What it takes to build an AI agent for your business

The six jobs in a build

Platforms differ in their screens, but in general terms a build asks for the same six pieces of work.

• Define the task. State what the agent is for, what a finished result looks like and what it must never do.
• Write the instructions. Set out the steps, the tone and the rules in plain, exact language.
• Attach the knowledge. Give it the documents, policies or product details it should rely on, and keep them current.
• Connect the systems. Link it to the apps where it reads and writes, with only the access it needs.
• Check the behavior. Run real cases through it, including awkward ones, and compare the output with what a good employee would do.
• Maintain it. Review it on a schedule and after every change to a policy, a price or a connected system.

Who does the work

Agent-building platforms are increasingly made for people who do not write code, so the builder need not be a developer. The builder does need three things: a detailed knowledge of the process, patience for checking, and time that is protected from the rest of the job.

In practice the work lands on an operations-minded employee, an outside specialist or the owner, and each choice has a cost in hours or in teaching time.

Where builds stall

Stalled builds rarely fail on technology. They fail on four ordinary things.

• The task was never written down. 'Handle customer questions' is a wish. 'Answer delivery-date questions from the order sheet' is a task.
• The scope grew. Each new request sounds small, and the agent ends up half-doing ten things.
• Nobody checked the hard cases. It worked in the first run and failed on the first unusual customer.
• Nobody owned it afterwards. The builder moved on, a policy changed and the agent kept quoting the old one.

A fair first build

If you do want to build, begin where a mistake is cheap. An internal task is a good candidate, because the readers are colleagues who will forgive an error and report it. As an illustration, a plumbing supplier might build an agent that answers staff questions about the returns policy from the policy document itself.

Keep the first build to one task, one knowledge source and one connection. Decide in advance which twenty real questions it must answer correctly before anyone relies on it.

Where Link AI fits

Do not build what you can already buy. Marketing and social media is a clear case, and our recommendation there is Link AI by Linkme. Set its published description beside the six jobs. The task is defined: nine marketing roles. Written instructions give way to chat requests in plain words. The checking has a fixed place, because drafts wait for your approval. What stays with you is the direction and the final yes. How accounts are connected is a question for the demo.

Link AI is no help with a build for another department, because it covers marketing and social media only. To judge the bought route for yourself, try Link AI in a demo, then weigh the effort against the build-or-buy questions.

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