Set Up Your Agency
The step-by-step checklist to take a new careCycle organization from empty to your first live campaign.
Welcome to careCycle. This is the path we walk every new agency through, in three parts: get your Receptionist answering, bring in your book, then start calling your members.
Along the way there are a few moments where careCycle really clicks. They're marked Try it below. Don't skip them.
If you haven't read How careCycle Fits Together yet, start there. It explains what each of these steps is for.
Part 1: Get started
Choose your Receptionist's number
Pick the phone number your members call and text to reach your team. When your number is set up, careCycle also creates your Receptionist, a starter routing group, and starter calendar settings. You'll tweak all of those in later steps.
Choose your Receptionist's number
Invite your team
Invite everybody who'll take calls or handle tasks, inquiries, and appointments. If you're not ready to bring everyone in yet, invite the people who'll take transfers and appointments now and add the rest later.
Set up customer assignments
Decide which agent, CSR, or team member owns each customer, so their tasks, appointments, and inquiry alerts go to the right person. You can adjust the rules later and reassign the customers you already have. Finish this before importing your book.
Set up who gets calls and appointments
Review the starter routing group and add the agents it should ring. Then review the starter calendar settings (length, spacing, booking hours, and who appointments go to), and have everyone who takes appointments connect their calendar.
Set up routing groups, calendar settings, and calendars
Configure your Receptionist
Pick Cora's voice and routing, then work through her escalations: what she does when a caller needs a person (transfer, book an appointment, or log an inquiry).
Try it: call your Receptionist
Call your new number and talk to Cora like a member would. Ask about a plan, ask for your agent, ask to book a time. Then open the Assembly tab and ask it to change something about how she handles a call. See Edit Your AI with Assembly.
Part 2: Bring in your book
Connect where you write your business
Connect your enrollment platform or CRM, so every new enrollment and status change flows into careCycle on its own. That's what keeps your welcome calls, check-ins, and save calls running without anyone lifting a finger.
Connect your CRM or connect HealthSherpa
Import your book of business
Bring in the members you already have. Hand the import assistant your export as-is, and it maps, cleans, and imports it with you. The plan codes on your policies link each member to careCycle's plan benefit data, so Cora can answer coverage questions with nothing extra to upload.
Try it: ask careCycle about your book
Once your book is in, ask careCycle a question about it, like "How many of my members have a policy starting next month?" Then pin the answer to your dashboard. See Build Custom Reports with Ask careCycle.
Part 3: Start calling your members
Register for SMS and RCS
Finish 10DLC registration so careCycle can text from your numbers. Texts don't go out until this is done. RCS branding is optional.
Build your post-sale journey
Add campaigns from the Template Library or build your own. Most agencies start with Welcome Calls for brand-new members, then fill out the rest of the Retention Journey.
Test it before you turn it on
Talk to your AI employee in your browser or on your phone before any member does, and catch missing data with the preflight check.
Get your agents ready
Send your team the agent guides so they know what to expect when calls, texts, and appointments start coming their way.
Your Inbox, Making and Taking Calls, and, if they take appointments, Connect Your Calendar
Try it: be the member
Before you turn a campaign on, fill in your Test Customer with details from one of your real members (their plan, carrier, and agent) and have the AI call you. Hearing it talk to "them" by name about their plan and their agent is the moment it all makes sense. See Test Your Campaign.
Heads up: the Home banner
Until you have a campaign set up, your Home dashboard shows a Let's get your campaigns dialing banner with a New Campaign button. It's just a shortcut to the same template picker.
What Happens Next
Once the basics are done, the next step is usually filling out the rest of a new member's first year. The Retention Journey lays out which templates to turn on and in what order. Your careCycle representative can also help you:
- Set up task automations (on the Tasks page, under Automations) for post-enrollment follow-up
- Tune your inquiry priorities
- Connect anything else, like carrier portals, enrollment platforms, and BI tools
Helpful References
Template Library
Every ready-made campaign, with a full brief for each.
Create a Campaign from a Template
The detailed, step-by-step campaign setup.
How careCycle Fits Together
The big picture behind everything you just set up.
Campaign Toolkit
Routing groups, calendars, Pulse, Assembly, and escalations.
API Reference
Sync customers, policies, sources, campaigns, inquiries, and more.
Support
Reach out if you get stuck anywhere in setup.