An AI Inbound Agent talks to your customers on WhatsApp for you. It can qualify leads, answer the questions you get every day, and step back when a lead is ready for a person to close the deal. If you want chats answered and leads moved forward without typing every reply yourself, this is the feature to use.

[!NOTE] AI Inbound Agents are available on all plans. Every reply an agent sends counts toward your plan’s monthly AI reply quota.

Quick Start

1. Select AI Inbound Agent in the CQ Sidebar.
2. Pick the template that fits your business, or create a new agent from scratch.
3. Add your business info and choose which chats the agent should reply to.
4. Create the agent. It starts replying to those chats right away.

Each step is explained below.

Step 1: Open AI Inbound Agent

Open WhatsApp Web with The Chat Quotient running and select AI Inbound Agent in the CQ Sidebar. This is where you create new agents and manage the ones you already have.

Step 2: Choose a Template or Start From Scratch

Templates are ready-made agents for common jobs, such as qualifying leads or answering product questions. Each template comes with a goal and step-back conditions already written. These are standard instructions that work for most businesses, and you can edit both before you create the agent.

If none of the templates fit, create a new agent and write the goal and step-back conditions yourself.

You can browse every template, with a description of what it does, in the AI Agent Library.

Step 3: Add Your Business Info and Audience

Whether you started from a template or from scratch, the agent needs a few details:

• Name: something you’ll recognize, such as “Lead Qualifier” or “Support Desk”.
• Goal: what the agent should achieve, in plain words (for example, “Qualify leads by asking for their budget and company size”). Templates fill this in for you.
• Audience: which chats the agent replies to. You can choose specific pipelines, saved contacts, unsaved contacts, selected WhatsApp lists, or all contacts. Most businesses pick unsaved contacts, since new enquiries usually come from numbers you haven’t saved yet.
• Business Info: facts the agent can use in its answers, entered as key-value pairs (for example, “Pricing”: “$29/mo”, “Location”: “New York”). You can reuse details saved in your profile or add ones that only this agent needs.

Step 4: Decide When the Agent Steps Back

The agent should hand the chat to you once the lead is ready to close, or when a customer asks for something it shouldn’t handle. Templates include step-back conditions that suit most businesses, and you can change them.

• What to tell the customer: choose what the agent says when it steps back. It can tell them a person will help, say “I’ll get back to you shortly”, or step back without sending a message.
• Step-back conditions: describe in plain text when the agent should stop replying (for example, “The customer asks for a refund” or “The customer is ready to place an order”).
• Notifications: choose how you want to hear about it when the agent steps back: email, WhatsApp, or both.

Step 5: Review Suggestions and Create the Agent

When you submit, The Chat Quotient checks what you entered and may suggest extra details that would help the agent answer better. You can go back and add them, or skip them and continue.

Once you create the agent, it starts replying to chats in its audience. Those chats show a green AI Inbound Agent Active label next to the AI Reply button. To turn the agent off in a chat, or to see what happens when you reply yourself, read Managing AI Inbound Agents in Individual Chats.

[!IMPORTANT] Keep your WhatsApp Web tab open with the extension running. The agent reads and sends messages through it, so it can’t reply while the tab is closed.

[!TIP] An agent is only as good as the information you give it. Accurate business info and clear step-back conditions decide how well it qualifies leads and when it hands them to you, so they are worth a few extra minutes.