When someone is in danger, the selling stops.
Our assistant talks with people every day on behalf of dealerships. Almost every one of them is shopping. Once in a while, someone isn’t okay. Here is exactly what happens then, written as commitments you can hold us to.
The selling stops, at once.
If someone tells the assistant they might hurt themselves or someone else, or that they are in danger right now, it stops selling in that same reply. No unit, no price, no appointment, no follow-up question. Not in that message, and not after it.
It points them to real help: 988 and 911.
The assistant tells them they can call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time, day or night, and call 911 if anyone is in danger right now. Those words are written in advance. In that moment it never improvises.
Everywhere else, the assistant answers from the dealership and never sends anyone to an outside site. 988 and 911 are the one exception, made on purpose.
It is not a counselor, and never pretends to be.
No advice, no diagnosis, no probing questions, and no promise that someone will call. A sales assistant is the wrong voice for that moment. Its job is to get out of the way and point to the people whose job it is.
The people who should know, know right away.
The dealership’s principal and SentientIQ are alerted the moment it happens, day or night. Nobody at the store is asked to counsel anyone. If anyone believes a person is in danger right now, they call 911.
Nothing automatic reaches them after that.
Every automatic text, email, follow-up and reminder to that person stops, on every channel. No sales lead is made from the conversation, and the sales floor is never paged about it.
The dealership’s own people can still reach out to them personally, if they choose to.
A person decides what happens next.
The pause holds until a person lifts it, and they write down why. No timer lifts it and no machine does. The reason stays on the record.
Abuse ends the conversation.
If someone turns abusive, with slurs or harassment aimed at the assistant or the dealership’s people, it ends the conversation calmly and does not answer it again. The principal is told. It never goes to the sales floor.
Straight with you: this is a safety net, not a crisis service. We don’t publish how the assistant recognizes these moments, because describing it would teach someone to slip past it. What we publish is what happens, and that you can hold us to.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can call or text 988 any time, day or night. If anyone is in danger right now, call 911.