What is customer intent?
Intent is what the customer is trying to do, named as a job: book, reschedule, ask a price, complain, or get a human. Intent detection is classification aimed at that job. It is not a mind reading claim.
Also called: intent detection
In plain English
People rarely write the label. 'You ruined my color' is a complaint even though it never says complaint. You define the intents you can actually handle. Anything else is unknown, which means a person. Intents are the reasons a person reached you, in their words. 'I need to move my appointment' is not the same as 'I need a price.' Write the top five from last month's inbox, not from a template. Everything else goes to a person. If you invent twenty intents on day one, the sorter will be confidently wrong and the team will stop trusting the labels. Re-read ten real messages and see if your labels still fit. Customers invent reasons your menu forgot.
How an owner would use it
List the intents that match real next steps you have. Map each to a tool or a handoff. Review the ones marked unknown every week and add an intent only when the same job keeps showing up.
Common mistakes
Inventing twenty intents before you have twenty real messages creates a toy. Forcing every message into book or price hides complaints. Intent is not permission to auto-send. Detect it, then follow the path you wrote, which may still be a human.
A worked example
A hair salon
A rebook is not a complaint, until it is
This is an illustration, not a customer result. The inbox labels book, reschedule, price, and unhappy. A message that says the color was wrong is unhappy, even if it also asks for a new time. Unhappy goes to the owner. A plain reschedule can draft from the booking link.
Related terms
Prompts and guides
Questions owners ask
What is intent in a customer message?
Intent is the job the customer wants done, labeled so your workflow can choose a next step.
How do I use intent detection?
Start with a few labels tied to real actions, keep an unknown bucket, and look at mistakes before you automate a reply.
What if the intent is ambiguous?
Treat it as unknown and ask one clarifying question, or hand it to a person. Guessing the intent and sending the wrong flow is worse than asking.
Product guides are on AI apps for business.