raia Chat User Guide
Deliver Seamless 24/7 Customer Engagement Across All Channels
Overview
raia Chat serves as the customer-facing interface where AI agents engage with customers, prospects, and users across multiple communication channels. While raia Command builds agents, raia Connect provides their knowledge, and raia Copilot enables oversight, raia Chat is where agents come to life—answering questions, solving problems, qualifying leads, scheduling appointments, and delivering the intelligent, responsive customer experience that modern businesses require. The application transforms customer engagement by enabling 24/7 availability, instant responses, consistent quality, and seamless multi-channel experiences without the costs and limitations of human-only support.
Chat's power lies in its ability to deploy fully branded, intelligent conversational experiences across Web, SMS, Email, and Voice channels from a single agent configuration. Customers can start a conversation on your website, continue via SMS, follow up through email, and complete via phone call—all while the agent maintains complete context and delivers consistent, accurate responses. This omnichannel capability eliminates the frustration of repeating information across channels and ensures that customers receive the same quality of service regardless of how they choose to communicate.
How raia Chat Works
Web Chat Widget Deployment
The web chat widget represents the most common entry point for customer interactions, providing an embeddable chat interface that can be added to any website with a simple code snippet. The widget is configured entirely through raia Command's Live Chat Skill settings, where users customize appearance, behavior, welcome messages, and functionality without writing code. Once configured, users receive an SDK embed code—a small JavaScript snippet—that is pasted into the website's HTML, typically just before the closing body tag.
The widget automatically inherits the agent's intelligence, knowledge, and capabilities, requiring no additional configuration beyond the initial embed. Customers see a branded chat interface that matches the website's design, with customizable colors, positioning, button styles, and header elements. The widget supports rich interactions including text messages, links, buttons, images, and structured responses like cards or carousels. Typing indicators show when the agent is formulating a response, creating a natural conversational feel. Message history persists across sessions, allowing customers to return to previous conversations without losing context.
SMS Integration and Two-Way Messaging
SMS integration through Twilio enables agents to engage customers via text messaging, one of the most widely used and accessible communication channels. Configuration occurs through raia Command's SMS Skill settings, where users provide Twilio credentials (Account SID and Auth Token) and configure phone numbers for sending and receiving messages. Once configured, agents can send SMS messages proactively (through raia Control campaigns) or respond to incoming texts from customers.
The SMS channel supports full two-way conversations where customers can text questions, requests, or responses and agents reply intelligently based on context and knowledge. Messages are threaded by phone number, maintaining conversation history and enabling context-aware responses. The platform handles SMS-specific considerations including message length limits (automatically splitting long responses), delivery confirmation, opt-out management (respecting STOP requests), and rate limiting (preventing spam or excessive messaging). SMS conversations appear in raia Copilot alongside other channels, enabling unified oversight and intervention when needed.
Email Engagement
Email integration through Mailgun enables agents to send and receive emails, supporting both reactive responses to customer inquiries and proactive outreach through campaigns. Configuration occurs through raia Command's Email Skill settings, where users provide Mailgun API credentials and configure sender identity (from address, name, and reply-to settings). The platform supports custom email templates with variable insertion, HTML formatting, and attachment handling.
Email conversations are threaded by subject line and recipient, maintaining context across multiple exchanges. Agents can parse incoming emails to extract questions or requests, formulate appropriate responses based on their knowledge and capabilities, and send replies that maintain conversation history. The platform handles email-specific considerations including spam prevention (proper authentication, reasonable sending rates), deliverability optimization (reputation management, bounce handling), and compliance (unsubscribe management, CAN-SPAM requirements). Email conversations integrate with raia Copilot for monitoring and intervention, and with raia Control for campaign-driven outreach.
Voice Channel Integration
Voice integration enables agents to engage in telephone conversations, supporting both inbound calls (customers calling your business) and outbound calls (agents calling customers). The voice channel uses telephony integration configured through raia Command's Voice Skill settings, where users specify phone numbers, greeting messages, call routing rules, and voice characteristics (accent, speed, tone). The platform handles speech-to-text conversion for understanding customer speech and text-to-speech generation for agent responses.
