Set up a Captain assistant and connect your inboxes

Discover

An assistant answers customers in the inboxes you connect it to, and hands the conversation to your team when it cannot help.

Plan & access: Startups, Business or Enterprise Pricing & Plans. Administrators create, edit and delete assistants. Agents can view them and use the Playground. Each inbox can have one assistant.

Set up & try

Before you start

• At least one inbox to connect (live chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, email and others).

• Some knowledge to add straight after: website pages, PDFs or FAQs. Without knowledge the assistant has little to answer from.

• Captain credits: every assistant reply to a customer uses credits.

1. Create the assistant

1. Go to Captain > Assistants.

   

2. Start the new assistant:

   • No assistant yet: click Create a new assistant on the empty page.

     

   • You already have an assistant: open the assistant switcher next to the assistant's name and click Create Assistant.

3. Fill in: Name, Description and Product Name are required. Description can be up to 500 characters.

   • Name: an internal name, for example "Support assistant".

   • Description: what the assistant is for. Write a purpose, not instructions.

   • Product Name: the product it supports. It uses this when it talks about your product. Captain only answers questions about the product you name here, so use your brand or product name, not one narrow feature.

     

4. Choose features (all start off):

   • Generate FAQs from resolved conversations: Captain suggests new FAQs from resolved conversations. See Add FAQs and review FAQ suggestions in Captain.

   • Capture key details as memories from customer interactions. See Use Captain Memories.

   • Include source citations in responses: the reply shows which document it used.

     

5. Click Create.

   • If this is your first assistant, Chatwoot opens its FAQs.

   • If you used the switcher, Chatwoot stays on the assistant you were viewing. Select the new assistant in the switcher before the next step.

     

2. Connect an inbox

1. Select the new assistant in the assistant switcher, then go to Inboxes.

   

2. Click Connect a new inbox, choose the inbox, and confirm.

   

   
   Until an inbox is connected, the assistant's Overview shows: "This assistant isn't connected to any inbox yet, so it won't respond to conversations."

3. Set what it says and when it closes

Open the assistant's Settings.

• Basic settings: turn on Allow access to contact information if the assistant should use the contact's details when replying.

  

• System settings:

  • Handoff message: what the assistant says when it passes the conversation to your team.

  • When customers stop replying: choose the Action when the customer stops replying and how long to wait (5 minutes to 24 hours; the default is 60 minutes).

    • Let Captain review it (recommended): Captain decides whether to resolve or hand off. This is the default.

    • Always resolve: Captain resolves every conversation after the wait.

    • Wait for the customer: Captain never resolves on its own. It can still hand off if the customer asks.

  • Send a message when resolving (on by default) sends the Resolution Message before Captain resolves.

    

Test it

1. Open the assistant and go to Playground.

   

2. Ask the questions your customers ask most. Check the answers are accurate, short and in your tone.

   

3. Ask something it should not know. Check it says it cannot help and offers to connect you with your team. It hands off when you accept.

   

4. The reply can take a few seconds to appear; you can keep the page open while it works.

   

5. Then send a real message to the connected inbox, for example from your website widget, and watch the reply arrive.

   

Playground messages use credits, the same as replies to customers.

Try changes before you save them

In the Playground, open Test setup to try changes without touching the assistant. Changes apply only to this playground session unless you save them.

• Knowledge: paste text into Reference text to test an answer before it is a document. Click Add document permanently to keep it.

• Scenarios, Guidelines and Guardrails: add a temporary item with Add to test (↵), or use Include in this test to switch saved ones on or off for this test. Click Add scenario permanently, Add guideline permanently or Add guardrail permanently to keep one.

  

• Under each reply, Run details shows the scenarios and rules used, tool calls and any handoffs.

  

• Reset test setup clears everything temporary.

Get value

• Add knowledge next: Add documents to Captain's knowledge.

• Decide who it replies to and when: Control who Captain replies to and when.

• Shape its answers: Set Captain's guardrails, guidelines and scenarios.

• Check the assistant's Overview for conversations handled, Knowledge coverage and a Captain summary.

• Hand a conversation to the assistant yourself: in the conversation's assignee dropdown, choose the assistant (only the assistant connected to that inbox is listed). The conversation moves to pending and the assistant takes over, even if the audience or schedule rules would have skipped it. To take it back, assign it to a person.

• Use the assistant switcher (Switch between assistants) if you run several, for example one per brand or language.

• The assistant reads the conversation's earlier public messages, including ones sent before it was connected. It never sees private notes.

• To see how the assistant is doing, use its Overview. See Captain Overview and reports.

Troubleshoot

More causes, including silent ones: Troubleshoot Captain.