What this article helps with: Setting up Lia Respond from scratch, in the order that works. Six steps, roughly an hour of real work, most of it writing down things you already know about your firm.
Who this is for: The firm admin doing the setup. Steps 1 to 4 need Admin; enrolling a client needs the Enroll Cases permission.
When not to use this article: If Lia is not switched on for your firm yet, there is nothing to configure — start with Getting started with Lia: access and permissions. If you want to know what Lia does before you set it up, read What is Lia? first.
Lia Respond is included in your Hona plan at no additional cost, so nothing here needs a purchase or an upgrade. The two Advanced Skills in step 6 are separate.
There is also a guided version of this inside the product. Agent Settings has a Setup guide button that walks these same steps on the real screens, and you can restart it any time. This article is the same sequence in writing, for reading ahead, catching up after dismissing the tour, or handing to whoever actually does the work.
Why the order matters
Setup goes wrong in one predictable way: the visible half gets done, everyone feels finished, and no client ever hears from Lia. It happens because two different things both look like "turning it on" — giving your team access, and telling Lia which cases to work. Access without enrollment does nothing at all.
So the sequence below deliberately ends with enrollment, and deliberately puts one real client in front of automation. Do it in this order and you will not be surprised by what Lia sends.
Step 1 — Tell Lia about your firm
Agent Settings → Firm context. This is the highest-value hour in the whole setup, so do not rush it.
Two fields matter. Custom instructions change how Lia behaves — your terminology, your business hours, your preferences. Write it the way you would brief a new hire on their first day. Company background is reference material Lia draws on when a client asks about the firm; there is a website fetch to save you starting from a blank box.
Also set the default case owner role while you are here. That decides who escalations get assigned to, and setting it once means every future enrollment routes correctly on its own.
Detail: Agent Settings → Firm context.
Step 2 — Decide when Lia should stop and fetch a human
Agent Settings → Escalation rules. Each rule is one sentence — what triggers it, how urgent it is, and who deals with it. Assigning to the case owner keeps escalations with the person who knows the client; assigning to a role suits work anyone on that team could pick up.
The shipped defaults are a reasonable starting point, and there is a Restore defaults link if you experiment and want them back.
One thing worth understanding now rather than later: Lia escalates when it cannot answer something confidently. A firm with thin firm context and few phase FAQs gets a stream of escalations for questions the team would have answered in a line. That is Lia being careful, not Lia being broken — and the fix is more context, not fewer rules.
Detail: Agent Settings → Escalations and Escalations and drafts.
Step 3 — Choose who at your firm can use Lia
Agent Settings → User Management. Everyone who should be able to hand Lia a case needs switching on here. Start with one or two people for the pilot; you can widen it in one action later.
This is the step firms most often think finishes the job. It does not — it decides who can enroll, not which cases are enrolled. That is step 4 and step 5.
Step 4 — Put one real client on Lia, by hand
Lia → Clients → Enroll. Pick a client, pick the case, set the case owner, and enroll.
Do this before you automate anything. One client, watched for a few days, tells you more about your firm context and escalation rules than any amount of configuration review. If something in Lia's tone or answers is wrong, you would much rather find out on one case than on two hundred.
If you would rather not involve a real client yet, Live preview lets you play the client against your real settings from your own phone.
Step 5 — Turn on automatic enrollment
Agent Settings → Skill Automations. Two settings, and both have to be right:
Set the mode to Automatic.
Turn on the phases where a case should come onto Lia — and the phases where it should come off.
Automatic with no phases switched on enrolls nothing, and that combination is the single most common reason a firm concludes Lia is not working. Switching a phase on also does not sweep up the cases already sitting in it; those appear as eligible, for you to enroll deliberately.
Step 6 — What to add once it is running
Lia Respond answers what clients ask. Two Advanced Skills go further and reach out on their own — these are separately enabled, so they are a conversation with your account team rather than a switch you flip:
Care Coordination: appointment reminders, post-treatment follow-up, and check-ins while a client is treating.
Provider Liaison: emailing provider offices for attendance, bills, and records, so the medical file builds itself.
The habit worth keeping from week one, whether or not you add a skill: when an escalation arrives that a written FAQ would have covered, add the FAQ then and there. Phase FAQs are what Lia answers from, and every one you add is a question your team stops answering by hand.
If nothing seems to be happening
Work down this list before opening a ticket. Almost every "Lia is not working" report is one of the first three.
Is anyone switched on? User Management, step 3.
Is the mode on Manual Only? Skill Automations, step 5.
Are any phases switched on? Automatic with every phase off is the same as manual.
Does the client have a phone number, and has your firm got an outbound number configured? Enrollment and textability are different things — a client can be enrolled and unreachable.
Did the client opt out? Lia stops permanently on STOP, and re-enrolling does not override it.
For anything else, see Troubleshooting and FAQs: Lia.
Where to go next
Lia Respond: answering your clients' inbound questions: exactly what it answers, and what it never answers.
Guardrails: what Lia will and will not do: the limits Lia operates under, including contact hours and opt-outs.
Chat with Lia: the staff-facing drawer, for your team rather than your clients.
Agent Settings: teaching Lia about your firm: every setting on the page, in detail.
Conclusion
Six steps, and the order is the point: context and rules first, then people, then one client by hand, then automation. If you have questions, chat with our support team or email [email protected].