Captain AI

Leverage AstraChat's AI-powered assistant to work smarter, respond faster, and deliver consistent customer support.

Introduction to Captain

Captain is AstraChat's AI-powered assistant that helps agents work more efficiently. It uses large language models to understand conversations and provide intelligent assistance throughout your daily workflow.

With Captain, your team gains access to a suite of AI capabilities designed to reduce response times and improve the quality of every customer interaction. Key features include:

Key capabilities

  • Suggested Replies -- Captain analyzes incoming messages and proposes relevant responses that agents can review and send with a single click.
  • Conversation Summaries -- Get a quick overview of long conversations so you can pick up where another agent left off without reading every message.
  • Reply Improvement -- Write a rough draft and let Captain refine it for tone, clarity, and professionalism.
  • FAQ-Based Responses -- Captain matches customer questions against your FAQ database and suggests accurate, pre-approved answers.
  • Document-Based Knowledge -- Upload product guides, policies, and other reference material so Captain can generate contextually accurate replies.

Note: Captain is an assistant, not a replacement. All suggestions are presented to agents for review before being sent to customers, ensuring human oversight at every step.

Setting Up Captain

Before your team can use Captain, an administrator needs to enable and configure it. Here is how to get started:

Setup steps

  1. Navigate to Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Click Integrations and select Captain (this may also appear under Application Settings depending on your AstraChat version).
  3. Toggle the Enable Captain switch to activate the AI assistant.
  4. Configure your AI provider and enter your API key. AstraChat supports multiple large language model providers -- choose the one that best fits your needs.
  5. Select which Captain features to enable for your account. You can activate all features or enable them individually.
  6. Click Save to apply your configuration.

Once enabled, Captain works across all inboxes in your account. Agents will see AI-powered suggestions and tools in the conversation interface immediately.

Tip: Start by enabling suggested replies and conversation summaries. These two features deliver the most immediate value with minimal setup.

Creating an AI Assistant

An AI assistant is a configured Captain profile that helps agents respond to customers. You can create multiple assistants tailored for different teams, inboxes, or use cases.

How to create an assistant

  1. Go to Settings → Captain.
  2. Click Create Assistant.
  3. Configure the options below.
  4. Click Save to create the assistant.

Configuration options

  • Name -- Give the assistant a descriptive name (e.g., "Support Assistant" or "Sales Helper").
  • Knowledge Base -- Select which documents and FAQs the assistant should reference when generating suggestions.
  • Tone -- Define the communication style. Choose from professional, friendly, concise, or create a custom tone description.
  • Behavior Instructions -- Provide specific instructions about how the assistant should handle certain topics or scenarios.

The assistant suggests replies based on conversation context, referencing your knowledge base and following the tone and behavior guidelines you have defined. You can create different assistants for different teams or inboxes, ensuring each one is optimized for its specific use case.

Response Guidelines & Guardrails

Response guidelines and Guardrails let you control how Captain communicates with your customers. They are configured on the assistant settings page and apply to both automatic replies and the copilot sidebar.

What are Response Guidelines?

Response guidelines tell Captain how it should write. They are rules about tone, style, and language that Captain must follow when drafting replies for customers.

Examples:

  • "Always use a formal tone and address the customer as 'you' (never slang)."
  • "Keep a professional, warm, and respectful tone."
  • "Replies should be concise -- 3 paragraphs maximum."
  • "Always close with: Kind regards, The [company name] Team."

What are Guardrails?

Guardrails tell Captain what topics it should NOT answer. They are boundaries that prevent the AI from going outside its area of expertise.

Examples:

  • "Do not give legal or financial advice."
  • "Do not discuss competitor products."
  • "Do not make promises about repair timelines."

How to configure them

  1. Go to Captain in the sidebar.
  2. Select your assistant (e.g., iGeniusBot).
  3. Click Settings (the gear icon).
  4. On the right panel you will see the Guardrails and Response guidelines cards. Click either one to add, edit, or remove rules.
  5. Write each rule as a clear, simple sentence.
  6. Click Save.

When to use each one

Response Guidelines

Define how Captain speaks: tone, regional language, sign-off format, response length.

Guardrails

Define what Captain should NOT talk about: forbidden topics, sensitive information, commitments it cannot make.

Tip: Write rules in a clear, direct way. "Use formal language, not slang" works better than a long explanation. You can add as many rules as you need.

