Configuring the Chat AI Agent

The AI agent answers visitors first, using only your published HelpGuides articles. You control its name, tone and length, give it guidance, and decide when it hands off to your team. All of this is under Inbox, then Messenger settings, then AI agent.

How the AI answers

It works out what the visitor wants: a question, a person, small talk, or they're done. It also rewrites follow-ups ("what about on mobile?") into complete questions.
It searches your published articles in the most relevant knowledge sources.
It writes an answer from those articles, streamed word by word, and lists the articles it used as Sources.
It asks "Did that help?" with That helped and Talk to a person buttons.

If your articles don't contain the answer, the AI says so and offers the team. It never uses outside knowledge and never guesses. If a question could mean several things, it asks one short clarifying question first. It replies in the visitor's language.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
Let the AI agent answer first	On	Off sends every conversation straight to your team
Agent name	AI Agent	Shown to visitors with an "AI" label
Tone	Friendly	Friendly, Professional, Neutral or Playful
Answer length	Standard	Concise (a few sentences), Standard (about 150 words) or Thorough (about 300 words)
Welcome message	(blank)	The first thing visitors see in a new conversation
Guidance	(blank)	Instructions for how the AI should behave
Ask "Did that help?" after answers	On	Shows the That helped and Talk to a person buttons
Hand off when a visitor is frustrated	On	Brings in your team when a visitor is upset or the answers aren't helping
Hand off the first time the agent can't answer	Off	When off, the AI hands off after two unanswered questions in a row

Writing good guidance

Guidance shapes how the AI answers, not what it knows. It still answers only from your articles. Good guidance is short and specific:

"Always mention the 14-day free trial when asked about pricing."
"Refer billing disputes and refund requests to the team."
"Call our customers 'members'."

If the AI keeps getting a topic wrong, the best fix is usually a clearer article, not more guidance.

When the AI hands off

The conversation goes to your team when:

the visitor asks for a person, or clicks Talk to a person;
the visitor seems frustrated (if that setting is on);
the AI can't find an answer twice in a row, or once if configured;
something goes wrong, or the AI takes too long.

The visitor is told the team has been brought in. If nobody is online, they're asked for an email so the team can follow up. Your team gets a short AI-written summary of the conversation, and is alerted as set up in Chat Notifications and Teams.

Questions while waiting for a person

If a visitor asks another question while they're waiting for your team, the AI acknowledges it and asks whether it should try to answer in the meantime (Yes, please answer or No, I'll wait for the team). With Yes, the AI keeps answering until a teammate takes over, and the conversation stays in your team's queue.

Watching and taking over

Your team can watch every answer as it's written and take over at any moment. See Taking Over a Chat from the AI.

The AI draws on the same structured content that makes your documentation work well with Model Context Protocol.