Hire Your First AI Employee
This guide walks you through the full flow — from picking a role to your employee going live — in under 10 minutes.
Step 1: Open the hiring flow
- Go to app.optimly.io and sign in
- In the left sidebar, click AI Workforce
- Click Hire AI employee in the top-right corner
You'll see a role selection screen. Pick the role that best fits what you need:
| Role | Best for |
|---|---|
| Customer Support | Answering common questions, escalating edge cases |
| Sales Representative | Qualifying leads, explaining your product |
| Lead Generator | Capturing visitor contact info |
| Analytics Reporter | Periodic summaries of activity |
| Custom Employee | Anything else |
Step 2: Name your employee and set the channel
After selecting a role you'll land on Stage 2: Name and review.
Fill in three things:
Employee name — something your customers or team will recognise (e.g. "Sofia", "Support Bot", "Acme Assistant").
Instructions — how your employee should behave. Optimly pre-fills a prompt based on the role you chose. Edit it to match your brand voice:
You are Sofia, a friendly customer support specialist for Acme.
Help customers with product inquiries, order tracking, and general questions.
Maintain a warm, helpful tone and transfer to a human colleague when needed.
Primary communication channel — where your employee will first interact with customers:
- Website — live chat widget on your site
- WhatsApp — direct messaging
- Email — shared support inbox
- API — custom application or webhook
Click Create draft. Your employee is created in Draft status and won't serve real customers until you publish it.
Step 3: Add knowledge
Your employee's overview page shows a setup checklist. The next recommended step is Add knowledge.
Click Add knowledge to open the Knowledge section. Add any combination of:
- Documents — upload PDFs, Word docs, or text files (FAQ, pricing sheet, product docs)
- Website — paste a URL and Optimly will crawl it
- Manual text — paste content directly
One well-written FAQ document is better than ten unorganised files. Your employee answers from this content, so quality matters more than volume.
Step 4: Configure the rest (optional but recommended)
Open the Configure tab. You'll see five sections:
Behavior
Your instructions, response style, and fallback message are already set from the hiring flow. You can refine them here.
Response style options:
- Friendly & Empathetic
- Direct & Technical
- Concise
When the employee cannot answer — set a fallback message like "I'll connect you with a human specialist right away" so customers are never left hanging.
Capabilities
Turn on tools your employee can use:
- Lead capture — collect visitor contact info automatically
- Email handoff — transfer the conversation to a human inbox
Appearance
Set an avatar and brand color to match your identity.
Step 5: Deploy
Click the Deploy tab.
Audience scope:
- Public — anyone on connected channels can talk to your employee
- Private — internal team only (useful for internal tools)
Website widget (if you chose Website as the channel):
- Choose widget placement (default: bottom right)
- Set the accent color
- Click Save widget settings
- Copy the script tag from Advanced settings and paste it before
</body>on your site:
<script src="https://widget.optimly.io/widget.js" data-agent-id="YOUR_AGENT_ID" async></script>
Other channels — click Connect WhatsApp, Connect Email, or expand Advanced API Credentials to get your access token.
Step 6: Publish
Once you're satisfied, click Publish (top-right). Your employee moves from Draft → Live and starts handling real conversations.
You can pause or return to draft at any time from the employee's status controls.
What to do next
Your employee is live. Here's what to check over the next few days:
Activity tab — see every conversation, lead captured, and escalation in real time.
Manual Mode — any conversation can be taken over by your team. Go to Conversations, open a chat, and toggle the Manual/AI switch. The employee steps back instantly; toggle it again to hand it back.
Analytics — the Analytics page surfaces trends across all your employees: resolution rate, response time, top topics, and more.
Common issues
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Widget not showing on site | Verify the script is before </body> and the domain matches your allowed origins in settings |
| Employee gives wrong answers | Add or correct content in the Knowledge section |
| Employee ignores fallback message | Make sure "When employee cannot answer" is set in the Behavior section |
| Status stuck on Draft | Click Publish — drafts never serve customers |
Questions? — contact@optimly.io · Discord