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Engagement

AI Virtual Agent & Conversations

9 min read

Overview

Every Savantly profile includes a built-in AI virtual agent — your 24/7 digital representative. Visitors to your profile can chat with your agent to ask questions about your business, get recommendations, request information, and even qualify as leads — all without you being present.

The AI agent is powered by your profile content, knowledge base, and any custom instructions you provide. The richer your profile, the smarter your agent.

How the AI Agent Works

  1. A visitor lands on your public profile page at https://[your-subdomain].savantly.ai.
  2. A chat widget appears in the bottom corner of the page.
  3. The visitor types a question.
  4. Your AI agent responds using:
  • Your business profile (name, description, mission, target audience)
  • Your content library (products, services, blog posts, knowledge base, case studies, etc.)
  • Your custom agent instructions
  1. The conversation is logged and visible to you in your Conversations dashboard.

Configuring Your AI Agent

Step 1: Open the Agent Settings

  • From your Dashboard, click the Ask Savantly card.
  • Or navigate directly to /dashboard?open=ask-savantly.

Step 2: Set the Agent Personality

Choose how your agent speaks to visitors:

  • Agent name — Give your agent a name (e.g., "Alex from Acme Co." or just "Savantly Assistant")
  • Tone — Professional, Friendly, Casual, Helpful, Enthusiastic
  • Language — The agent can respond in the visitor's language automatically

Step 3: Write a System Prompt / Instructions

This is the most impactful configuration option. Write clear instructions that tell the agent:

  • Who it is and what it represents
  • What it should and shouldn't discuss
  • How it should handle specific scenarios (e.g., pricing questions, technical inquiries)
  • What action it should encourage visitors to take (e.g., book a demo, sign up for a free trial)

Example system prompt for a SaaS company: ``` You are the AI assistant for Acme Inc., a project management SaaS for remote teams. Your role is to help visitors understand our product, answer questions about features and pricing, and encourage them to start a free trial or book a demo.

When asked about pricing, explain our plans: Starter ($12/user/month), Pro ($24/user/month), and Enterprise (custom). Always mention our 14-day free trial.

If a visitor asks about a feature you're unsure about, say you'll connect them with the team and ask for their email address.

Do not discuss competitor products negatively. Stay focused on Acme's value. ```

Step 4: Set a Welcome Message

Write the greeting visitors see when the chat widget opens:

"Hi! I'm the Acme AI assistant. Ask me anything about our project management tools — I'm here to help 24/7!"

Step 5: Configure Lead Capture

Set when the agent should ask for visitor contact information:

  • Always — Ask for name/email at the start of every conversation
  • After N messages — Ask after a configurable number of exchanges
  • Never — Don't proactively ask (visitors can still provide contact info voluntarily)

On Free plans, you can configure the agent to require visitors to log in or provide their email after a set number of messages.

Step 6: Save Configuration

Click Save to apply your changes. The agent updates instantly on your public profile.

Viewing Conversations

Conversations Dashboard

  1. Navigate to Engagement → Conversations (/conversations).
  2. See a list of all conversations sorted by date.
  3. Each conversation shows:
  • Visitor name or identifier
  • Start time and duration
  • Number of messages
  • Status (Active, Closed, Taken Over)
  • Lead status (if the visitor provided contact info)

Reading a Conversation

  1. Click any conversation to open the full thread.
  2. See every message exchanged between the visitor and your AI agent.
  3. View the visitor's profile info (if captured): name, email, location, device type.
  4. See timestamps on each message.

Taking Over a Conversation (Pro & Business)

When a visitor needs human assistance, you can seamlessly take over from the AI:

  1. Open the conversation in your dashboard.
  2. Click Take Over Conversation.
  3. A new text input appears — you're now in the conversation as a human agent.
  4. The visitor sees a message like "A human representative has joined the chat".
  5. Type your responses directly.
  6. Click Return to AI when you're done to hand the conversation back to the agent.

Live conversation monitoring

On Pro and Business plans, you can watch conversations happen in real time:

  1. Go to Conversations and toggle to Live view.
  2. Conversations update in real time as messages come in.
  3. Click Watch on any active conversation to monitor it.

Managing Leads from Conversations

When the AI agent captures visitor information, it creates a Lead record:

  1. Navigate to Marketing → Leads (/leads).
  2. See all captured leads with:
  • Name and contact info
  • Source conversation link
  • Date captured
  • Lead status (New, Contacted, Qualified, Converted, Lost)
  1. Update lead status as you follow up.
  2. Click View Conversation to read the context of how the lead was captured.

Conversation Insights (Business)

Get AI-powered analysis of your conversations:

  1. Go to Analytics → Conversation Insights (/conversation-insights).
  2. See:
  • Top visitor questions — What people ask most often
  • Topics and themes — Common discussion areas
  • Sentiment analysis — How visitors feel about your responses
  • Lead conversion rate — What percentage of chats become leads
  • Peak chat times — When visitors are most active
  1. Use these insights to improve your AI agent configuration and knowledge base.

Inbox

Your inbox collects all messages that need your direct attention:

  1. Navigate to Engagement → Inbox (/inbox).
  2. See messages from:
  • Visitors who explicitly requested to speak with a human
  • Contact form submissions
  • Direct messages from connections
  1. Reply directly from the inbox.
  2. Mark conversations as resolved when complete.

Admin-to-Admin Conversations (Business)

For internal communication between admin team members:

  1. Navigate to /admin-agent-conversations.
  2. Send messages to other admin users in your organization.
  3. Useful for coordinating on lead follow-ups and conversation hand-offs.

Embedding the Chat Widget on External Sites

You can embed your Savantly AI agent on any external website (e.g., your main company website):

  1. Go to Settings → Integrations or your Dashboard → Ask Savantly.
  2. Click Get Embed Code.
  3. Copy the JavaScript snippet.
  4. Paste it before the closing </body> tag on your external website.

The chat widget will appear on your external site and all conversations will flow back to your Savantly conversations dashboard.

Best Practices for Your AI Agent

Feed it great information

The AI agent is only as good as the information it has access to. Improve its responses by:

  • Filling out your Business Profile completely (especially mission, vision, target audience)
  • Adding detailed Knowledge Base articles with answers to common questions
  • Creating thorough Product and Service descriptions
  • Adding a comprehensive Support Docs section

Write specific instructions

Vague instructions produce vague responses. Be specific:

  • ❌ "Be helpful"
  • ✓ "When visitors ask about pricing, always mention the 14-day free trial and offer to help them find the right plan"

Monitor early and adjust

During the first week after going live:

  1. Read the first 20–30 conversations carefully
  2. Note any questions the agent answered incorrectly
  3. Add those answers to your Knowledge Base
  4. Update your system prompt with better instructions for those scenarios

Set a clear primary CTA

The agent should always drive visitors toward a specific action. Choose one primary goal:

  • Book a demo
  • Start a free trial
  • Download a resource
  • Contact the team

Troubleshooting

My agent is giving incorrect information

  • Check that your business profile and content are accurate and up to date
  • Add clarifying information to your Knowledge Base
  • Update your agent's system prompt with explicit corrections

Visitors aren't engaging with the chat

  • Make your welcome message more inviting and specific
  • Ensure the chat widget is visible (check the widget position in Appearance settings)
  • Consider adding a proactive greeting that appears after 15–30 seconds on the page

I'm not capturing leads

  • Set lead capture to trigger earlier (after 2–3 messages instead of 5+)
  • Instruct the agent in its system prompt to ask for contact info when showing interest

Next: [Email Marketing →](./08-email-marketing.md)

Still stuck? Submit a ticket.