📝 Overview
The AI Chat Receptionist in Marketing Suite engages your website visitors, answers their questions, and captures their contact details 24/7, even when your team is offline. It turns casual browsers into leads you can follow up with, and it can handle multiple visitors at once.
This guide walks you through configuring your AI Chat Receptionist, adding the chat widget to your website, and monitoring its conversations.
💡 By default, the AI Chat Receptionist answers questions using your business profile and knowledge, collects visitor contact details so you can follow up, responds in over 40 languages, and lets visitors know when it doesn't have enough information so a team member can step in.
🛠️ Setting Up Your AI Chat Receptionist
Setup happens in three parts: configuring the basics, reviewing what the AI is allowed to do, and giving it knowledge about your business. To begin, go to AI ➜ AI Workforce and click Configure on the Chat Receptionist.
Click the arrow to learn how to set up the AI Chat Receptionist
Click the arrow to learn how to set up the AI Chat Receptionist
1️⃣ Step 1: Configure the basics
Start with the settings that shape who your AI is and where it responds:
Name and Image: Give your AI a friendly, professional name and photo. This is how it introduces itself to visitors.
Role: The Role prompt sets the tone and behaviour of your AI. Include instructions about your business's voice, how it should greet visitors, and any important policies it should share. Keep it specific and concise.
Triggers: Your AI is assigned to the Web Chat trigger by default, which is always active. You can also assign it to respond to inbound messages on other connected channels, such as Email, Facebook, and Instagram.
2️⃣ Step 2: Review its capabilities
Capabilities guide what actions your AI can take during a conversation:
Capture Lead Information: The AI asks visitors for contact details such as their name, phone number, or email, and saves captured leads directly to your CRM. This is turned on by default.
Book Appointments: Connect your calendar to let the AI offer available time slots and collect booking details automatically.
Custom Capabilities: You can expand your AI's skills with custom instructions tailored to your business, for example how to handle urgent enquiries or which booking link to share.
3️⃣ Step 3: Add knowledge
To answer questions accurately, your AI needs context about your business. Knowledge includes detailed business information such as FAQs, service descriptions, and policies. Your business profile is included by default, and the more relevant knowledge you add, the more accurate your AI's answers become.
💡 A simple way to improve accuracy: write down the services you offer (and those you don't), the most common questions your customers ask, and the key information the AI should always collect. Use this to sharpen your Role prompt and fill any knowledge gaps.
🌐 Adding the Chat Widget to Your Website
The web chat widget is how visitors talk to your AI Chat Receptionist, and it needs to be installed on your website before the AI can start engaging visitors. The widget isn't added automatically, so you'll need to add the widget code to your site or enable it within your site builder.
⚠️ The AI chat widget requires a website. The rest of Marketing Suite works without one, but the chat widget needs a site to live on.
🔴 Reviewer note: Add the exact widget installation steps (where to find the embed code and common site-builder instructions) once confirmed in the live product, plus screenshots.
🔍 Testing and Monitoring Your AI
Before going live, test your AI by asking it the kinds of questions your real visitors would ask: your opening hours, your services, pricing policies, and booking requests. Check that it asks for contact details naturally and admits when it doesn't know something rather than guessing.
Once live, regularly review the Conversations and Anonymous Visitors tabs in Conversations to see how your AI is interacting with visitors. Conversations land in Anonymous Visitors when the AI wasn't able to identify the visitor's contact information.
💡 Each AI response includes a clickable Explanation showing the reasoning behind the reply and the knowledge source it used, which makes it easy to spot and fix gaps in your AI's knowledge.
🔴 Reviewer note: The product's built-in "Try it" test environment relies on a feature that is hidden in our configuration. Confirm whether the test page is available to providers before documenting it, and adjust this section accordingly.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Find answers to common questions or additional details that may not be covered in the main instructions.
Click the arrow to view frequently asked questions
Click the arrow to view frequently asked questions
Will real people also answer the web chat, or is it AI only?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
The web chat is managed by the AI. When the AI collects enough contact details from a visitor, you can continue the conversation with them from your inbox on an appropriate channel.
Why does my AI sometimes answer the same question differently?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
The AI adapts its responses to the context and wording of each conversation, so replies can vary. If you need it to answer a specific question the same way every time, give it very specific directions in its Role or capabilities.
How often should I update my AI's knowledge?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
Review your AI's Role prompt and knowledge regularly so its answers stay accurate and aligned with your latest offers and policies. Once a month is a good starting point for most businesses.
What happens if the AI can't answer a question?
Click the arrow to see the answer
Click the arrow to see the answer
The AI lets the visitor know it doesn't have enough information, so a member of your team can follow up. Reviewing these conversations is a great way to find knowledge worth adding.