Create your AI assistant

An AI assistant is a virtual team member that answers customers on its own — on your website chat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or Telegram — using your knowledge base. When it can't help, or the customer asks for a person, it hands the conversation to your team.

What your customer sees: the assistant's name and expectation message at the top, and an instant answer from your fee snippet.

Before you start, make sure you have:

1. An AI provider connected — AI setup.
2. At least a few snippets in your knowledge base — Knowledge base.
3. A team to hand over to (e.g. "Admissions counsellors") — Your team.

Step 1: Open Assistants and click New assistant

Where: Admin → AI → Assistants.

Click New assistant (outlined). Existing assistants are listed below; click one to edit it.

Step 2: Fill in the assistant form

The form has four parts. Here's every field, what it does and what to put.

Who the assistant is

How it talks and when it hands over

Instructions and guardrails

These two boxes are where you shape the assistant's behaviour in plain language.

Instructions — how it should work: its role, what to ask, what to suggest. Write them as you would brief a new staff member.

You are the admissions assistant of Bright Classes, a JEE/NEET coaching institute in Mumbai.
- First ask which class the student is in and which exam they are preparing for, then suggest the right programme.
- Always offer a free counselling session or demo class at the end.
- If a parent asks about fee dues, use the lookup_fee_status tool.

Guardrails — what it must never do, whatever the customer says.

- Never promise a rank, selection or guaranteed result.
- Never offer discounts or scholarships that are not in the knowledge base.
- Never share another student's details.

Tips:

• Put facts (prices, timings) in snippets, not in Instructions — snippets are shared by every assistant and easier to keep up to date.
• Keep each instruction to one line; bullet points work best.
• If the assistant does something you don't like in testing, add one line to Instructions or Guardrails and test again.

Jev decisions (optional)

These only work if you've connected Jev under AI → Providers; otherwise you'll see "Jev isn't set up for this workspace" and can ignore them.

Follow up when the customer goes quiet

Turn on to have the assistant nudge customers who stop replying — but only when Jev judges the conversation is waiting on the customer, and only during business hours.

• Follow up after (hours): e.g. 4, 24 sends one follow-up 4 hours after the assistant's last message and another 24 hours after that (up to 5).
• WhatsApp templates for follow-ups: WhatsApp only allows approved templates after 24 hours. Choose an inbox under Load templates from, pick templates, fill in their values and check the preview. Without Jev, follow-ups are only sent inside the 24-hour window.

Tools

Tick the tools this assistant may call. Your knowledge base is always available to every assistant, so you don't tick anything for that.

Click Create.

Step 3: Connect it to your channels

Creating the assistant doesn't send it any conversations yet. There are two ways to give it conversations.

For chat channels: the inbox's AI assistant setting

Live Chat, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Telegram inboxes have an AI assistant setting (Admin → Channel → Inboxes → your inbox):

The AI assistant dropdown on the inbox's General tab.

So with the default settings, as soon as you create and enable your first assistant, it starts answering every new chat on your chat channels. Use Off on any inbox where you don't want that.

The assistant only takes conversations that nobody owns. If an agent is already assigned, or the assistant handed this conversation over recently, it stays with your team.

For email and other channels: use an automation

For email (or for more control, e.g. "only enquiries that mention fees"), create an automation rule: Admin → Productivity → Automations → New rule.

1. Name: Send email enquiries to the AI assistant. Type: New conversation.
2. Add condition: Inbox · equals · your email inbox.
3. Add action: Assign agent · your assistant (assistants appear in the agent list).
4. Click Create.

See Automations for more.

Step 4: Test before you go live

Open the assistant (Admin → AI → Assistants → click its name) and choose the Test tab.

Type a customer question and click Test (or press Ctrl+Enter). Nothing is sent to any customer.

• Drafted reply shows exactly what it would answer.
• Knowledge used lists the snippets and articles it drew on, with a match percentage — if the right snippet isn't there, improve its title and wording.

Test the questions your customers really ask, in the languages they use, including awkward ones ("can you give me a discount?", "I want to talk to someone"). Fix what's wrong in snippets, Instructions or Guardrails and test again.

Step 5: Watch it work

When the assistant handles a conversation, your team sees it live in the inbox with a banner: "… (AI) is handling this conversation · replying takes it over".

The assistant's replies appear in the thread. Click Take over — or just reply — to step in.

• Take over or simply sending a reply hands the conversation to you; the assistant stops replying.
• When the assistant hands over by itself (the customer asked for a person, it didn't know the answer, it reached Max turns, or Jev stopped a reply), it leaves a private note saying why, moves the conversation to the Fallback team (or Unassigned if none), and the expectation message disappears for the customer.

Step 6: Check performance

The Performance tab shows how the assistant is doing over 7 / 30 / 90 days.

Arrows compare with the previous period; a red arrow means the change is bad (e.g. handoff rate going up).

The improvement loop: each week, read a few handed-over conversations, add the missing answers as snippets (or approve Suggestions), and the handoff rate drops.

Tools: let the assistant look things up

Where: Admin → AI → Tools. (Optional, usually set up by a developer.)

A tool lets the assistant call one of your own systems while it replies — for example, look up a student's fee dues or an order's delivery date.

The assistant decides when to use a tool from its name and description.

Then tick the tool under Tools in each assistant that should use it.

Quick start for institutes

If you run a coaching institute or school, Admin → Workspace → Admissions → Set up the AI admissions assistant creates admissions contact fields, draft snippets (courses, fees, timings, admission process, scholarships, results) and a ready-made Hindi/English/Hinglish assistant in one click. Fill in the drafts, switch them on and test. See Admissions.

Troubleshooting