Heymarket's Hey AI feature lets you set up an AI agent that can automatically respond to incoming messages, answer customer questions, and hand off conversations to a human when needed. This guide walks you through how to configure and train your AI agent so it works best for your business.
Note: Hey AI also supports a scheduling agent that can help manage appointments and bookings. That's outside the scope of this article — this guide focuses specifically on training your agent to answer questions and handle customer inquiries.
Who can do this?
The Hey AI settings are managed by account admins and team owners. Once configured, the AI agent works automatically for all users in your team.
Step 1: Define Your Agent's Behavior
Before adding any knowledge base, start by telling the AI agent who it is and how it should act.
Go to Admin > Hey AI > Agent Behavior: https://app.heymarket.com/admin/hey-ai/ai-agent-behavior/ and click Edit Agent and Unassignment Rules.
You'll fill in four fields:
- Identity — Describe the agent's role. For example: "A friendly support agent for Acme Co. that helps customers with orders and returns."
- Objective — What should the agent try to accomplish? For example: "Answer common customer questions and collect order details before escalating to the team."
- Tone — How should the agent sound? Options like Succinct, Friendly, or Professional work well depending on your audience.
- Constraints — Any topics or actions the agent should avoid. For example: "Do not discuss pricing. Do not make promises about delivery timelines."
Tip: The more specific your Identity and Objective, the better the agent will perform. Vague instructions lead to generic responses.
Step 2: Set Unassignment Rules
Unassignment rules tell the AI agent when to stop responding and hand the conversation off to a human team member.
You can add rules like:
- Contact explicitly asks to talk to a human
- Contact expresses frustration
- Contact asks about a topic outside the agent's scope
When a rule is triggered, the conversation is unassigned from the AI and routed to your team. You can also configure what happens automatically after unassignment (for example, sending a notification or applying a tag).
Step 3: Add a Knowledge Base
The knowledge base is where your agent learns about your business. You can add two types of knowledge: PDFs and website URLs.
PDF Knowledge Base
Upload documents your agent can reference — things like product guides, FAQs, policies, or onboarding materials.
Go to Admin > Hey AI > Knowledge Bases > PDF Knowledge Base and click + Add PDFs.
Limits: Up to 50 PDFs per team, with a maximum of 50MB per file.
Good examples of PDFs to upload:
- Product catalog or spec sheet
- Return and refund policy
- Service agreement or terms
- Frequently asked questions document
- Onboarding guide
Once uploaded, click Save. The sync status will update to Complete once the agent has processed the files.
Website Knowledge Base
Point the agent to pages on your website so it can learn from your existing content.
Go to Admin > Hey AI > Knowledge Bases > Website Knowledge Base and click + Add URL.
Limits: Up to 8 URLs. You can optionally enable Include linked pages to automatically pull in subpages linked from each URL.
Good examples of URLs to add:
- Your Help Center or FAQ page
- Product or service pages
- Pricing page (if you want the agent to reference it)
- About Us or company overview page
Once your URLs are added, click Sync. The status will show Complete when ready.
Step 4: Review and Test
After configuring your agent, send a few test messages through your inbox to see how it responds. Check that it:
- Answers questions accurately using your knowledge base
- Uses the right tone
- Hands off to a human when it should
If responses are off, revisit your Agent Behavior settings and make your instructions more specific, or add more content to your knowledge base.
Step 5: Give Feedback to Improve the Agent
Note: Feedback requires Training Mode to be enabled. Check with your admin to confirm it's turned on before using this feature.
As the agent handles real conversations, you can rate its suggested responses directly from the chat view. When the agent proposes a reply, use the thumbs up or thumbs down icons on the suggestion panel.
If you click thumbs down, a short feedback form will appear asking you to flag the issue:
- Incorrect information — the agent's response was factually wrong
- Missing important information — the response was incomplete
You can also add a note to explain what was wrong (for example, "San Francisco store closes at 6PM, not 5PM"). This feedback helps improve the agent's responses over time.
For Admins: Reviewing Agent Enhancement Suggestions
This section is for account admins and team owners only.
Heymarket runs a daily job that automatically analyzes the feedback submitted by your team. When a pattern is identified — such as repeated incorrect responses or a common knowledge gap — it creates an Agent Enhancement suggestion for you to review.
You can find these suggestions under Admin > Hey AI > Agent Enhancements.
Each suggestion includes:
- A description of the recommended change (for example, adding a missing help article to the knowledge base)
- A Severity rating (High or Medium) indicating how much the issue is impacting agent performance
- An Impact Summary explaining what's going wrong and why it matters
For each suggestion, you have two options:
- Mark as To Do — Accept the suggestion and add it to your task list. Someone with access to your knowledge base or help center can then make the change (for example, updating a PDF or adding a new URL).
- Reject Suggestion — Dismiss the suggestion if it's not relevant or already resolved.
Staying on top of these suggestions is one of the most effective ways to keep your agent accurate over time.
If you mark a suggestion as To Do, the specific changes the AI Agent needs will be displayed like this:
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What happens if the agent doesn't know the answer to something? A: If the agent can't find a confident answer in its knowledge base, it will either acknowledge it doesn't know or — depending on your unassignment rules — hand the conversation off to a human team member. You can also add a constraint like "If you are unsure of the answer, let the customer know and say a team member will follow up."
Q: Can I use both PDFs and website URLs at the same time? A: Yes. The agent draws from both sources at once. Adding a mix of internal documents (PDFs) and your public website pages gives the agent a fuller picture of your business.
Q: How often does the agent sync new content? A: You can manually trigger a sync any time by clicking the Sync button on the Website Knowledge Base page. For PDFs, the sync begins automatically after you save. The status badge will show Complete when the agent is ready.
Q: Can I limit what topics the agent responds to? A: Yes — use the Constraints field in Agent Behavior to specify topics the agent should avoid or decline to answer. For example: "Do not answer questions about competitor products" or "Do not discuss account billing — direct customers to support@yourcompany.com."
Q: Will the agent respond to every incoming message? A: The agent responds based on how it's configured in Setup and Agent Behavior. Once an unassignment rule is triggered, the agent stops responding to that conversation and it moves to your human team's queue.
Need Help?
If you have questions about setting up Hey AI, reach out to your Heymarket account manager or visit the Heymarket Help Center.