Edit Your AI with Assembly
Use Assembly to learn what your AI says, change it, test it in a simulation, and coach it line by line.
Voice AI campaigns and your Receptionist have an Assembly tab (it used to be called Employees). It's where you talk to careCycle about your AI employee: how it handles calls, what it says, and what you want it to say instead. You don't need to touch a prompt or know anything about how AI works. You just chat, test, and approve.
This guide covers how the tab works and, more importantly, how to actually get the results you're looking for.
How your AI "thinks" about a call
Before you change anything, it helps to know what's under the hood.
Behind every AI employee is basically an exemplary script. That's the happy path: how the call should go when everything goes right. On top of that, it knows how to handle the stuff people say most often on these calls: "I'm busy," "Is this a robot?", "I already have an agent," "How'd you get my number?", and so on.
Then there are escalations. These are the moments where the AI needs to do something: transfer the call to your team, book an appointment, or log an inquiry for someone to follow up on. The script decides what the AI says; the escalations decide what it does about it. More on those below.
And on every call, careCycle hands it what your records say about the member: their policies, appointments, open requests, and recent calls. See What Your AI Knows on Every Call.
Step 1: Onboard yourself to the campaign
Open your campaign and click the Assembly tab. You'll land in a chat with careCycle.
The best first move is to just ask questions. Treat it like getting onboarded by someone who already knows the campaign inside and out:
- "Walk me through the happy path on this call."
- "What does it say if someone's busy?"
- "How does it handle someone who says they already have an agent?"
- "What happens if nobody's available to take a transfer?"
Starting prompts
Not sure what to ask? A new chat offers a few starting prompts. Click one to send it:
- Show the happy path
- Review recent calls
- Improve the opening
- Explain how this employee handles a situation
- Make responses shorter
After each answer, careCycle suggests a few follow-ups to keep exploring.
Reviewing calls
Once your campaign has been running, careCycle can pull up real calls, transcripts, and results to explain what's working and what isn't. It looks at the last 7 days unless you ask for something else, like "yesterday," "last month," "the last 48 hours," or "since we launched."
careCycle explains the AI's instructions in plain English instead of showing you the raw prompt. Greetings and voicemails are the exception: you can see and edit those word for word.
Step 2: Tell it what you want
Once you get the gist of how the AI works, now's your chance to tweak things.
If you're starting from scratch
Start with the context, not the words. Tell careCycle:
- Who you're calling and when (where are they in their journey with you?).
- Why you're calling them.
- What the call to action is, if there is one (transfer, appointment, just a check-in).
- How you want it to sound.
If you already have a script in mind
The best results come from a mix: give the general context (who, why, when), then paste in a script that paints a picture of what you're going for.
Here's the thing about scripts though. Think about the last time you called your bank or your cell provider. You can usually tell when the person is reading off a script versus actually talking to you. Most of the good ones still have a script, they just don't sound like it. Same with cold-call sales: you get a script, but the best calls are the ones that wander off it.
AI is different. If you give it a script, it'll say that script almost word for word. It's a robot, after all. So a script that sounds a little stiff when a human reads it sounds way stiffer coming out of an AI.
The good news is we've spent a ton of time on exactly this problem. careCycle is trained on our best practices for voice AI scripts. It won't ignore what you ask for or rewrite your whole script, but it will push back on lines that work between two humans and fall flat through text-to-speech.
A few tips for writing lines that sound human
- Write it how you'd say it. Ums, uhs, and repeated phrases are your friends: "I wanted to uh, I just wanted to see if you had a couple minutes."
- End most turns with a question. On an outbound call, you called them, so you're driving. A question gives them a reason to respond. Most turns, though, not every one. A question after every single line gets annoying and sounds robotic.
- Think in phases. A call has steps: the opener, the reason for the call, the ask, handling a "no," and the close. Big changes to how those phases flow are what the main chat is great at.
Approving changes
When careCycle has a change ready, you'll see a Proposed Employee Change card. It tells you what it's changing, why, and which calls it applies to (for example, daytime calls, after-hours calls, or appointment callbacks), with the Current and Proposed versions side by side. If something has to happen first, like setting up an escalation, the card says so under Before this can be applied.
Not quite right? Just keep chatting. Tell it what to change and it'll come back with a new proposal.
When you're happy, click Apply Change.
Apply Change goes live right away. If your campaign is active, the very next call uses the new version. If you want to try it out first, click Test Proposed Changes to run a simulation against the proposal before it touches anything.
Step 3: Test it in a simulation
Once you've gone back and forth a few times, you'll want to make sure the AI is actually following the script and flow you have in mind. That's what the simulator is for.
Click Simulation in the top right. You can pick a Call Scenario (like Existing Customer, New Customer, or After Hours (Existing Customer)) and a Customer to play, or leave both alone to use a sample customer. Then click Start Simulation.
You play the caller and type back and forth with the AI. It uses the same instructions and escalations your real calls use.
