Overview 8 min read

Conversation Agents and Helpdesk AI: the complete guide

Overview: what belongs together

PaperOffice AI helps you answer your own customers on several channels. The building blocks work together:

  • A Conversation Agent answers calls on its own phone number and chats on your website.
  • Knowledge Base AI provides the knowledge the agent answers from: articles and pages of your website.
  • Operational sources provide business data such as order or shipment status, which the agent reveals only after proof.
  • The call log and knowledge gaps show what customers asked and what the agent could not answer.
  • Helpdesk AI is your own ticket system, where open requests from calls, chats and your customer portal arrive.
  • A phone share lets a person ask about the documents of one workspace by phone, with a PIN.

Conversation Agents on the phone and in the website chat are available from the Professional plan. Knowledge Base AI and Helpdesk AI are available from the Plus plan. Helpdesk AI is your ticket system for your customers; it is not PaperOffice support.

Create a Conversation Agent

  1. Open Conversation AI → Conversation Agents and click New Conversation Agent.
  2. On the Overview tab, under “Role & access”, choose the role. For customers, choose Public agent.
  3. On the Agent tab, under Initial language & voice, choose the voice. Use Preview voice to listen to it.
  4. On the same tab, fill in What does the agent say first? and How should the agent behave?: role, tone, call flow and limits.
  5. On the Allowed languages tab, set the start language and the languages the agent may switch to, with a voice for each.
  6. On the Knowledge tab, select the knowledge bases and click Save.

A public agent answers only from knowledge bases. It never uses workspace documents. Facts such as your address or opening hours belong in a knowledge base, prices in the price list.

Test before customers call

Open Conversation AI → Test agent, choose the agent and the channel Text, Phone or Website chat, and ask your question. Debug mode shows the thinking steps and tool calls. Phone mode in the test lab is a simulation, not a real call.

Answer calls on your own phone number

  1. Open the agent and switch to the Telephony tab.
  2. Under “Own phone number”, click Request phone number. PaperOffice gets in touch to assign the number.
  3. Forward your company number to the assigned number with your phone provider.

Only PaperOffice assigns and changes the number. The service is paid and available from the Professional plan.

The agent does not call back by itself. If a caller wants a callback, the agent creates a callback ticket with the detected phone number, and your team calls back, without a fixed time commitment. Outgoing calls by the agent are not yet enabled for customers.

Answer in a chat on your website

  1. Open the agent and switch to the Website chat tab. Switch the chat on.
  2. Under Allowed domains, enter your website, one address per line, https only. Subdomain wildcards such as https://*.example.com are allowed; a global wildcard is not.
  3. Enter the link to your Privacy notice and save the agent.
  4. In the “Embed” section, click Copy code and paste the code on your website before the closing body tag.

Without an allowed domain the chat stays off. Rotate site key creates a new key; the old code then stops working. You can limit how many new conversations start per hour. Conversations are listed under Conversation AI → Chat Log. The website chat is paid and available from the Professional plan; the automatic conversation analysis is paid on top.

Give the agent knowledge

The agent answers from the knowledge bases you select. You can write articles yourself and also use your website as a source:

  1. Open Knowledge Base AI → Website sources and click Add source.
  2. Enter a name, the Start URL with https:// and the Knowledge base. Choose the Refresh interval and Max. pages.
  3. On the Crawler tab, choose Auto, Fast or Full. Full uses a browser for pages that need JavaScript. On the Scope tab, limit or exclude areas if needed.
  4. Click Save. The first crawl starts a few minutes later. Check the result under Knowledge Base AI → Indexed pages.

Each page becomes an internal article in the knowledge base. Crawling is paid: every run, including scheduled runs, is charged in advance in blocks of 100 pages. HTTPS only, same host only; robots.txt is respected by default. Add anything that is not on your website as a separate article.

Order and shipment status: business data with proof

“Where is my order?” Operational sources mirror data from your systems: orders, shipments, prices, quotes, invoices and returns.