Voice conversations support natural dialogue including interruptions, clarifications, and conversational repair (handling misunderstandings). The agent can transfer calls to human team members when needed, place calls on hold, or schedule callbacks. Voice interactions are transcribed and logged, appearing in raia Copilot alongside other channels for unified oversight. The platform handles telephony considerations including call quality monitoring, latency optimization, fallback strategies for connectivity issues, and integration with existing phone systems or contact center infrastructure.
Key Benefits
24/7 Availability Without Staffing Costs
Traditional customer support requires staffing across all hours of operation, with costs scaling linearly with coverage requirements. Providing 24/7 support through human agents requires multiple shifts, weekend coverage, and holiday staffing—often tripling or quadrupling personnel costs compared to business-hours-only support. Many organizations compromise by offering limited hours, resulting in missed opportunities, frustrated customers, and competitive disadvantage against businesses that provide round-the-clock service.
raia Chat eliminates this tradeoff by enabling true 24/7 availability without incremental staffing costs. Once deployed, agents handle unlimited conversations simultaneously across all time zones and holidays without fatigue, breaks, or shift changes. Customers receive instant responses regardless of when they reach out—2 AM on Sunday receives the same quality of service as 2 PM on Tuesday. This constant availability captures opportunities that would otherwise be lost, serves global customers across time zones, provides support during emergencies or urgent situations, and creates competitive advantage through superior accessibility.
Instant Response and Zero Wait Times
Customer expectations for response speed have evolved dramatically, with modern consumers expecting instant or near-instant replies to inquiries. Studies consistently show that response time directly impacts customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and brand perception. Traditional support models struggle with this expectation—human agents can only handle one conversation at a time, peak periods create queues and wait times, and staffing for instant response to variable demand is economically impractical.
raia Chat delivers instant responses to every customer interaction regardless of volume or timing. The agent begins formulating a response the moment a customer sends a message, with typical response times measured in seconds rather than minutes or hours. This speed applies equally during peak periods—Black Friday, product launches, service outages—when traditional support systems become overwhelmed. The elimination of wait times dramatically improves customer experience, increases conversion rates (particularly for sales inquiries where delay often means lost opportunities), reduces abandonment, and creates positive brand perception through responsiveness.
Consistent Quality Across All Interactions
Human support quality varies based on agent experience, training, mood, fatigue, and individual capabilities. Customers may receive excellent service from one agent and poor service from another, creating inconsistent experiences that undermine trust and satisfaction. Knowledge gaps, policy misunderstandings, and communication skill variations contribute to this inconsistency. Training and quality assurance efforts help but cannot eliminate the inherent variability in human performance.
raia Chat ensures consistent quality across every interaction by delivering responses based on the same knowledge, instructions, and capabilities regardless of when or how customers engage. Every customer receives accurate information drawn from the same curated knowledge base, consistent tone and messaging aligned with brand guidelines, appropriate use of skills and capabilities, and adherence to policies and procedures. This consistency applies across channels—customers receive the same quality via web chat, SMS, email, or voice—and across time, eliminating the "luck of the draw" element in customer support. The result is predictable, reliable service that builds trust and satisfaction.
Seamless Multi-Channel Experience
Modern customers expect to engage with businesses through their preferred channels and switch between channels without friction. A customer might start researching on a website, ask questions via chat, continue the conversation through SMS while mobile, and complete a purchase via phone call. Traditional systems treat these as separate interactions, requiring customers to repeat information and losing context across channel switches. This fragmentation creates frustration and often results in abandoned interactions.
raia Chat provides true omnichannel experience where conversations maintain context across all channels. A customer who starts a conversation via web chat can continue via SMS by simply texting the agent's phone number—the agent recognizes the customer, recalls the previous conversation, and continues from where they left off. Email follow-ups reference web chat conversations. Voice calls have context from previous SMS exchanges. This seamless experience eliminates repetition, reduces friction, accommodates customer preferences, and creates a unified relationship rather than disconnected transactions.