The simulation is text, not voice, and it never actually transfers anyone, books anything, or logs an inquiry. When the AI tries to, you'll see a Test Action badge showing what would have happened. A transfer or a hang-up ends the simulation. If you picked a Customer, their details (like their name, agent, and plan) fill in the script, but the AI doesn't get their policies, appointments, open requests, or recent calls. Use a test call to hear it use those. See What Your AI Knows on Every Call.
Step 4: Coach it line by line
Think of the simulator as your space for testing, verifying, and then making surgical edits to the exact phrasing. Say you really like the script, but you want to add an "uh" in the middle of a long turn to break it up. This is where you'd do that.
Under every AI response you'll see three buttons: Good, Bad, and Improve. Good saves right away. Pick Bad or Improve and you get:
- Coaching Note: free-text guidance. What's wrong, or what you want.
- Suggested Response: open it to write the exact line you wish it had said. Turn on Use Exact Wording if it should say your line word for word.
Here's how I use them:
- Small wording tweaks (same message, just swapping some words or sounds): I just rewrite the line in Suggested Response.
- The direction is off and I don't have a perfect line in mind: I write my thoughts in Coaching Note and let the AI figure out the fix.
- I know exactly what I want, and it applies beyond this one line (like "change this line to X, and fix any other lines like it"): I use both.
Mark the lines you love as Good too, so careCycle knows to keep them.
Submit your coaching
Keep going until the end of the conversation, or stop whenever you've seen enough. Then click Submit Coaching. That ends the test and sends all your notes to the main chat, where careCycle turns them into a proposed change.
Review the proposal, push back if you need to, and click Apply Change when it looks right.
Retest your fixes
Click Retest These Fixes to replay the same conversation (same caller lines, same customer) against the fixed version. careCycle shows you the before and after for each line you coached, so you can see whether the fix landed without retyping the whole call.
It takes a few reps (and that's normal)
AI isn't perfectly predictable. You can coach a line, apply the fix, re-run the sim, and still get something you don't love. That's ok! Give the feedback again and let it take another swing. Good voice AI scripts are built through a lot of back and forth. The more reps and edge cases you throw at it, the better it'll sound on the phone.
Campaign briefs
You can also build a whole new Voice AI campaign by chatting. Click Create Campaign, choose Voice AI, then Start with Assembly.
- Describe the call. Tell careCycle what the campaign should accomplish, or click Attach a Script to start from one you already have. Starting ideas like Help New Callers and Check In After Enrollment fill in the box for you.
- Answer a few questions. careCycle asks what it needs to know, like the insurance type and when the calls should happen.
- Review the brief. As you go, it writes a Campaign Brief: the goal, who you're calling, how the conversation goes, the escalations, the voice and tone, and what success means. What Will Be Created shows exactly what you'll get, and Still to Resolve lists anything left open.
- Create it. Scroll through the brief and click Create Campaign. careCycle builds it while you watch, then opens it in Assembly with the Escalations panel ready to set up. It's created as a draft, so nothing calls anyone until you activate it.
Resuming drafts and conversations
You don't have to finish in one sitting.
- Briefs: click Save and Come Back Later. Your unfinished briefs wait under Saved Campaign Briefs on the Campaigns page. Click Continue to pick up where you left off.
- Assembly chats: open History in the top right of the Assembly tab and pick any chat to keep going, or click New Chat for a fresh one.
Start from a template
Seriously, use our templates. They're tried and tested scripts that have run more calls than any one agency could, and we keep updating them with what we learn. The best play is to pick the template closest to the kind of call you want to make, then tweak its script to match. That way you're not starting from zero and finding every edge case on your own.
Escalations
In the Assembly tab, click Escalations in the top right to set what the AI does when a situation comes up on a call. Each row is a scenario, with one setting for Business Hours and one for Outside Operating Hours:
- Transfer Call: send them to one of your routing groups.
- Book Appointment: book them on one of your calendars.
- Log Inquiry: write it up for your team to follow up on. See Handle Inquiries.
After hours never offers a transfer, since nobody's there to pick up. Use Manage in any menu to create or edit routing groups and calendars without leaving the page. Click Add Escalation for a new row, and Save Changes at the bottom of the panel when you're done.
Saving escalations marks any proposals you haven't applied yet as outdated. Apply or finish up those first, then save your escalations.
See Escalations for the full rundown.
Bulk-assign a scenario across campaigns
To set what the AI does for a scenario in many campaigns at once, go to Settings > Calling > Scenarios. Under Default Escalations, click a scenario, pick the action for business hours and after hours, and choose which campaigns to update (or Select All). Click Save and Update [number] Campaigns. New campaigns start with these defaults too, and any campaign can still override them in its own Escalations panel.
Version history
Every change you apply creates a new version. Open History, then Versions to see who changed what and when. If a change made things worse, click Restore Version on the previous one. Restoring creates a new version, so nothing gets lost.
Good to know
- Your chats and simulations are private to you. Teammates won't see them, but they'll see the versions you apply.
- You need edit access to the campaign to apply changes, restore versions, or save escalations. Anyone who can view the campaign can chat and run simulations.
- One change can cover more than one call type. Check Applies to on the proposal so you know if it's touching daytime, after-hours, and callback calls all at once.