Yes, an AI can reply to your customers' text messages: with Muzau, your business gets a 09 number, and an SMS agent answers incoming messages with what the Brain knows about your business. Its replies are short, and the first one starts with “Hello, this is the AI assistant of” your business. They go out on their own or after your approval. When it does not know, it hands over to your team, who can take the conversation back by SMS.
A customer who texts asks a short question and expects a quick answer: “Is it possible before the end of the month?”, “Did you get my document?”. The message lands on a salesperson's phone, in the middle of a meeting. They reply in the evening, or forget it, and nobody else on the team has seen it.
Your team keeps the relationship and the decisions. The agent takes the short replies whose content is already written down somewhere in your business, and it tells the customer it is an AI.
Each Muzau SMS agent has its own 09 number, the one you give to your customers. A customer's texts form one conversation there, and the agent rereads the latest messages before replying. Two texts sent back to back, “Hello” then the question, get a single reply that takes both into account. In each conversation, its first SMS starts with “Hello, this is the AI assistant of” your business: it is the code that adds this, not the AI.
The agent relies on the Brain and its library: your site, your documents. A phone number does not prove who is writing, so it only uses knowledge marked public. It is instructed to state only the prices and lead times found in the Brain. It writes plain text, made to fit in a 160-character SMS, AI mention included. If the customer asks for an appointment, the agent offers free slots, read from your calendar if it is connected, otherwise taken from your opening hours. It then asks for their email for the invitation: see booking an appointment by SMS.
Each reply from the SMS agent follows your setting: it goes out on its own, or it waits for your approval in a “To approve” card, and does not go out before. SMS has no setting of its own: it follows the overall choice on the Autonomy page, otherwise the one for email replies. A pending reply is approved in one click and goes out from the agent's number. Even when the agent replies on its own, a check rereads every text before sending, and a reply it stops waits for you. If the customer wrote an IBAN in the conversation, nothing goes out without you.
When it does not know, the SMS agent writes to the customer “We'll reply to you here by SMS.” and hands over. A “Someone is waiting for a reply (SMS)” card arrives with the customer's number. An email, or a message in Slack or Microsoft Teams, can also alert the team. The team replies from the card, from the agent's number: see replying to SMS from a computer. When the agent is paused or out of credits, the incoming SMS is still kept. Nothing is sent to the customer, not even an apology, and a card tells you who is waiting and why. A customer who replies STOP no longer receives any SMS from the business: see what a STOP triggers.
A text is a good one to hand over when its answer is already written somewhere, a bad one when it calls for a decision. Reread the latest texts received on your team's phones and sort them into three piles.
For each question to hand over, write the answer in one or two sentences. If it does not fit in one SMS, it is not given by SMS: offer an email or an appointment.
Then read those answers as if a stranger were receiving them. A phone number does not say who is writing: nothing about a specific customer (their order, their file, their quote) should be given by SMS without knowing who you are talking to. Those questions go through email or the team.
Finally, decide who takes the conversation back when the answer is not known, and within what time. If the AI told the customer that someone would reply, that is the promise they will remember.
Autonomous does not mean unchecked. You set the level of autonomy of every agent, its limits cannot be crossed, everything it does is recorded in a plain-language log, and one gesture stops it all.
For the tasks you don't have time for. You give the address of your website, then describe the work in your own words. Nothing to install.