Julia Mathias // Building a Smart Helpdesk: Using Elixir for Social Good

Julia Mathias walked through Turn.io’s architecture for routing WhatsApp help desk conversations at Alchemy Conf 2025.

Turn.io handles chat routing for NGOs and governments serving vulnerable populations, facilitating thousands of daily chats for people seeking refugee assistance, crisis counseling, or health information. The challenge: route conversations between chatbots and human operators while determining which cases actually need human intervention.

The routing engine uses GenServer with Dynamic Supervisor, tracking “lease” ownership—whether a bot or human controls each conversation. What started as simple “random routing” revealed significant hidden complexity and memory challenges. The breakthrough came from empowering domain experts rather than engineers to decide when humans should step in.

With a 10-person dev team, Turn.io processed 21 million chats last year. Their goal is to impact 1 billion people rather than chase valuation.