Inbound agents

An inbound Agent answers customers who message you first. It replies from your knowledge base, asks for the details you need, and hands the conversation to a person when it should not decide alone.

How a conversation runs

1. A customer writes to an account you gave the Agent in Receiving accounts.
2. The Agent answers. A burst of messages is answered once. It waits about 30 seconds on WhatsApp and LinkedIn, answers email straight away, then reads everything the customer sent.
3. During the conversation it answers from the knowledge bases you linked and asks for the information items you configured, one or two at a time.
4. It hands off, stops, or keeps going. When all collection items are filled in, RenewSell hands the customer to your team and records an opportunity. This happens even if the Agent did not ask for a handoff.
5. You see the thread in the Agent's Conversation Inbox and can take over at any time.

Skills

Five skills can be switched on or off independently in the Agent's editor. A skill that is off simply does not happen.

Skill	What it does
Knowledge search	Links knowledge bases so the Agent can answer product, service and common questions
Welcome message	Sends new customers a welcome message and welcome material
Customer information collection	Collects the key details you list and decides when the customer is worth following up
Human handoff rules	Notifies you and hands the customer to a person when a condition is met
Stop service rules	Stops serving the customer when a condition is met

Greeting

Welcome message can send one fixed greeting, Fixed greeting, to each new customer. Turn it on only when you want the same opening line every time; without it the Agent answers naturally.

The same skill also sends welcome material: files from the Agent's attachment area (pdf/png/jpg/webp, up to 3 files, 5 MB in total). They go with the first reply. Whether the customer can open them depends on their channel.

Information collection

Customer information collection holds up to 12 items, such as expected quantity or target market. The Agent asks naturally inside its answers, never as a questionnaire.

• It only records what the customer actually wrote. It never guesses, and it never asks twice for the same item.
• When every item has a value, the conversation is handed to your team with the rule Information complete. This is decided by RenewSell, not by the Agent. It fires when the collection skill, Human handoff rules and the Information complete rule are all on.
• With no items configured, that rule never triggers.

Handoff and stop rules

Human handoff rules and Stop service rules each list up to 10 rules. A rule has a Rule name, a Trigger condition, and an optional Closing message (optional).

• When a condition is met, the Agent sends the closing message and puts the thread on hold. A handoff leaves it for you; a stop ends the Agent's part.
• The closing message is sent in the customer's language. If you wrote it in another language, RenewSell writes the same meaning in the customer's language. The exception is Information complete, whose text is sent exactly as written.
• Human handoff rules cannot be empty: at least one rule must stay enabled to publish. The fixed Information complete rule is always there.
• Each rule can be turned off with its own switch without deleting it.

Reply language

Reply language is Follow the customer by default: the Agent answers in the language of the customer's latest message. You can pin it to one language instead.

Who answers, and when it stops

• The Agent answers only while it is published, its Auto reply switch is on, and the thread's own Auto reply switch is on.
• An account can be used by one published inbound Agent at a time. Publishing a second inbound Agent on the same account is refused with the name of the one already using it.
• Only receive new customer inquiries; do not reply to existing contacts keeps the Agent out of threads where you already wrote to that contact from that account. Those messages are stored in the Inbox, and the thread's own Auto reply switch stays off.
• Maximum triggers ends the Agent's part after a set number of replies to one customer. A merged burst of customer messages counts once.
• If a person on your team sends a message in the thread, replies pause while Pause AI replies after a human steps in is on.
• A customer writing something that looks like instructions to an AI never reaches the model; the thread is handed to you.

When a customer asks who they are talking to

The Agent answers as the person in AI Employee Name and AI Employee Role, the same way an outbound Agent does. It never claims to be an AI.

If a customer sincerely and directly asks whether they are talking to a person or a bot, it answers in one short sentence. It says it is the company's digital assistant, then carries on helping. It never claims to be human when asked that directly.

Notifications

• Notification channels (multiple allowed) sends you the events you choose. Select one or more bots from your notification settings. The Agent notifies only those endpoints, whatever events each bot subscribes to on its own.

• A handoff always notifies the selected channels.

• A stop rule notifies only when its Notify when replies stop switch is on.

• Reaching Maximum triggers notifies when Notify when the trigger limit is reached is on.

• Finished information collection creates an opportunity and sends a notification about it.

The notifications use the endpoints selected here, not the event subscriptions of each bot. With no notification channel selected, nothing is sent. Preview notification shows sample text for each event without sending anything.

Test it before customers arrive

The right column of an inbound Agent's editor is Inbound chat preview. Write as a customer and see the answer, the collection progress bar, and whether the Agent hands off or stops. Nothing is sent; see Preview and test.