Your customers can now talk to your AI agent.

Some questions are easier to say than to type. Someone browsing your site on their phone at 9pm, trying to find out if you have a Saturday opening, doesn’t want to type out a paragraph. Now they can press a button and ask.

Voice is the biggest change in this update, but there’s more. Below is what’s new, what your visitors will see, and how to turn each feature on.

Live voice: an AI voice agent on your website

Live voice adds a voice option to the chat on your website. A visitor presses the sound-wave button next to Send, says what they need, and your AI agent answers out loud, in real time.

You don’t build a separate voice bot. Live voice uses the agent you already have, so it answers from the same knowledge and can still look things up or run the actions you’ve set up during a call.

What a call looks like for your visitors

• They press the sound-wave button next to Send and start talking.
• What each side says appears on screen as text, so they can follow along.
• If your agent has something to show, like a card or a map, it appears on screen during the call.
• They can mute, open the written chat, or end the call at any time.
• When they hang up, the conversation stays in the chat, the same as a typed one.

There’s no app to download and no phone number to call. It works in the web browser. The first time, the browser asks for permission to use the microphone.

Setting it up

Live voice is off until you turn it on. Open your agent, go to Agent settings → General, and switch on Live voice. Then choose one of ten voices. Marin and Cedar are the two we recommend.

Before visitors use it, make a test call in the Playground. You’ll hear how your agent sounds and can fix anything it gets wrong before a customer hears it.

Every call is recorded and transcribed. To review one, open the chat in Conversations. You can read the transcript or play the recording at up to 2× speed.

Voice minutes on each plan

Every paid plan includes voice minutes, and so does the 14-day free trial. Minutes count the full length of each call, and all your agents share one monthly allowance. If your agent looks something up or takes an action during a call, that turn also uses message credits, the same as in chat.

“Calls at once” is how many people can talk to your agents at the same time. On Basic that’s 3, so a fourth caller can’t connect until one of the first three hangs up. See the pricing page for full plan details.

Suggested follow-up questions under each answer

Visitors usually know their first question. After the answer, many aren’t sure what to ask next, so they leave. Follow-up questions give them options.

With this skill on, your agent suggests a few questions under its answer, based on the conversation so far. A visitor taps one, and it’s sent as their next message.

• Number of suggestions: 1 to 5, with 3 as the default. Your agent may show fewer when fewer make sense.
• Topics:add an optional note to steer the suggestions, such as “suggest questions about booking.” Leave it blank and your agent chooses.
• Review: suggestions are saved with each chat, so you can see in Conversations what each visitor was offered.

Emoji reactions on visitor messages

Your agent can now react to a visitor’s message with an emoji, the way people do in messaging apps. It shows the visitor that their message was received and understood. There are three reactions:

Your agent reacts to some messages, not every one.

Agent chats also now show “Delivered” and then “Read” under the visitor’s message while your agent writes its reply, so visitors can see that their message arrived.

You’ll find both skills under Agent skillsin your agent’s menu. Turn each one on with its switch, and click it to change its settings. Both skills need an AI agent. If you’re still using a legacy chatbot, here’s why we moved to agents.

Each message now uses up to 60% fewer credits

We’ve reduced the credits each message uses. Plan prices and monthly credits are the same as before, so the same plan now covers about twice as many messages.

Here’s roughly how many Standard messages each plan covers in a month now:

Standard is quick and handles everyday questions well. Advanced, available on the Elite plan, spends more effort on complex questions that take several steps to answer. You don’t need to change anything. The new rates apply automatically.

How to try it

1. 1

   Turn on Live voice

   Open your agent, go to Agent settings → General, switch on Live voice, and choose a voice.

2. 2

   Make a test call

   Open the Playground and press the sound-wave button next to Send.

3. 3

   Turn on the new skills

   Go to Agent skills and switch on Reactions and Follow-up questions.

4. 4

   Check your embed code

   If you added your agent to your site with the inline iframe code before October 5, copy the code again from Integrations so voice can use the microphone. The chat bubble script updates automatically.

Common questions

If you try Live voice, tell us how it goes, including anything that doesn’t work. Write to us at support@chatfast.io.