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# Adding Timeouts to a Flow

When your contacts don't respond to a message in a flow, you can add a timeout to send an automatic message. This feature allows you remind your contacts to respond, to let them know they can restart the flow at a later time, or to place other actions on non-responsive contacts, such as [adding or removing them in a group](/en/article/adding-or-removing-contacts-in-a-group-9fkx32/), [sending an email](/en/article/sending-an-email-1b77v1d/), and [more](/en/article/introduction-to-flows-1vmh15z/). 

## How It Works

In the example below, we gave our contacts 5 minutes to answer the first question in our flow.  

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/7/a/9/f/7a9fc4558a9de000/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-15505_1ck0n6k.png)

If the contact responds within 5 minutes they will receive the next message in our flow immediately. If they do not respond within 5 minutes we can send them a "No Response" message.  

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/7/a/9/f/7a9fc4558a9de000/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-16152_125qbdp.png)
In this example, we want to let our contacts know that they can restart the flow later by sending the keyword trigger we've assigned to the flow.  

![](https://storage.crisp.chat/users/helpdesk/website/-/7/a/9/f/7a9fc4558a9de000/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-16165_jp6pvc.png)

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