AI assistant or AI agent?
An assistant helps, an agent does it itself.
An AI assistant works alongside a person: it summarises, looks things up and makes suggestions. An AI agent carries out a task itself: having a conversation, scheduling an appointment or transferring a customer.
Both have their place. The difference is who makes the decision, and therefore what you need to arrange up front.
Assistant and agent side by side.
Works for your employee
For example Microsoft 365 Copilot and the AI features in Zoom: summarising meetings, drafting emails and finding information. The employee decides.
More about AI in Teams and Zoom →Works on its own
For example Teams Phone Agent as an AI receptionist, or voicebots and chatbots in the contact center. The agent handles the conversation and hands over to a person when needed.
More about contact centers →Four places where an agent does the work.
Answering the phone
Answering questions, transferring calls and taking messages, also outside office hours. For example with Teams Phone Agent.
More about Teams Phone →Handling repeat questions
Opening hours, order status or a password reset: the agent handles it and passes the difficult work to an employee.
More about contact centers →Scheduling and rescheduling
An agent books an appointment in your calendar or moves it, and confirms by email or SMS.
More about integrations →Following up and recording
After the call, an agent creates a ticket, updates the CRM and sends a summary.
More about contact center and AI →Five things to arrange before an agent goes live.
- What may the agent do?Define which questions and actions the agent handles itself.
- When does a person take over?With emotion, exceptions or when the customer asks for it.
- Say it’s AIMandatory since August 2026 under the AI Act.
- Which information does it use?An agent is only as good as the knowledge and systems it can access.
- Measure the resultWas the customer really helped? Not just: how many calls were deflected.
Soon your customer’s AI may be calling.
Large tech companies are working on standards that let a consumer’s personal AI assistant contact a business on their behalf: moving an appointment, filing a complaint, cancelling a subscription.
That calls for new agreements in your customer contact. How do you recognise such an assistant, and what may it arrange?
We help you choose where AI fits.
We look at which tasks an assistant or agent can take over for you, what that requires and how to set it up safely. We also guide you through the roll-out and management.