Turn on your own AI Receptionist

BeginnerLabAI ReceptionistAI WorkforceKnowledge BaseGet set up · Step 5 of 9

Estimated time · about 25 minutes|Required · Partner Center admin access, Access to add code to your website

Outcomes

✓Find your AI Workforce and tell the employees on it apart

✓Name your Chat Receptionist and read the role it already runs on

✓Add your website as a knowledge source and see what it trained on

✓Hold a real conversation with it and sharpen an answer

✓Install the web chat widget and watch it become a trigger on the employee

Three parts make a receptionist

Every AI Employee, including the AI Receptionist, is built from the same three parts. Configuring yours means deciding who it is, what it can do, and what it knows. Flip each one:

Role↘

Role

Who the AI is and how it behaves: its job description, tone, and standing instructions. Yours arrives with a working role already written, and you can read it before you change anything.

↙

Capabilities↘

Capabilities

A skill it can apply, with instructions telling it when. Yours ships with Capture leads already on, which is what turns a conversation into a CRM contact.

↙

Knowledge sources↘

Knowledge sources

What it can pull from when answering: your website, documents, and facts you add. Each source shows when it last refreshed and how many pages it trained on.

↙

Your receptionist serves your business, so it lives in your workspace: Partner Center. Everything in this step happens there.

You do this twice. Setting up a client's receptionist, once Conversations AI is active on their account, puts you on the same screens in their Business App, and Deploy a receptionist for a client walks you through it when you are ready.

Meet your workforce

Open AI → Workforce. The page that loads is your AI Workforce, and every AI Employee you have sits on it as a card.

You already have more than one. The Chat receptionist answers anyone messaging your business. On Professional and above, a Voice receptionist sits beside it and answers the phone. The AI Sales Assistant works on your recorded sales calls. Alongside them sit any custom employees, and a Create button in the top right for building your own.

Two things differ from card to card:

• The buttons differ by employee. The Chat receptionist offers Chat and Configure. The Voice receptionist offers Call, Try it, and Configure, because you test a voice receptionist by phoning it. Before it has a number of its own, that middle button reads Claim phone number.
• Autonomy shows on the two receptionist cards as a level, and the info icon beside it explains the four levels.

Which plan carries which receptionist

The Starter plan includes the AI Chat Receptionist, which is the one this step configures. The Professional plan and above add the AI Voice Receptionist and the social channels, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Your own subscription decides what you get, and a client gets whichever edition of Conversations AI is active on their account. This guide breaks down what each plan includes.

Labfind your receptionist

Go to AI → Workforce.

1. 1.Expand AI in the left navigation. Three items appear: Workforce, Capabilities, and Knowledge Base.
2. 2.Select Workforce.
3. 3.Find the card whose subtitle reads Chat receptionist. The large text is a name, which you or a teammate can change; the subtitle is what stays put.
4. 4.Select Configure on that card.

The Configure page is open, with the receptionist's photo and name on the left.

Name it, and read what it already does

The Configure page is one screen with everything on it. On the left: the photo, the Name field, the Autonomy badge, and a View prompt button. On the right, in order: Triggers, Profile, Capabilities, Knowledge sources, and Automations.

Start with the name, because the AI knows its own name and introduces itself with it. Then read before you write, because two things are already done for you.

Under Capabilities you will find Capture leads: "Collects contact information, creates a new contact, and lets the contact know someone on your team will follow up." That is the capability that turns a chat into a record in your CRM, and it is on before you touch anything.

Labmake it yours, then read the role

Go to the receptionist's Configure page.

1. 1.In Name, replace "Chat Receptionist" with a name that fits your brand, and set a photo.
2. 2.Under Profile, expand Role. This is the job description and behavioural guidelines it already runs on. Read it before changing a word.
3. 3.Select View prompt to see the full instruction the AI actually receives.
4. 4.Under Capabilities, find Capture leads and read its description. Its ⋮ menu is where you edit or remove it, and Learn more opens its documentation.
5. 5.Select Save.

The receptionist carries your name and photo, and you have read both the role it runs on and the Capture leads capability it already has.

The role that ships is a working one, and most first-day changes are small additions to it rather than rewrites.

Give it knowledge

Knowledge sources on the same page is where you choose what the AI can pull from when it answers. Your website homepage is already one of them, included by default, which is why the receptionist can say something useful before you configure anything at all. Every source lists its address, when it last refreshed, and how many pages it trained on, so you can always see exactly what the AI is working from.

