The website, read whole
The business's site is read when the agent is deployed, and re-read on a schedule. A price change on the site changes what the agent says, with nobody asked to update it.
Knowledge base
One set of facts, every channel.
An answering service knows what is on its script sheet, printed in March. The business has changed its hours and prices since, and the phone still says March.
What the agent knows
The website, the documents and the notes, kept current without anyone retyping them.
The Knowledge base card on the agent's board holds everything the agent is allowed to say. It is one place, and every channel reads it.
Documents
PDF, Word and plain text, uploaded and indexed in a minute or two. A scanned PDF has no text in it, so it needs typing up before the agent can read it.
Notes
The things that are not on the website. How to handle a particular request, which work the business does not take, what to say when a site is closed for the day.
Every channel
The phone, text, website chat and email agents all answer from the same knowledge. One edit, and every channel changes together.
What it never says
It will not guess. A question the knowledge base does not cover gets “let me have somebody call you back”, not an invention. Asked whether it is an AI, it says so.
Live answers from systems
“What do I owe” and “when am I booked in” are not knowledge base questions. They come from the client's accounting, diary or job system through an integration, live, on the call.
How it goes for the caller
Where each answer comes from.
- The caller asks something on the website. Opening hours, service area, what the business does. The answer comes from the latest re-read of the site.
- The caller asks something in a document. Warranty terms, the price list, the cancellation policy. The answer comes from the uploaded file.
- The caller asks about themselves. Their balance, their next appointment, their job. The answer comes from the connected system, not the knowledge base.
- The caller asks something nothing covers. The agent does not guess. It takes details for a call-back or puts the caller through.
What the business gets
An agent that stays right without a maintenance habit.
The usual failure of an answering service is drift. This is built so the facts cannot drift away from the business.
- One edit changes every channel: phone, text, website chat and email.
- The website is re-read on a schedule, so the site stays the source of truth it already is.
- Documents indexed in a minute or two, with nothing to install.
- A “How it works” map showing where every piece of information goes and how long it is kept. See call records.
- The knowledge base and every call handled in New Zealand and Australian data centres, and nowhere else. See security.
Sold through partners
The part of onboarding your team already knows how to do
Setting up a client's knowledge base is a conversation: their website address, the documents they hand to new staff, and the notes in the operations manager's head. The builder reads the website whole at setup, so most of it arrives on its own.
You set the price; Talkgate runs the platform, and one knowledge base is why the phone, website chat and email agents sell as one product. See the partner programme.
Sources
What the knowledge base reads.
- The client's website
- Word
- Plain text
- Notes
Answers about a particular customer come from the connected system instead. See all integrations.
Next step
Bring a client's website and watch an agent learn it.
A partner briefing shows the knowledge base being built from a real site, and what the agent says when it does not know.