Your agents
What an agent is, what you give it, and how it behaves in a conversation.
An agent is a role you create: a name, a job, and the things it is allowed to use. You can have several, each doing a different job. Starter allows 5, Pro allows 20.
What you give an agent
| You set | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name and role | What it is called and what it is for, such as Sales or Bookings. |
| Instructions | How it should behave: what to say, what never to say, how far it may go. |
| Personality | How it speaks to your customers. |
| Knowledge | Documents and notes it answers from. |
| Playbooks | How a particular job should be handled, step by step. |
| Tools | What it may do: your catalogue, basket, checkout, bookings, connectors. |
| Conversation starters | The taps a customer sees before they type anything. |
| Web look-up | Off by default. On, it may look up general knowledge, such as what an ingredient does. It never uses the web for your prices or stock. |
Knowledge: answering from your own material
Add your policies, opening hours, sizing charts, service descriptions or anything else your customers ask about. Your agent searches this when it answers, so replies match what you wrote rather than what a model guesses.
Each agent has its own knowledge, so a Support agent can know your returns policy while a Bookings agent knows your opening hours. Starter allows 5 sources per agent, Pro 20.
Playbooks: the way your business does a thing
A playbook is a short, named procedure: how to handle a complaint about a late delivery, how to take a wholesale enquiry, what to do when somebody asks for a discount. It is applied when the situation comes up, and it can be written for one channel if that is where it belongs.
Starter allows 5 playbooks, Pro 20.
Tools: what an agent may actually do
Every agent can search your catalogue, read the customer's basket and check an order. Those three are always on, because no version of helping a customer should be missing them.
Everything else is yours to grant: adding to the basket, creating a checkout link, booking an appointment, and any connector you have set up, such as a calendar or an inbox.
Off, Ask me first, On
Anything sensitive carries a switch with three positions:
- Off: the agent cannot do it, and is told to say plainly that it cannot.
- Ask me first: the agent asks; the job waits for you and nothing runs until you approve it. The exact call it asked for is what runs, not a re-run of something similar.
- On: it goes ahead.
The switch is checked twice: when the agent is shown what it can use, and again at the moment it tries. A model that remembers a tool from earlier in the conversation still cannot slip past it.
One extra guard: if somebody in the chat claims to be the shop owner, "On" is treated as "Ask me first" for that call. A claim is not proof.
Handing over to a person
An agent hands a conversation to your team when it should not decide, when a customer asks for a person, or when it cannot answer safely. You see why it handed over. You can also take any conversation yourself at any moment, and the agent steps back.
Several agents, one conversation
If a question belongs to another of your agents, it is passed across mid-conversation, with what has already been said. The customer sees one continuous chat.
What your corrections teach it
When your team corrects an agent, that correction is written up as a suggested rule and waits for you. You approve it or reject it. Approved rules are how the agent answers next time, so the way your business works stays in your business, even when staff leave.
Nothing is learned silently: a suggestion does nothing until you approve it.
What an agent will not do
- Invent a price, a stock count or a delivery fee. Those come from your catalogue and your delivery areas, and a check stops any figure that is not there.
- Promise something it cannot do. A promise to a customer that no tool can keep is caught before it is sent.
- Diagnose, or claim a product treats or cures anything. Health questions are answered carefully, and a real medical concern is sent to a professional.
- Act on a claim of identity. "I am the owner" is detected, never believed.
Where to go next
- Selling in chat — catalogue, basket, checkout, delivery, orders.
- Contacts — how customers are filed as they get closer to buying.
- How AutomateIt works — the path of a single message.