Edit Your AI with Employees

Every campaign has an Employees tab. 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.

Step 1: Onboard yourself to the campaign

Open your campaign and click the Employees 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?"

There are a few starter buttons too, like Explain how this employee handles a situation and Review recent calls. Once your campaign has been running, careCycle can also pull up real calls, transcripts, and the last 31 days of results to explain what's working and what isn't.

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). For greetings and voicemails, you'll see the Current and Proposed versions side by side.

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.

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. Pick a Call scenario (like "An existing customer calling during business hours" or "A customer receiving an appointment callback"), and optionally give it a caller persona or details. 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.

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 Needs improvement. Pick Bad or Needs improvement and you get two boxes:

• Coaching note: free-text guidance. What's wrong, or what you want.
• Desired response: the exact line you wish it had said.

Here's how I use them:

• Small wording tweaks (same message, just swapping some words or sounds): I just rewrite the line in Desired 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.

Click Save coaching on each one. Mark the lines you love as Good too, so careCycle knows to keep them.

Send it back to the chat

You can keep going until the end of the conversation, or click End simulation whenever you've seen enough. Once it's over, click Suggest fixes in chat. That drops a message into the main chat with all your coaching attached. Hit send, and careCycle turns your notes into a proposed change.

Review the proposal, push back if you need to, and click Apply change when it looks right. Then run another simulation and you should see your edits show up.

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.

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

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 After Hours:

• Transfer Call: send them to one of your transfer destinations.
• Book Appointment: book them on one of your appointment configurations.
• 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 destinations and calendars without leaving the page. Click Save changes when you're done.

Version history

Every change you apply creates a new version. Open History, then Version History to see who changed what and when. If a change made things worse, you can Restore the previous version. 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.