Key Features
Fully Customizable Web Widget
The web chat widget offers extensive customization capabilities that enable perfect alignment with brand identity and user experience requirements. Visual customization controls colors (button, header, background, text), fonts (family, size, weight), positioning (bottom right, bottom left, custom), size (compact, standard, expanded), and styling (rounded corners, shadows, borders). Content customization defines welcome messages, placeholder text, button labels, and system messages. Behavior customization controls auto-open timing, minimize/maximize behavior, sound notifications, and desktop notifications.
Advanced customization enables custom CSS for complete design control, JavaScript hooks for programmatic interaction, custom icons and imagery, and white-label options that remove raia branding. The widget supports responsive design that adapts to desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes, ensuring optimal experience across devices. Preview functionality allows testing appearance and behavior before deployment. Multiple widget configurations can be created for different pages, audiences, or use cases, with conditional display rules controlling when and where widgets appear.
Brand Consistency and Tone Control
raia Chat ensures that agent interactions reflect brand identity through comprehensive tone and messaging controls. Agent instructions defined in raia Command specify communication style (formal, casual, friendly, professional), vocabulary preferences (industry terminology, plain language, technical depth), response structure (concise, detailed, step-by-step), and personality traits (helpful, empathetic, enthusiastic, matter-of-fact). These instructions apply consistently across all channels, ensuring that customers experience the same brand voice whether interacting via chat, SMS, email, or voice.
The platform supports multiple tone profiles for different contexts—a sales agent might be enthusiastic and persuasive while a support agent is empathetic and solution-focused. Brand guidelines can include specific phrases to use or avoid, formatting preferences, emoji usage policies, and escalation language. Examples and templates provide concrete guidance that shapes agent behavior. The combination of instructions, knowledge, and examples creates consistent brand expression that feels authentic and appropriate across all customer interactions.
Rich Media and Structured Responses
Beyond simple text exchanges, raia Chat supports rich media and structured responses that enhance communication and user experience. Agents can send clickable links with preview cards, images and graphics (product photos, diagrams, screenshots), buttons for common actions (yes/no, multiple choice, quick replies), and structured cards containing title, description, image, and action buttons. These rich elements make interactions more engaging, enable faster navigation through options, and support visual communication where text alone is insufficient.
The platform handles media appropriately for each channel—rich cards display beautifully in web chat, degrade gracefully to text with links in SMS, render as HTML in email, and are described verbally in voice interactions. Agents can dynamically generate structured responses based on context, such as showing product cards when discussing items, displaying appointment time options when scheduling, or presenting troubleshooting steps with visual aids. This multimedia capability transforms chat from a text-only medium into a rich, interactive experience.
Conversation Context and Memory
raia Chat maintains comprehensive conversation context that enables natural, coherent interactions. Short-term context includes the current conversation history (all messages in the current session), user information (name, account details, preferences), and interaction state (what the agent is helping with, decisions made, information collected). Long-term memory spans multiple conversations, remembering previous interactions, past issues and resolutions, stated preferences, and relationship history.
This contextual awareness enables agents to provide personalized responses that reference previous conversations, avoid asking for information already provided, tailor recommendations based on known preferences, and maintain relationship continuity. The platform supports context variables that can be passed programmatically—for example, a logged-in website user's account information can be provided to the agent, enabling personalized greetings and account-specific assistance. Context management includes privacy controls that determine what information is retained, for how long, and under what conditions it can be accessed.
Escalation and Human Handoff
While agents handle most interactions autonomously, raia Chat provides seamless escalation to human team members when needed. Escalation can be triggered automatically based on configurable criteria (specific keywords, negative sentiment, extended duration, repeated failures) or manually by customers requesting human assistance. When escalation occurs, designated team members receive notifications through raia Copilot, where they can review conversation history and take over the interaction.
