Core concepts
The building blocks of NuTalk: agents, channels, campaigns, contacts and credits, and how they fit together.
How it fits together
An agent is the AI that holds the conversation. You link it to channels, the phone numbers and messaging accounts where it answers people. Campaigns reach out through those channels: they call your contacts, from a list or as new leads arrive, and follow up on WhatsApp. Credits pay for the calls, messages and AI work along the way.
Agents
An agent is the AI that talks with your customers. Each one has:
- Instructions
- Its system prompt: what it does, how it speaks and what to do when it doesn't know something.
- Versions
- Each change to its instructions is saved as a new version, deployed at once or kept as a draft. Only the deployed version answers. A new version is numbered one step above the agent's highest one: v1.0.0, then v1.0.1 for a patch, v1.1.0 for a minor change or v2.0.0 for a major one.
- Actions
- What it can do during a conversation, such as booking appointments, calling your own API, reading and updating records in your own database, or sending an email.
- Goals
- The outcomes you want from its conversations. Evaluations score calls and chats against them.
Versions let you change an agent safely: save new instructions as a draft, deploy them when they're ready, and deploy an earlier version to go back.
Channels
A channel is where an agent talks with people: a phone number, a WhatsApp number, the chat on your website, a Facebook Messenger page or an Instagram professional account. Link an agent to a channel and it answers the calls or messages that arrive there.
Voice channels
- A NuTalk number in Mexico, the US or Canada, or your own landline connected through an AiBox.
- Inbound calls, and outbound calls from campaigns, the API and test calls.
- A voice you pick after listening to samples.
- Each call's recording (when recording is on), transcript and summary, in Calls.
WhatsApp channels
- Official WhatsApp Business, connected through Meta, or Sync with WhatsApp, which links the number you already use on your phone with a QR code.
- Photos and documents in conversations.
- Message templates, with buttons, to start a conversation (Official WhatsApp Business).
On a messaging channel you also choose who answers: the AI, your team, or the AI only for the channel's test numbers while you try it.
Campaigns
A campaign calls your contacts and follows up on WhatsApp, step by step. You set:
- Workflow
- The steps, such as a call, a WhatsApp template, a wait or a CRM update, with branches by the call's outcome or the lead's response.
- Retries
- More tries when nobody answers, a set time apart.
- Calling hours
- The days and hours calls go out, and holidays with no calls or messages.
- Pace
- How many calls run at once, how many go out per hour and how often one person is called in a day.
- Pipeline
- The stages contacts move through in the campaign.
A campaign calls a list you already have, once through at the pace you set, or each new lead when it arrives, within your calling hours: from Kommo, HubSpot or Odoo, Facebook and Instagram lead ads, website forms, Zapier or your own system.
Contacts
Contacts are the people your agents talk with.
- Contact lists
- Groups of contacts. A list can feed a campaign.
- Contact fields
- The data you keep about each person, such as their company or plan. Your workspace defines them in Settings → Contact fields.
- Activity
- Each person's calls, chats and appointments, in one timeline.
People who call or write to your agents become contacts on their own. You can also add them by hand, import a CSV file, create them through the API, or let a campaign's lead sources add them.
Credits
NuTalk bills usage in credits. Calls, messages and other AI work, such as evaluations, summaries and tests, use credits at your plan's rates. In Billing, Rates lists what each action costs.
Your plan can add credits every month, and you can buy more in Billing. Credits expire, and Billing shows when. Calls on NuTalk numbers use credits; calls through your own AiBox line are included and use none. For current prices, see the pricing page.