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Overview

An AI Employee replies to incoming conversations in your Inbox on SMS, WhatsApp, email, and the chat widget. It follows a job, works toward a goal, and answers from your knowledge bases (the documents it reads to answer questions). It uses only the skills (actions) you allow, and asks a teammate for help when it should. Find employees under Marketing → Automation & AI → AI Employees (/ai-employees).
In short: 1) Hire an employee with the seven-step wizard. 2) Assign it to conversations by hand, by default, or by workflow. 3) Let it send replies or approve its drafts first.
Time to complete: ~20 minutes  ·  Difficulty: Intermediate  ·  Only Active employees can reply.

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Before you start

  • Create a knowledge base if the employee should answer from your documents.
  • Set up meeting types (the kinds of appointments people can book) if it should book appointments.
  • Your plan sets how many employees you can have. Every reply spends AI credits (the balance that pays for AI work).

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Hire an employee

Click New Employee. The wizard (a guided form) has seven steps. A draft is saved after Employee details, so you can leave and Continue hiring later.

Choose a job

Start from a ready-made job — Receptionist, Sales Representative, Lead Qualification Specialist, Customer Support, Appointment Scheduler, Marketing Assistant, Collections Officer, FAQ Assistant, Review Collector — or Custom Employee. A job pre-fills the goal, skills, and human-help triggers (the situations where it asks a teammate for help). You can change all of them.

Employee details

Set the Name, Job title, Avatar, Description, Language, and Timezone. Under Voice & tone, pick a Communication style (Friendly, Professional, Formal, Casual) and add an optional Brand voice.

Goal

Start from a goal — Book Appointments, Qualify Leads, Resolve Support Requests, Collect Customer Information, Collect Reviews, Answer FAQs, Track Orders, Generate Sales Opportunities, or Custom Goal. Name it, then set Goal is completed when, Stop trying when, If the goal can’t be completed, and Max attempts (1–20). Collecting goals let you list What should this employee collect? (up to 8 items).

Knowledge

Choose the Attached knowledge bases. The employee can only answer from knowledge bases attached here.

Skills

Tick what the employee is allowed to do. Reply to Customers is always on. Available skills: Read Customer, Update Customer, Update Custom Fields, Add Note, Check Availability, Book Appointment, Create Opportunity, Update Opportunity, Add Opportunity Note, and Search Knowledge Base. Booking skills ask Which meeting types can this employee book? (up to 10). Skills marked Coming soon can’t be selected yet.

Human help

Choose When should this employee ask for help? from ten triggers. Examples: Customer asks for a human, Refund request, Negative sentiment, AI is not confident, Legal request. Add Custom phrases (up to 25). Under When help happens, pick Assign to a teammate, Leave conversation summary, and Notify team.

Review

Confirm the summary, then click Create employee (saves as Draft) or Create & activate.
You don’t choose an AI model (the engine that writes the replies). The Overview tab shows which one powers the employee under Powered by. Autocampaign AI manages it for you.
Activation is blocked when:
  • Search Knowledge Base is ticked but no knowledge base is attached.
  • A booking skill has no meeting type.
  • A Collect Reviews goal has no saving skill (Add Note, Update Customer, or Update Custom Fields).

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Put the employee on conversations

An employee only replies on conversations it’s assigned to. Three ways:
  • From the inbox — in the contact panel’s AI Employee card, click Assign and select an employee. Use Change or Unassign later.
  • Automatically — set Default employee for new conversations on the AI Employees page. Or pick an AI Employee per phone number (Channels), per email sender (Settings → Email → Senders), or in the chat widget. A new incoming conversation goes to the number’s employee first, then to the default. A conversation a teammate already owns is never taken over.
  • From a workflow (an automation that runs steps for you) — add the Assign AI Employee action in the workflow builder. The employee replies when the contact next messages; it doesn’t send anything on its own.

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Choose between auto-send and draft & approve

Assigning an employee puts the conversation in AI active: the employee sends its own replies. To review first, open the AI Autopilot menu in the composer (the box where you type replies) and choose Draft & approve. The chip (small label) reads Autopilot: Draft & approve, and each reply appears as a banner — <employee> needs approval — with Edit and Approve & Send. A newer incoming message replaces an unapproved draft.
1

Take over

Click Take over on the AI Employee card, or just send a reply while in Auto-send mode. The conversation becomes Human controlled.
2

Resume

Click Resume AI to hand the conversation back.
In Draft & approve mode, replying yourself doesn’t pause the employee — it keeps drafting the next reply for your approval. Conversation states: AI active · Supervised · Handover pending · Human controlled · AI suspended. After three failed reply attempts in a row, a conversation is AI suspended until you Resume AI.

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What happens when the employee asks for help

When a trigger fires, the employee sends its courtesy line and the conversation goes to Handover pending. The chosen teammate is assigned, the team is notified, and an AI-written summary note is added to the thread. A Goal card in the contact panel shows the checklist and lets you Mark complete.

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What replies look like on each channel

  • SMS replies are plain text, capped at 1,000 characters by default.
  • WhatsApp replies use WhatsApp formatting. If the 24-hour customer-service window has closed (WhatsApp only lets you reply freely within 24 hours of the customer’s last message), the reply is skipped and logged. The employee never sends templates.
  • Email replies are formatted (up to 2,000 characters). An SMS opt-out (a request to stop receiving texts) doesn’t block email replies.
  • Chat widget replies support rich text. Opted-out contacts with no email address can’t be assigned.
  • Each reply sets aside AI credits; with none left the reply is skipped as Not enough credits.

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Manage employees

Each card shows today’s Conversations, Appointments, Handovers, and Goal success, with Pause, Resume, Duplicate, and Delete. The profile has three tabs. Overview lets you edit any section and Save. Activity lists every interaction: what the customer asked, the reply, actions taken, knowledge used, and why a reply was skipped. Test chat lets you try the saved setup without touching real conversations.
Retry later under If the goal can’t be completed is accepted but currently does nothing. Employees handling active conversations can’t be deleted — pause or reassign them first.

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FAQ

Only on conversations it’s assigned to — by hand, by a default or per-number assignment, or by a workflow.
Yes. Turn on the booking, customer, and opportunity skills. Opportunity skills act only on the conversation’s contact and their open deal — see Opportunities.
No. AI Reply and AI Draft rewrite or compose text for you and need no employee. They also use AI credits.
No. Instructions are assembled from the job, goal, skills, and voice you set. The Advanced tab is for platform staff only.

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Troubleshooting

Check it’s Active, the conversation shows AI active or Supervised, the contact isn’t opted out, and you have AI credits. The Activity tab shows the skip reason.
Attach the knowledge base on the Knowledge step, tick Search Knowledge Base, and confirm the sources finished processing (status Completed).
Read the message shown — usually a missing knowledge base, meeting type, or saving skill (see above).

Feed it knowledge

Give your employee source material to answer from.