The handoff process maintains complete context—human agents see the entire conversation history, user information, and any actions taken by the AI agent. Customers experience a smooth transition without needing to repeat information. Human agents can use raia Copilot's interface to continue the conversation, with all messages appearing in the same thread across channels. After resolution, the human agent can return control to the AI agent or conclude the conversation. All escalations are logged and analyzed to identify patterns that inform agent improvement.
Analytics and Performance Tracking
raia Chat provides comprehensive analytics that measure engagement, performance, and business impact. Conversation metrics track volume and trends, average duration, messages per conversation, and completion rates. Engagement metrics measure response rates (percentage of visitors who engage), abandonment rates (conversations started but not completed), and return visitor rates. Performance metrics assess resolution rates (conversations successfully resolved), escalation rates (requiring human intervention), and satisfaction scores (from post-conversation surveys or feedback).
Channel analytics compare performance across Web, SMS, Email, and Voice, identifying channel preferences and effectiveness. Topic analysis identifies common questions, emerging issues, and knowledge gaps. Funnel analysis tracks customer journeys from initial engagement through conversion or resolution. All analytics can be segmented by time period, customer segment, agent, or custom dimensions. Export capabilities enable integration with business intelligence tools or custom reporting systems. These insights inform optimization decisions, demonstrate ROI, and identify opportunities for improvement.
Integration with Communication Platforms
Beyond the native channels, raia Chat integrates with popular communication platforms where customers already spend time. Zendesk integration enables agents to operate within existing support workflows, appearing as available agents in the Zendesk interface. Facebook Messenger integration allows agents to engage customers through the Messenger platform. WhatsApp integration (where available) enables conversations through the world's most popular messaging app. Slack integration supports internal use cases where employees interact with agents through familiar workplace tools.
These integrations extend agent reach without requiring customers to adopt new platforms or interfaces. Configuration occurs through raia Command with platform-specific credentials and settings. Conversations through integrated platforms appear in raia Copilot alongside native channels, maintaining unified oversight and enabling intervention when needed. The platform handles platform-specific requirements including authentication, message formatting, media handling, and compliance with platform policies.
Getting Started with raia Chat
Organizations beginning with raia Chat typically start with web chat deployment, as it provides the most controlled environment and immediate value. The implementation process begins with configuring the Live Chat Skill in raia Command, customizing appearance to match brand identity, and setting welcome messages and behavior. The SDK embed code is then added to the website, usually starting with a single page or section for testing before expanding to the full site.
After web chat is operational, organizations commonly add SMS capability to support mobile customers and enable asynchronous communication. Email integration follows, supporting both reactive customer inquiries and proactive campaign-driven engagement. Voice integration typically comes last, as it requires more complex telephony setup and often involves integration with existing phone systems. This phased approach allows teams to learn each channel, establish best practices, and demonstrate value before expanding to additional channels.
Success with raia Chat comes from treating it as a customer experience platform rather than just a support tool. Organizations that achieve the greatest value continuously optimize agent knowledge based on conversation patterns, refine tone and messaging based on customer feedback, expand capabilities through new skills and integrations, monitor analytics to identify improvement opportunities, and use insights from customer interactions to inform product and service enhancements. The platform's flexibility and integration with the raia ecosystem make this continuous optimization sustainable and impactful.
Conclusion
raia Chat represents the customer-facing realization of intelligent AI agents, transforming how organizations engage with customers across all channels. By providing 24/7 availability, instant responses, consistent quality, and seamless omnichannel experiences, Chat delivers the customer experience that modern consumers expect while dramatically reducing costs compared to human-only support. The platform's combination of accessibility, intelligence, and integration creates sustainable competitive advantage through superior customer engagement.
Organizations using raia Chat report dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction, significant reductions in support costs, increased conversion rates from instant response to sales inquiries, and enhanced brand perception through consistent, high-quality interactions. The platform's multi-channel capabilities ensure that customers can engage through their preferred channels while organizations maintain unified oversight and control. As customer expectations for instant, intelligent, always-available service continue to rise, raia Chat provides the infrastructure necessary to meet and exceed those expectations at scale.
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