Adding one takes two clicks rather than one. The Add knowledge field first offers knowledge you already have; + Add new knowledge at the top of that list is what opens the choice of three:

• Text for content related to your business, such as FAQs or custom information
• Website to retrieve content from a website
• File Upload for a document or file

Labadd the rest of your website

Go to the same Configure page, under Knowledge sources.

1. 1.Read the sources already listed, and note the page count on each one.
2. 2.Select the Add knowledge field at the bottom of the list. It opens a dropdown of knowledge you already have.
3. 3.Select + Add new knowledge at the top of that dropdown, then choose Website.
4. 4.Enter your website address. It has to be reachable without a login, so check it in an incognito window if you are unsure.
5. 5.Save, then give the source time to finish training.
6. 6.Come back and read its line: the date it last refreshed, and how many pages it trained on out of how many it found.

Your site appears as a source with a page count, and you know exactly how much of it the AI learned.

Anything that lives nowhere on your site (your hours, your prices, what makes you different) goes in through Text as a written entry, and a price list or a policy document goes in through File Upload. For every source type, crawl mode, and refresh option, the Knowledge Base guide covers it, and AI → Knowledge Base is where you manage sources across every employee at once.

Put it to practice

Chat on the receptionist's card opens a conversation between you and your employee. It is private to you, it keeps a history, and it shows you its reasoning as it answers. This is where you try your receptionist out: ask it what your customers ask, audit the answers, and fix what is off.

The Voice receptionist tests differently. Its Try it opens a short dialog handing you the number to phone once the Voice Receptionist is enabled, because hearing a voice answer is the only way to judge one. A Try it also appears on a client's account, in their Business App, once Local SEO is active there: that one opens their Chat Receptionist inside the My Listings page, so you can see what a customer sees before the widget reaches their website.

Labinterview your receptionist

Go to AI → Workforce, then Chat on the Chat Receptionist card.

1. 1.Ask the three questions your customers ask you most. Include one about price.
2. 2.Ask something deliberately vague, and watch whether it asks a good follow-up or guesses.
3. 3.Ask the same question a second time. Answers vary slightly, and a question that only works sometimes needs a sharper source or a clearer instruction.
4. 4.Select Configure from the top right, change one thing, and ask again.
5. 5.Use + New chat whenever you want a clean start with no history behind it.

You have found at least one answer worth sharpening, changed one thing, and seen the difference.

Change one element at a time, whether that is the role, a capability, or a knowledge source. Changing three at once tells you nothing about which one worked.

Put it on your website

The widget does not add itself. Installing the code is the step that turns a working configuration into a receptionist your visitors can reach, and it is also what connects the two halves of this lesson: a widget you install shows up back on the employee as a trigger, one of the events that invokes it.

Labcreate a widget you can embed

Go to Conversations → More → Conversations Settings, on the Web Chat card. (Administration → Conversations Settings reaches the same page.)

1. 1.Select Manage widgets to open the Web Chat configuration page.
2. 2.Select New Web Chat and give it a widget name. This creates a Standard widget, which is the kind you can embed.
3. 3.On the AI employee card, select your receptionist.
4. 4.Set the Welcome greeting, the Initial AI message, and the Appearance colors to match your brand, then save.

Your widget is listed with its Widget type reading Standard and your receptionist assigned to it.

The widget that ships with your account has a Widget type of System, and its ⋮ menu offers only Edit. Embed codes live on Standard widgets, which is why the step above creates one.

Labembed it on your site

Go to your new widget's ⋮ menu on the Web Chat configuration page.

1. 1.Choose Embed.
2. 2.Open the Floating chat widget section and pick the tab that matches your site: Website, Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or GoDaddy.
3. 3.Copy the code and paste it into your page head, just before the closing head tag, then publish.
4. 4.Load your own site in an incognito window and start a conversation.

The widget opens on your live site, the conversation appears in Conversations, and the contact is saved to your CRM.

Go back to the receptionist's Configure page and look at Triggers. Your widget is listed there now, as an event that invokes this employee, with its own Settings.

Try it now

Open Conversations and find the chat you just had through your own widget. Whatever a visitor sends now lands here, and this is the inbox you will check in the morning.

When you want to take this further, Hire your first AI Employee is the path to follow.

Knowledge Check

Three quick questions on finding your workforce, the three parts, testing, and getting the widget live.

Congratulations, you completed this step!

Get set up · Step 5 of 9

Keep learning›