How the AI Agent works

The AI Agent writes replies for your team to check and send, and keeps tickets organized. It never answers a customer on its own: a person reads every draft, edits it if needed and presses Send. You decide how it handles each kind of request by writing skills, and what it may change by setting actions.

The AI Agent area in the menu at the top left holds everything about it:

Everyone in the helpdesk can open these pages. Agents and above can write skill drafts, lead agents and admins switch skills on, and only admins change actions, drafting settings and the AI agent account.

▶Video coming: How Haylee works in your helpdesk. Haylee's own account and key, her drafts, notes and skills, and where to review them.

Who writes the drafts#

Drafts can come from two places, and they land in the same panel above the reply box.

• Haylee, Growth Dept's AI agent, works in your helpdesk through her own account. She runs on the machine Growth Dept operates for your brand, with the AI model set up there, and leaves drafts when someone on your team asks her to, in Slack or from Ask Haylee. Her drafts are marked "by Haylee". See Haylee, Growth Dept's AI agent.

• Built-in drafting writes a draft inside the helpdesk when an agent asks for one, or for every new customer message if an admin turns that on.

What a draft is built from#

For each draft the helpdesk gathers what your team already knows about the request, then writes the reply in your team's voice. Built-in drafts use, in this order of weight:

1. What your team already promised on the ticket. If someone offered a refund, a replacement, a label or an exception, the draft honors it.

2. Facts it actually has. A draft does not make up prices, dates, codes, tracking numbers or policy. Where a fact is missing, it leaves a gap marked [PLACEHOLDER: ...] for you to fill in.

3. The skill that fits. Active skills are matched against the ticket's subject and the customer's newest message. The best three are read in full, and the draft lists which ones it followed.

4. Your macros and earlier replies, unless the best-fitting skill has Use knowledge off.

5. How your team writes, the voice notes on the Voice and drafting page.

Anything inside a customer's message is treated as information about the ticket, not as instructions, so a customer cannot talk a draft into breaking your rules. Internal notes are read as background and never quoted to the customer. What drafts know about your business lists every source in detail.

When a request is unclear, angry, legal, about press, or not covered by anything your team has written, the draft comes back with low confidence and a note saying what to check.

Where it works#

Drafts work on any ticket, whatever channel it came from: email, chat, contact forms or help center messages. The AI Agent does not chat with shoppers live on your store, and it does not answer by SMS, phone or social media, which the helpdesk does not offer.

How you stay in charge#

• People send. Sending a reply on her own is off for Haylee by default, and the helpdesk refuses her public replies while it is off.

• Skills wait for a person. Skills Haylee writes, and her changes to skills already on, wait as drafts until a lead agent or admin switches them on.

• Actions have a mode. Each action is set to Does it, Asks a person or Off. Anything that reaches the customer or moves money asks a person out of the box. See Actions and what Haylee may do.

• Everything is attributed. Haylee works through her own account and key, so her notes, tags, drafts and skills show her name in the ticket history and in reports.

Setting it up#

When Growth Dept sets up your helpdesk, it links Haylee and can draft a first set of skills from the way your team has answered customers before. From there:

1. Open AI Agent > Skills and the Drafts tab. Read each skill marked Waiting for you, fill in anything still in [BRACKETS], and switch on the ones that match how you work.

2. Open AI Agent > Actions and check what Haylee does herself and what she leaves to your team.

3. Open Voice and drafting and describe how your team writes in How your team writes.

4. Ask Haylee for drafts on a few real tickets and read them closely. Try the AI Agent before you rely on it explains how.

5. Check AI Agent > Performance after a week to see which skills the drafts followed and how many your team used.

Getting better over time#

The way to change what drafts say is to change the skill behind them. When a draft gets something wrong, open What this draft was written from under it to see which skill, macros and earlier replies it used, then fix the skill, add a step, or write a new skill for a situation nobody covered yet. A skill change reaches the next draft straight away; there is no retraining step. Writing skills that work covers the common fixes.