Silence never bills. A conversation ending is not evidence that anything was resolved.
Closing a conversation is not evidence. A customer not replying is not evidence.Ambiguity resolves to unbilled. An unclear signal does not bill. This includes borderline
sentiment, uncertain supporting evidence or a partial system state.
- The customer says yes.
- A teammate marked it resolved and the customer did not come back. This is the weakest corroborated tier, recorded as
human_marked_resolved. - Quiet days, only if you switched them on and there is separate evidence that the answer worked.
Tier 1: Explicit confirmation
The customer stated the outcome.
Recorded as
explicit_confirmation.
A positive CSAT rating does not currently create confirmation. A survey response on the conversation prevents a new confirmation from being recorded, even when the rating is positive. See CSAT.
A teammate marking a conversation resolved is not the customer’s explicit confirmation. When the customer does not return, that evidence belongs to corroborated silence below.
Tier 2: System-verified outcome
The customer was not asked. A connected system shows the problem is gone.
Every one of these is a state change in your systems, not in Tied’s. It requires the agent to hold read scope on the system that proves it, which is why this tier is reachable only where an integration is connected.
Recorded as
system_verified.
Tier 3: Corroborated silence
The customer said nothing further. Billable only when all three conditions hold. Not two.A substantive answer
A specific, on-topic response to the question that was actually asked.
No negative signal anywhere in the conversation
Not later in the thread, and not on the resolution afterwards.
At least one corroborator
One of the five below. The set is closed.
Silence plus a corroborator is evidence. Silence on its own is not, and does not bill.
Recorded as
corroborated_silence.
This is the weakest confirmation tier. A teammate mark alone is insufficient. The customer must not have returned. The automatic waiting check is not yet connected. Quiet-day confirmation also requires your account to have switched it on.
Tier 0: Never billable
These are the ten reason codes for an unbillable record. Confirmation refusals and credit holds are tracked separately.
There is one canonical spelling,
reopened_within_window, and it is used both for the unbillable reason and for the stored void reason on the billing event. Records written before this was unified carry the legacy void reason reopen_within_window; they are still read and treated identically, and are not rewritten. The analytics label for either spelling is reopen_30d.
Test traffic is tracked separately from the reason. A sandbox conversation that also abandons
partway records
abandoned_mid_flow and carries a test flag: two independent facts rather
than one collapsed into the other. Your QA runs, your red-teaming and Tied’s own evaluations never
bill under any circumstances.On misuse
If a customer discovers your AI agent will write a cover letter or explain an unrelated topic, that is not a resolution and it does not bill. Off-topic misuse is detected and refused by the guardrail layer as well as excluded from billing.Assisted routing is free
If the agent engages but cannot finish and hands off to a human, the charge is zero. Not a
reduced charge, not a routing fee, not partial credit.
routed_to_human event carrying which of the seven escalation grounds fired, and an unbillable resolution with reason assisted_routing or human_took_over. The grounds are:
Full detail: Guardrails and safety.
Note the consequence of
human_took_over: if a person messages the customer before the resolution is confirmed, the resolution is not billable at all, however much the agent did first. Confirmation does not override the credit check or confirmation window. A reopen or a negative survey can still cancel a settled charge.
Confirmation is the dividing line. Once a resolution is confirmed, its fee is locked: a person who messages the customer afterwards, or takes over the conversation afterwards, does not cancel it. Only the two void triggers below can reverse a confirmed resolution.
Void windows
A billed resolution is not final when it is billed. Two triggers void it.
The default negative CSAT threshold is 1 or 2 out of 5. An account policy can set a different threshold. The survey must rate that resolution. Repeat submissions do not create extra credits. Raising the rating later does not restore the charge.
Voided resolutions do not count in settled totals. The original receipt stays unchanged; the void and any credit explain the adjustment.
Credits post automatically. Nothing is filed, no ticket is opened, no case is argued. The
void triggers and the credit is created within 24 hours. It is netted against the next invoice and
shown as its own line, with the reason attached, in the in-app view. See
The money-back guarantee.
How a reopen is matched to the original
Each resolution carries a stable issue key and a per-conversation ordinal. A later contact about the same issue matches on the issue key, which is what allows a reopen to void the specific earlier resolution rather than an approximate one. That also means a customer returning about a different issue does not void anything. An unrelated next contact can support a Tier 3 confirmation.How a resolution is recorded
Resolution evidence, confirmation and billing status are kept separately. The original resolution facts stay unchanged when confirmation or billing status changes.The resolution is recorded
When the agent resolves a conversation, its original facts include the conversation reference,
timestamps, action-trail references, model usage and confirmation status pending. Those
facts stay unchanged. Confirmation and a credit hold are recorded separately.
Confirmation arrives as its own record
The positive signal is a separate immutable record naming which of the three signal types
fired. Absence of this record means the resolution is unbilled. This is why absence-of-evidence
is the default state rather than something that has to be computed.
A teammate-marked resolution with no customer return uses
corroborated_silence and the
human_marked_resolved corroborator, preserving the same three signal types.Or an unbillable record explains why not
Carrying one of the ten reason codes above. A resolution awaiting confirmation or credits stays
unbilled. A confirmation arriving after the window is refused. A pending credit hold closes
without charge when its window expires.
A timer alone never makes a resolution billable. Without an accepted confirmation it does not
bill. An expired confirmation window cannot be revived by a late confirmation or a later top-up.
Every resolution produces a receipt
The receipt is the enforcement mechanism for everything above.
For
human_marked_resolved, the explanation says: “A teammate marked it resolved and the customer did not come back. This is the weakest confirmation tier.” It does not claim the customer said yes.
What is reported
Settled resolution totals exclude voided charges and resolutions held pending for credits. Resolutions closed without charge after their confirmation window ends are also unbilled. These outcomes explain why a confirmation may have no standing invoice charge.Next
Resolution pricing
Once a resolution counts, what it costs: the seven classes and their discriminators.
How pricing works
The whole mechanism, including what happens at a zero balance.
Guardrails and safety
The seven escalation grounds behind a handoff.
Credits
How voided resolutions post back to your balance.