When the assistant walks you through something

Some problems are not one button. Redoing a verification that was submitted with the wrong photographs means withdrawing the old submission and then sending the new one, and the second half cannot happen until the next day — partly because you have to find your passport, and partly because your platform will not accept another application for 24 hours after the withdrawal.

When your platform has this switched on, the assistant can start a process for you — a short, fixed sequence you work through at your own pace.

What does "step 2 of 3" mean?

It means exactly what it says: three things have to happen, and you are on the second.

The number is not the assistant's estimate. The steps are written into the platform, in a fixed order, and the total is known before the first one starts. It cannot grow while you are inside it, and the assistant is not consulted about what comes next — it chose which process fits your problem, and that was its entire contribution.

You confirm every step, one at a time

Nothing advances on its own. Each step is a card with a plain sentence saying what that step does, and a button. The next step does not exist on your screen until the previous one is finished.

Three things follow from that, and they are the reason it is built this way:

• You read what you are agreeing to before you agree to it. That sentence belongs to the step itself. It is the same sentence for everybody, every time, and the assistant did not write it.
• You can stop anywhere. A half-finished process is not a commitment. Walk away at step two and step two is simply where it stays.
• Nothing skips. If a step stops making sense — you got verified in the meantime, say — the process stops and tells you, rather than jumping ahead to something that no longer applies.

Some steps are not an action at all

Plenty of steps are just a page. "Open the verification page" is a step, and pressing it records that you went and then takes you there, where you do the thing yourself with the platform's own confirmations in front of you.

Some steps go further and offer to show you the page rather than only open it — see When the assistant shows you the page. That is still an explanation and still fills nothing in.

The panel that follows you

The moment a process starts, a small panel appears in the bottom corner of the screen, and it stays there as you move around the site. Open your wallets, read your transaction history, go and check your email and come back — it is still there, on whatever page you land on.

That solves the thing that used to make processes confusing. A step sends you somewhere else, and the conversation you were reading is on the page you just left. Without the panel you would arrive on a screen full of controls with no sign that anything was in progress.

Inside it you get:

• Every step, not just this one — ticked where you are done, highlighted where you are now, greyed where you have not got to yet. You can see the shape of the whole thing rather than being handed one surprise at a time.
• The step you are on, with its sentence and its button.
• Show me how, when the current step has a walkthrough and you are standing on the right page.
• Back to the conversation.

The ⌄ control collapses the panel down to its title if it is in the way of something you are reading.

Back to the conversation

This is the most useful control in the panel once you are three pages deep.

It takes you straight back to the support conversation the process started in — the one with the assistant's messages in it, and the box you type into. You do not have to find it in your ticket list, and you do not have to remember which ticket it was.

Use it whenever you want to ask something in the middle of a process. Asking a question does not disturb the process, and coming back to it does not restart anything.

Closing the panel does not cancel anything

Press the ✕ and the panel goes away. That is all it does.

The process itself is recorded on your account, not in that panel. It is still outstanding, still on the same step, and the panel comes back the next time you load the site. If you would rather deal with it now, Back to the conversation is the way in; if you would rather it left you alone for ten minutes, closing it is the way out.

Coming back to it days later

This is the normal case, not the awkward one. "Withdraw your submission, then come back with the right documents" is a trip to find a passport — and in that particular process, a mandatory day's wait as well, because withdrawing a verification submission is recorded as a rejection and your platform will not take another for 24 hours. The step says so. It is not supposed to happen in one sitting.

You do not need to retrace your steps. Sign in whenever you like and the panel finds whatever is outstanding on its own, wherever you happen to be on the site. It asks the platform each time rather than remembering, so what you see is the state of things now rather than the state when you left — if the process ended while you were away, the panel is simply gone.

Two limits are worth knowing:

• Your conversation stays open while a process is running. Platforms that automatically close quiet tickets do not close one that is mid-process.
• A process does not stay open forever. After about a week the buttons stop working, because an offer made for a situation a week ago may not fit any more. Ask again and the assistant checks your account as it stands now and starts fresh.

Can I talk to a person instead?

Always, and at any point, including halfway through a process. Type "I want to speak to a person", or use the Talk to a person button under the message box. Nothing has to be finished first, and an unfinished process is not held against you.

See When the assistant offers to do something for what the individual buttons are and what they can never be, and The support assistant, and asking for a person for what the assistant can and cannot do generally.