Who is this article for?
Program managers who want partners to get instant answers in Messages, without having to answer every question themselves.
The Support Agent answers your partners' questions in Messages, using PartnerStack's help documentation and the content you give it. When a question needs you, it hands the conversation over and moves it to Needs your attention, so you only spend time on messages that need a human.
The agent is available to all programs with Messages and is off by default. You decide when to turn it on.
How to set up the Support Agent
- Log in to your PartnerStack account and go to Messages.
- Click Learn how it works to see what the agent does.
- Click Set up agent to open Agent Settings.
- Set up each area below, then click Save.
Identity
Give the agent a name, avatar, and welcome message that represent your program. The welcome message appears the first time the agent replies in a conversation.
Voice and style
Choose how the agent sounds:
- Friendly: warm and upbeat. It greets partners and offers next steps.
- Plainspoken: direct and efficient. It leads with the answer and skips pleasantries.
- Formal: polished and precise. It suits enterprise-facing programs.
Knowledge
The agent already knows PartnerStack's help documentation. Add your own content so it can answer questions about your program:
- From your Resources: the agent references text-based resources you've already published in your Resources section.
- Documents added by you: upload a PDF, Word, or text file that isn't already in your Resources section. Max file size is 250MB. Please note: partners won't have access to these files.
Auto-responses
Set an exact reply for questions you get often. Add the question and the reply, and the agent sends your reply when a partner asks that question.
Guardrails
Guardrails are topics the agent never answers. Every program on PartnerStack has 4 default guardrails, and these can't be changed or removed:
- Legal or contract advice
- Tax guidance
- Payout disputes
- Personal data changes
You can add your own topics on top of these. When a partner asks about a guardrailed topic, the agent doesn't answer. It lets the partner know their program team will reply, and moves the conversation to Needs your attention. The partner never sees which topics are restricted.
Your First Action: Test Your Agent
Before turning the agent on, we highly recommend testing it. Ask it the questions your partners usually ask, and check the answers, tone, and guardrails. Partners don't see your test conversations.
How to Turn the Agent On and Off
- In Messages, find the Support Agent card.
- Click the toggle and confirm.
When the agent is on, the card shows Replying to partners. When it's off, it shows Not replying to partners.
The agent is turned on for your whole program. You can't turn it on for specific groups or partners.
Turning the agent off doesn't delete anything. Conversations and past agent replies stay in their threads, and anything still waiting on a reply moves to your unread messages.
What Happens Next: How Conversations Are Handled
When the agent is on, your Messages inbox has three views:
- All messages: every conversation.
- Needs your attention: conversations the agent handed to you, or that need your reply.
- Agent handling: conversations the agent answered.
The Messages count in your left menu shows the conversations that need you, not everything unread.
When the agent hands a conversation to you
The agent hands the conversation to you and moves it to Needs your attention when:
- It can't answer confidently.
- The question needs account details only your team can check, like a specific commission or payment.
- The partner asks to speak with your team.
- The partner asks about a guardrailed topic.
When you reply
As soon as you send a message, the agent steps back from that topic. The conversation leaves Needs your attention only when you reply. Marking a message as read or unread doesn't change this.
If the partner asks something new
After a handoff, partners can still ask the agent new questions, and it can answer them.
Rating the agent's replies
Use the thumbs up or thumbs down on any agent reply to tell us how it did. This helps us improve the agent.
What Your Partners See
- The agent introduces itself with your welcome message the first time it replies.
- Agent replies look different from your team's messages, so partners always know who they're talking to.
- When the agent hands off, partners get a message saying their program team will reply.
- The agent replies in the partner's language.
Important Information
- Spark accounts: the agent isn't available because Spark accounts don't have Messages.
- Groups with Messages turned off: partners in those groups can't message you, so the agent doesn't reply to them either.
- Integrations: the agent doesn't connect to external tools like Highspot, Notion, or an LMS, and doesn't read links. It only uses PartnerStack's help documentation, your Resources, and files you upload.
- Partner-specific data: the agent can't look up a partner's links, earnings, or account details.
Disclaimer: PartnerStack uses LLMs from Google Gemini that have the potential to generate inaccurate results.
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Q: Can I turn on the agent for only some groups or partners?
A: No. The agent is on or off for your whole program.
Q: Will the agent reply to conversations from before I turned it on?
A: It only replies to new partner messages. Past conversations aren't changed.
Q: Why is a conversation still in Needs your attention after I marked it as read?
A: Conversations leave Needs your attention only when you reply. Read and unread status doesn't affect it.
Q: Why did the agent hand off a question I expected it to answer?
A: The agent hands off when it can't answer confidently from its knowledge. Add a file covering that topic to Knowledge, or set an auto-response, then test it again.
Q: Can I change or remove the default guardrails?
A: No. Legal or contract advice, tax guidance, payout disputes, and personal data changes are guardrails for every program. You can add your own topics on top of them.
Q: Do my changes apply right away?
A: Yes. Once you save, your changes apply to all new agent replies.
Q: [AI Feature] Is the agent reading all my messages?
A: The agent only reads conversations to reply to new partner messages in your program. It doesn't read other parts of your account.
Q: [AI Feature] What knowledge does the agent use?
A: PartnerStack's help documentation, the text-based resources in your Resources section, and the files you upload. Nothing else.
Q: [AI Feature] Is my data sent to third-party LLM services like Google Gemini? Is it used for model training?
A: Yes, conversations and your knowledge files are processed by Google's Gemini Enterprise API. Your data is not used for model training. Under our enterprise agreement, Google processes the data only to generate replies and does not retain it once the request is complete.
Q: [AI Feature] Which languages does the agent support?
A: The agent replies in the language your partner writes in.
Q: [AI Feature] What data centers are used to host the agent?
A: The PartnerStack platform, including the Support Agent, is hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in North American data centers.