  1. Open Knowledge Base AI → Operational sources and click Add source.
  2. Choose the Connection, for example Pull REST (HTTPS JSON), Push (ingest URL), Price list (manual) or a ready-made connection such as JTL-Wawi or Holded.
  3. On the Mapping tab, map fields such as order, postal code, phone and tracking number.
  4. On the Proof tab, choose how customers prove who they are: order number and postal code, an SMS one-time code, or the caller number on the phone.
  5. On the Preview tab, run Preview without saving. Then save and click Sync now.

The agent reveals customer data only after proof, and then only the records of that proof. The SMS code goes to the number on the record, and only if the caller agrees. Status messages to customers are off by default. Fetches, new or changed records, messages and stored records are paid; see Show usage.

Learn from conversations

PaperOffice analyzes every conversation. Open Conversation AI → Call Log to see transcript, summary, sentiment, intent and outcome of each call. Website chats are listed in the Chat Log.

Questions the agent could not answer end up under Conversation AI → Knowledge gaps. Identical questions are counted. For a gap of the type “Knowledge is missing”, click Create article, check title, text and knowledge base, and save. The draft is only a suggestion from the conversation; statements made in the conversation are not verified. A gap only counts as closed once the agent actually answers the original question.

Logs are kept for 30, 90 or at most 180 days, then deleted completely. Translating a transcript is paid; you confirm first.

Handle requests as tickets in Helpdesk AI

  1. Open Helpdesk AI → Settings → Customer portal. The portal address is assigned automatically. Enter the portal name and reply address.
  2. Under Service hours & SLA, turn on Enable SLA deadlines and set response and resolution times per priority and your business hours.
  3. Under Notifications, your team gets an e-mail for every new ticket. Click Save settings.
  4. Handle tickets under Helpdesk AI → Ticket overview.

Tickets come from your customer portal or are created in Helpdesk AI. With Conversation Agents they also come from the website chat and from calls: on the Requests tab of the agent you set how open requests are recorded. The caller gets a link by text message, and a ticket is created once they enter their email address.

Your customers sign in to the portal with a link sent by e-mail, without a password. They see their tickets and your knowledge base there. In a ticket, the PaperOffice Agent tab offers Summarize ticket, Suggest tags and Compose reply. Drafts are never sent automatically: you check them and send them yourself. AI help in the ticket is paid.

Query a workspace by phone with a PIN

With a phone share, a person calls from their registered mobile number, enters their PIN and asks a Conversation Agent about exactly one workspace, without an app and without signing in.

  1. Create a Conversation Agent with the Protected agent role. On the Telephony tab, choose the country and enable inbound. PaperOffice assigns the number for that country.
  2. Open the workspace, switch to the Sharing tab and click New external share. Choose the Phone channel.
  3. Enter the recipient's mobile number and a PIN, then click Save and activate sharing. Give the recipient the number and the PIN.

Only the registered mobile number may call. After three wrong PINs, access is locked for 15 minutes. The agent sends documents only to the fixed email address in the share. Calls are paid and charged to the account that shares the workspace. The workspace must be of type Business.

Text messages from PaperOffice

PaperOffice sends text messages from the sender “PaperOffice” only for fixed purposes: codes, signature invitations, and links or case numbers after a call with an agent. On the Requests tab you decide whether callers get a form link and whether the case number is sent. On the Referrals tab you maintain the link library; the agent may only send these links. Every text message to a recipient or caller is paid and charged to the account that triggers it.

Frequently asked questions

  • Does a public agent see my documents? No. A public agent answers only from knowledge bases, never from workspace documents.
  • Does the agent call customers back? No. It creates a callback ticket, and your team calls back.
  • Can I keep my company number? Yes. Forward it to the number assigned by PaperOffice.
  • Is Helpdesk AI the PaperOffice support? No. It is your own ticket system for your customers.
  • How long are call logs kept? 30, 90 or at most 180 days, depending on the setting.