Assist Agent Guide

Assist Agent empowers support agents with AI-driven assistance, generating customer-facing responses and enabling AI-powered chat support between agents and AI. This AI-driven assistance also helps quickly onboard new agents, improves the accuracy of support information, and ensures that agents can easily find relevant knowledge base articles for reference while working on tickets. 

What’s Available on Assist Agent

• Forethought Assist Agent Dashboard – Admins can configure:
  • Fine-grained control of Knowledge Retrieval
  • Defining Fallback responses
  • Creating Custom Workflows
  • Creating Instructional Notes
• Assist Browser Extension – Agents can:
  • Side panel with integrated Assist AI, enabling Agents to chat directly with the AI
  • Generated reply prompt designed for crafting customer-facing responses

Setup Instructions

For Admins

Before your agents can use Assist Agent, you need to configure key settings in your Forethought dashboard. Follow these steps:

Connect Your Knowledge Base

Connecting your knowledge base enhances the accuracy and relevance of responses generated by Assist Agent. By default, Assist Agent attempts to remove information that is internal-only or irrelevant to the customer when generating replies. If you'd like more control over the information used, you can apply filters to each source in Knowledge Retrieval, like the image below.

To connect your knowledge base, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Solve > Configuration > Assist.
   
2. Click Knowledge.
   
3. Click + Connect New Integration, then follow the instructions on the Integrations page.
4. Return to the Assist Configuration page and click Build Knowledge Retrieval in Workflow. To learn more about setting up Knowledge Retrieval, see How to Set Up Knowledge Retrieval. 
   • The Knowledge Retrieval workflow enables Assist Agent to search your connected knowledge base for relevant information to assist your agents.

Provide Instructions for Assist Agent

Creating instructional notes for Assist Agent helps guide it in generating relevant, customer-facing responses to support your agents while they work on tickets. This ensures that interactions with the Assist Agent are meaningful and effective.

1. On the Assist Configuration page, click Instruction.
2. You can create instructions for generated reply and assist AI.
   • Generated Reply: This note guides Knowledge Retrieval to create accurate, relevant, and tailored customer-facing responses that directly address user requests.
   • Assist AI: This note helps the AI deliver engaging, personalized responses that meet your agents’ unique needs, ensuring effective support.

Set Up Fallback Responses for Agents

If an agent asks a question and Assist Agent can’t find a relevant response after searching the knowledge base, the Fallback workflow is triggered. By setting a fallback response in Assist Agent, you provide agents with clear instructions on what to do when AI can’t help them.

To set up a Fallback response:

1. On the Assist Configuration page, click Fallback.
   
2. Click + Connect New Integration, then follow the instructions on the Integrations page.
3. Return to the Assist Configuration page and click Build Fallback in Workflow. 
4. Customize the Fallback Message to define how Assist Agent responds when there is insufficient content.
   

Set Up Customer-Facing Tone of Voice

A consistent tone of voice strengthens brand identity and improves customer relationships. By default, AI-generated responses use a neutral tone, but you can customize this to better align with your brand.

1. On the Assist Configuration page, click Tone.

2. You can set a tone for both Generated Reply and Assist AI.
   

3. Toggle on Tone of Voice to enable customization.
4. Describe the desired tone or select from predefined options, such as empathetic, friendly,  professional, and more.

Set up Quick Feedback

Quick Feedback allows your support agents to easily provide feedback on the articles Assist AI surfaces, which helps you understand whether the content is helpful as they work on support tickets. You can use this feedback to continually improve the relevance and quality of your knowledge base articles.

To enable Quick Feedback:

1. Go to the Assist Configuration page and click Feedback.
2. Toggle on Quick Feedback to enable it.
   
3. Choose a feedback style. You can select from:
   • Thumbs
   • Black and white smileys
   • Hearts
4. Edit the hover labels to match the tone or purpose you want.

Publish your changes

Once you're done setting up and configuring your Assist Agent, click Publish to make it live in Forethought Assist so your agents can start using it.

Create Custom Workflows

You can create workflows in either Classic or Autoflows to guide agents as they work on tickets.  To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to Solve > Workflow Builder > Assist.
   
2. At the right side of your screen, click + Create New > Intent.
3. Enter an Intent Display Name and provide additional details about the intent.
4. Add at least two training phrases.
5. Click Add Intent.
6. Customize the intent or workflow according to your needs. 
   • When agents work on a ticket related to this workflow, the workflow will be triggered automatically. The workflow you have set up will guide your agents in resolving tickets efficiently, reducing the need for handholding— especially for new agents. 

For Agents

Once Assist Agent has been configured in the Forethought dashboard, agents can start using it in their help desk. Follow the steps below to get started. If you already have Assist installed, go directly to step #4. 

1. Install the Forethought Assist extension. (If not already installed)
2. Sign up for Forethought Assist.
3. In the upper-right corner of your screen, click Extensions > Forethought Assist.
   
4. Open a ticket and click Assist. This displays a ticket summary along with a guide on how to handle the ticket based on the connected knowledge base or workflows set up by your manager.
   
5. On the left side, an auto-generated reply appears. Review the response for accuracy and relevance. If you need to modify it, simply type your request in the chat prompt using plain English.
6. Keep using Assist Agent to resolve tickets efficiently.
7. Complete the feedback survey to share your experience and suggestions.

Assist Agent Demo Video

Click this link to see the Assist Agent in action. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: If I want to use a different set of knowledge for Assist Agent than the one used for feed and generative responses in Assist, would updating it here impact the other areas of Assist?

A: Managers can configure Assist Agent settings on the Configuration page. This setup remains separate from the existing Assist configuration. 

Q: Can different sections of Assist use separate knowledge configurations? Or can dashboard admins configure this on the Assist configuration page?

A: The AI agent can intelligently generate appropriate responses for both customer-facing and agent-facing use cases, even from mixed sources.

What’s Coming

• Resizable text box windows
• Improved prompt regeneration logic for better reply accuracy
• Enhanced consistency in rewriting generated prompts
• Better formatting of retrieved articles