a meeting with a date has just been agreed.
Right before sending, Scale checks the conversation again and sends the follow-up only when every condition below is true. Lead stages are explained in Leads and Customers in Scale.
- The Follow-up setting is not Disabled
- The conversation is not closed
- The AI is still the one answering the conversation and no team member has taken it over
- The lead's stage is not Lost or Not a Lead
- Auto-reply is switched on for the workspace
- The 24-hour messaging window with the customer is still open
- The workspace subscription is active and has messages left
How to turn automatic follow-ups on or off and set their timing
Open the advanced AI settings
Go to Settings → AI Assistant and click Advanced settings. Only the account owner sees these settings. See AI Assistant settings in Scale for the other options.
Choose an option on the Follow-up card
The card is titled Follow-up, with the line How long before it follows up on silence under it. Click one option.
Save
Click Save advanced settings. The choice applies to new conversations as soon as it is saved.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Disabled | No automatic follow-up is sent |
| After 1 hour | The follow-up is sent about one hour after the AI's last reply |
| After 24 hours | The follow-up is sent late in the 24-hour window, about 20 hours after the AI's last reply |
| After 3 days | Sent as late inside the 24-hour window as Scale allows. It is not sent three days later |
| Weekly | Sent as late inside the 24-hour window as Scale allows. It is not repeated every week |
Meetings booked by the AI and the Google Calendar link
When a customer asks for a meeting, a call or a visit during a chat, the AI records a meeting request on the lead. While no exact time is set the request stays Pending. When a date and time are agreed it becomes Scheduled, the lead's stage moves to Appointment Booked, and the owner and the assigned team member receive a Booking confirmed notification. Each lead has one open meeting at a time, and a later confirmation updates the same request.
How readily the AI offers appointments is set on the Booking card under Settings → AI Assistant → Advanced settings. The same choice also appears under Settings → Integrations → Appointment booking.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Never book | The AI neither suggests nor books appointments |
| Book only when asked | The AI books only if the customer asks for it |
| Suggest booking naturally | The AI suggests an appointment when the customer shows interest. This is the option Scale recommends |
| Always try to book | The AI pushes for an appointment in every conversation |
Google Calendar. When Google Calendar is connected, every Scheduled meeting is added to your calendar automatically as a 30-minute event in the calendar's own time zone, and a row is added to the Bookings tab of your Google Sheets spreadsheet. Pending requests are not added, because they have no time yet. Connect the calendar from the Google Calendar card on the Follow-ups screen or from Settings → Integrations; the steps are in How to Connect Google Sheets and Google Calendar to Scale. Meetings scheduled before you connected are not added afterwards.
Deleting a meeting in Scale also deletes its calendar event. A meeting whose time has passed is removed from the Follow-ups list automatically, and its event stays in Google Calendar.
Frequently asked questions
Does a reminder send a message to the customer?
No. A reminder is an internal note with a time. It alerts you and the team member assigned to the lead, and the customer receives nothing.
Why did the AI not send a follow-up to a customer?
The usual reasons: the conversation was closed or taken over by a team member, the lead is at Lost or Not a Lead, the Follow-up setting is Disabled, the 24-hour window had closed, or the plan had no messages left.
Can the AI follow up days after the last message?
No. An automatic follow-up is a free-form message, which Meta allows only inside the 24-hour window. After that, use an approved WhatsApp template, as described in Campaigns in Scale.
My reminder arrived at the wrong hour. How do I fix it?
Check Business timezone under Settings → Preferences. Reminder times are read in that time zone unless the team member has their own in their working schedule.
Can a team member see a reminder I created on their lead?
Yes. A reminder follows the lead, so the assigned team member sees it and can mark it done or push it back. When the lead is reassigned, its reminders move with it.
Why did a meeting disappear from the Meetings tab?
A meeting whose time has passed is removed from the list automatically, and its event stays in Google Calendar. The owner may also have deleted it by hand.
Why was a meeting not added to Google Calendar?
Only Scheduled meetings with a date and time are added, and only when the calendar was connected at the moment they were scheduled. Pending requests are not added.