Set up the AI assistant

This guide takes you from an empty assistant to one that answers customers on every channel. Plan for about fifteen minutes, most of it spent writing down what your customers usually ask.

Before you start

• You need the Manage access level for Customer Support (owners and admins have it). See Module access.
• Have the answers to your common questions at hand: shipping, prices, opening hours, returns, payment. A page on your website or a Google Doc works too.
• Connect the channels where the assistant should answer first. See How channels work.

Step 1: Add knowledge

The assistant answers only from what you add here. With nothing added, it hands every conversation to your team.

1. Go to Customer Support → Knowledge.

2. Under Type, keep FAQ (Q/A pairs).

3. Give it a Title, for example "Câu hỏi thường gặp".

4. Write each question and answer as a block, with a blank line between blocks:

   Q: How much is shipping?
   A: Free from 500,000đ. Below that, 25,000đ in Hanoi and 35,000đ elsewhere.
   
   Q: When is the shop open?
   A: Every day from 8:00 to 21:00, weekends included.
   

5. Click Add source. The source appears in the list and changes from Pending to Indexed within a few seconds.

You can also add policies as text, your website, Google Docs and Sheets, Notion pages and PDF or Word files. See Add knowledge for the AI.

Step 2: Try it before customers do

The Chat with the AI panel on the right of the Knowledge tab lets you write as a customer and see how the assistant answers, with your current knowledge, situations and products. Nothing is sent to anyone.

1. Pick a channel (for example Zalo OA) and whether to pretend you are Within office hours or Outside office hours.
2. Ask the questions your customers ask, in their words: "ship ra Đà Nẵng bao nhiêu", "mấy giờ mở cửa".
3. Under each answer, open the line that counts the knowledge chunks used to see which passages it relied on. Would hand off tells you it would pass this one to your team, and why.

If an answer is wrong or missing, fix the knowledge and ask again. Each answer here counts toward your AI budget.

Step 3: Choose when it answers

Go to the Assistant tab and pick a Mode.

• Pick Draft only to start safely: the assistant suggests a reply for every customer message, and your agents decide whether to send it. Drafts are written only while at least one agent is online.
• Pick When nobody is online to cover evenings and weekends.
• Pick First responder when you trust the answers: it replies to every new customer first and hands off when it cannot help.

The three checkboxes below the modes are on by default:

• After a hand-off, keep suggesting replies to the agent: once the assistant hands off, it keeps drafting replies for the agent.
• Let the assistant ask for the visitor's email when a follow-up is needed: in website chats, it can show an email form when someone on your team needs to get back to the customer.
• Save the name and phone number visitors mention: it saves those details on the customer's profile, and asks for a phone number once when a follow-up would help (never as its first question).

Step 4: Give it a name and a tone

In the Persona card:

Click Save AI settings.

Step 5: Set the budget

The Team budget and key card on the right controls cost:

• Daily cap, USD and Monthly cap, USD. Leave them blank for the platform defaults shown in the label. When a cap is reached the assistant stops answering, owners and admins get one email per day, and customers fall back to the offline experience.
• Your own AI provider API key (optional). Without it, the platform key is used. Tick Remove the team key and use the platform key to switch back.
• The Notion integration token, needed only for Notion knowledge sources.

Click Save budget. The cards at the top of the Assistant tab show what was spent today and this month, and the runs, hand-offs and cost of the last 30 days.

Troubleshooting