AI Agents for revenue-critical conversations 

You need an AI Agent if customers ask unpredictable questions across several channels and slow or missed replies lose you customers. If you only answer a few fixed questions on one channel, a chatbot is enough. A chatbot follows scripted flows. Respond.io AI Agents understand free-form messages, images and voice notes, and take actions such as qualifying leads, updating Lifecycle stages in your sales pipeline and assigning chats to your team. They work in the same inbox as your team across WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and calls, because respond.io is a customer conversation platform, not a standalone chatbot.

Respond.io AI Agents are built for mid-market B2C businesses whose customers chat or call before buying or booking, such as retailers, clinics, schools, travel agencies, car dealers and real estate agencies. They fit best when a team handles 500+ customer conversations a month across WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and other channels, and slow replies or poor handoffs are losing leads. They are not the right fit in three cases:

• you get fewer than 500 conversations a month
• you need WhatsApp group messaging
• you rely mainly on cold outbound messaging

That’s because respond.io is built around replying to and qualifying customers who reach out first.

Yes. Respond.io AI Agents ask the qualifying questions you set, such as budget, timeline or product interest, and act on the answers inside the conversation. Spam and low-intent chats are tagged and closed, or stay with the AI Agent. Qualified leads move to the next Lifecycle stage in your sales pipeline. They’re assigned to the right salesperson or team by round robin or least open conversations, with an internal note on what the customer asked. This suits mid-market B2C businesses that get more inbound chats than their sales team can screen, such as during ad campaigns. If most inquiries are already qualified, or you get fewer than 500 conversations a month, a simple assignment rule is usually enough.

Yes. Respond.io AI Agents answer product and price questions from the knowledge sources you approve, such as your website, product PDFs, Google Docs and CSV tables, and recommend products based on what the customer asks for. Website sources re-sync on a schedule, so answers follow your latest prices and catalog pages. On Advanced and Enterprise plans, AI Agents can also check live stock by sending HTTP requests to your inventory system, and hand the chat to your team when availability can’t be confirmed. This suits retailers, beauty brands, travel agencies and car dealers whose customers ask several product questions before buying. If your stock data has no API, AI Agents can only answer from your last synced source, so set them to hand stock questions to your team.

No. On current paid plans, AI Agents keep running after you use up your monthly AI credit allowance, so replies don’t stop during a sale, peak season or an ad campaign. Extra usage is billed automatically in blocks of 1,000 credits on your regular invoice. Total usage, including your allowance, is capped at twice your monthly allowance; at that point AI features pause until the next billing cycle. Teams that regularly go past their allowance should choose a plan sized for it. See how AI Credit On-Demand works

Yes. Respond.io integrates natively with HubSpot and Salesforce, and connects to any other CRM with an API. Your team sees CRM records next to each conversation, with HubSpot available on the Growth plan and above and Salesforce on Advanced and above. On HubSpot, contact properties sync into respond.io Contact fields. On Advanced and Enterprise plans, AI Agents send updates back to your CRM, such as a new lead or a qualification result, through HTTP requests or by triggering a Workflow. Zapier, Make and n8n can also pass conversation events to your CRM. Respond.io works alongside your CRM rather than replacing it: keep your CRM for deal management and reporting, and use respond.io for the chats, calls and handoffs that feed it.

Yes. AI Agents answer first, then hand each chat to the right branch or team by role, online status or workload, so customers reach someone who can help without your team sorting chats by hand. For calls, Voice AI Agents detect the caller’s language and transfer the call to the team that speaks it. For chats, Workflows can route customers to a team that speaks their language. Srikandi, a Mitsubishi dealer with 47 branches in Indonesia, automatically routed 88% of conversations to the right branch and agent through one WhatsApp number within five months. If every chat goes to one small team, a simple assignment rule is enough.

Yes. Respond.io AI Agents work across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, Telegram, Viber, LINE and other channels. Voice AI Agents answer inbound WhatsApp and VoIP calls 24/7 in 30+ languages. Calls and chats land in the same inbox with one conversation history. When a customer messages on WhatsApp and then calls, the AI Agent and your team see both. A teammate can take over any chat, and Voice AI Agents transfer live calls to your team. This matters when customers switch channels before buying. If you only use one channel and plan to stay there, a single-channel tool may be enough.

No. Respond.io AI Agents answer only from the knowledge sources you approve and hand the conversation to a human instead of guessing when the answer isn’t there. Guardrails set what each agent can and can’t say, sensitive topics or low-confidence replies trigger escalation, and you test replies on sample messages before going live. Any teammate can take over a conversation at any time, and your conversation data is not used to train AI models. Accuracy depends on your sources. If prices or policies change often, keep them in synced website sources or, on Advanced and Enterprise plans, connect live data through HTTP requests, or the agent will answer from outdated information.

Most teams launch an AI Agent from a template within an hour. Respond.io includes Receptionist, Sales Agent and Support Agent templates with instructions and actions already filled in, and Copilot can guide setup. New AI Agents stay inactive until you publish them, and you can test replies and actions on sample messages first without affecting real customers. Setup takes longer when an agent needs custom instructions, several knowledge sources or HTTP requests to your own systems.