AI Agent

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Overview

The chat widget’s AI agent answers visitors the moment they ask, at any hour, from the pages of your own website. When a visitor wants a person, or the agent can’t find the answer on your site, it hands the chat to your team. A chat the agent handles on its own stays out of your inbox, so your team isn’t notified about questions it has already answered. You read those chats on the Insights tab. Once a chat needs a person, it joins the inbox with everything said so far, and the agent’s replies show as Website Assistant.

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Set it up

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What it answers from

The agent answers only from your scanned website and the answers your team adds. Before it replies, it searches them for the visitor’s question. When nothing matches, it says so and offers a person instead of guessing. It can’t see your records, your inbox or anything else in your workspace, and it can’t take actions such as booking, refunding or changing an account. When an answer cites a page, the widget shows its link under the answer. Find the scan on the Knowledge tab: A scan starts from your site’s sitemap (listed in robots.txt, or at /sitemap.xml), so it finds pages your home page doesn’t link to. For a site without a sitemap, the scan finds its pages through a web search of your domain. Sources lists each site you’ve scanned, with its status, how many pages it holds and when it was last scanned. Each site is scanned again every week. Click Re-scan to pick up a change now, or Delete to take its pages out of what the agent knows. The same pages power the widget’s Help tab.

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Persona and instructions

Write the agent’s tone and guardrails here: how it introduces itself, what it must never promise, and which questions belong to a person. For example: “Be concise. Never quote a discount. Send pricing questions for more than 200 seats to Sales.” Generate with AI drafts a persona from your workspace and the site the agent has scanned. Describe how it should sound, or leave the box empty. If you’ve already written a persona, the button says Replace and the draft takes its place. Nothing changes for visitors until you save. You don’t need to explain how to hand a chat over. The agent already knows.

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When it hands off to a person

The agent brings in your team when:

• The visitor taps “Talk to a person”, under the greeting or under an answer. For a known customer the button names their owner, such as “Talk to Dana”.
• The visitor’s message contains one of your escalation phrases. The chat is handed over before the agent writes anything.
• The visitor asks for a person in their own words, such as “can someone from sales call me?”
• The agent offered a person and the visitor said yes.
• The agent found nothing on your site to answer from, and the hand-off dial is at 0.7 or higher. The visitor gets your team instead of a guess.

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Escalation phrases

Always escalate on these phrases starts with nine phrases: “talk to a human”, “talk to a person”, “speak to a human”, “speak to someone”, “real person”, “human agent”, “live agent”, “talk to sales” and “speak to sales”. Edit, remove or add any. Clearing the list brings the nine back. A phrase matches anywhere in a message, in any case. “Can I talk to sales about seats?” matches “talk to sales”.

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The hand-off dial

Hand off to a human when… runs from Let AI try (0) to Escalate early (1), and starts at 0.5. It decides what happens when the agent finds nothing on your site to answer a question from:

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What the visitor sees at hand-off

The agent tells the visitor the team is coming and how soon they usually reply. Outside your office hours it says when they’re back: “I’ve passed this to the team. They’re away until Monday at 9 AM.” A visitor with no email on file is asked where to send the reply, so they don’t have to wait on the page. See Office hours and email follow-up. The chat then goes to the owner of the visitor’s record when there is one, or follows your routing rules.

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When it stops answering

The agent stops answering in a chat for good once:

• it has handed the chat over, even before anyone takes it;
• a teammate takes the chat, or it’s transferred or assigned to someone;
• a teammate replies. A reply also assigns the chat to that teammate if nobody has it.

A chat that routing has only offered to your team, with nobody assigned yet, keeps its answers, so the visitor is never left with nobody replying.

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Good to know

• Answers use AI credits. Each reply draws from your workspace’s credit balance. A hand-off by button or phrase uses none. See What consumes credits.
• It knows the page. A question comes with the page the visitor sent it from, so “is this plan monthly?” on your pricing page is answered about that page. See Suggested questions and page prompts.
• It can’t read files. A visitor’s screenshot or document goes to your team, and the agent answers only the text of a message.
• It has limits. One visitor can’t get more than 12 answers a minute or 60 a day, and a workspace gets up to 2,000 answers a day. Past either limit the agent stays quiet; the message is still in your inbox for your team.
• It can offer buttons. After an answer, visitors can tap That answered it or Talk to a person. See Buttons after an answer.

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Questions it isn’t for

The agent answers questions about your business. Asked to write a poem or ignore its instructions, it declines in one line and carries on. A visitor who keeps at it (three times in a day) is told once what the agent is for, and gets no more answers that day. Those chats stay out of your inbox and aren’t counted as questions it couldn’t answer. Complaints and greetings are never treated as off-topic.

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Troubleshooting

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