Creating Documents

Documents form the foundation of Captain's knowledge base. By adding reference material, you give the AI the information it needs to generate accurate, helpful suggestions.

Captain supports a wide range of document content, including:

Supported content types

  • Product information -- Specifications, features, pricing details, and comparison guides.
  • Policies -- Return policies, service agreements, warranty information, and terms of service.
  • FAQs and guides -- How-to articles, troubleshooting steps, and onboarding documentation.
  • Internal procedures -- Escalation workflows, approval processes, and team-specific protocols.

How to add documents

  1. Go to Settings → Captain.
  2. Navigate to the Documents section.
  3. Click Add Document.
  4. Enter a title and paste or type the document content.
  5. Click Save.

When Captain generates suggested replies, it searches through your documents to find relevant information and uses it to craft contextually accurate responses.

Tip: Keep documents focused and well-organized. Several specific documents produce better results than one large, general-purpose document.

Creating FAQs

FAQs provide Captain with structured question-and-answer pairs. When a customer asks a question that matches an FAQ entry, Captain suggests the corresponding answer -- giving agents a fast, accurate response they can send immediately.

How to build your FAQ database

  1. Go to Settings → Captain.
  2. Navigate to the FAQs section.
  3. Click Add FAQ.
  4. Enter the question as a customer would ask it.
  5. Enter the answer you want agents to use when this question comes up.
  6. Click Save.

Tips for effective FAQs

  • Be specific -- More specific questions produce better matches. Instead of "How does billing work?", use "How do I upgrade my plan?" and "How do I cancel my subscription?" as separate entries.
  • Use natural language -- Write questions the way your customers actually ask them, not in formal or technical language.
  • Keep answers complete -- Include all the information an agent needs in the answer so they can send it with minimal editing.
  • Review regularly -- Update FAQs as your product, policies, or common questions change.

Suggested Replies

Suggested replies are one of Captain's most powerful features. As customers send messages, Captain analyzes the conversation context and generates relevant reply suggestions in real time.

How suggested replies work

  1. A customer sends a message in a conversation.
  2. Captain analyzes the message along with the conversation history.
  3. Relevant suggestions appear above the message composer in the conversation view.
  4. Click a suggestion to insert it into the composer.
  5. Review and edit the suggestion as needed before sending.

Suggestion sources

  • FAQs -- Direct matches from your FAQ database.
  • Documents -- Relevant information from your knowledge base.
  • Conversation context -- The full history of the current conversation, including customer details and previous messages.
  • Previous similar conversations -- Patterns from how your team has handled similar questions in the past.

Important: Always review suggested replies before sending. Captain provides a starting point, but agents should ensure the response is accurate, complete, and appropriate for the specific situation.

Conversation Summary

Long conversations can be difficult to follow, especially when an agent is taking over from a colleague or returning to a conversation after some time. Captain's conversation summary feature solves this by generating a concise overview of the entire conversation.

What a summary includes

  • Key points -- The main topics and issues discussed in the conversation.
  • Customer requests -- What the customer is asking for or needs help with.
  • Resolution status -- Whether the issue has been resolved, is pending, or requires further action.
  • Action items -- Any outstanding tasks or follow-ups that need attention.

How to generate a summary

  1. Open the conversation you want to summarize.
  2. Click the Summary button in the conversation toolbar, or find it in the right sidebar panel.
  3. Captain generates the summary within seconds.

When summaries are most useful

  • Taking over a conversation from another agent during a shift change.
  • Returning to a conversation that has been inactive for a while.
  • A manager needs a quick overview of a complex support case.
  • Preparing to escalate a conversation to a specialist team.

Reply Improvement

Not every agent writes the same way, and not every first draft is perfect. Captain's reply improvement feature helps maintain consistent communication quality across your entire team.

How to use reply improvement

  1. Write your reply in the message composer -- it does not need to be polished.
  2. Click the Improve button (or select the improvement option from the Captain menu).
  3. Choose an improvement style (see below).
  4. Captain rewrites your draft according to the selected style.
  5. Review the improved version and send it, or make further edits.

Improvement styles

More Professional

Formal, business-appropriate language suitable for corporate communications.

More Friendly

Warm, approachable tone ideal for casual customer interactions.

More Concise

Shorter, to-the-point version that removes unnecessary words and filler.

More Detailed

Expanded version with additional context, explanations, and helpful information.

Reply improvement helps teams maintain a consistent brand voice regardless of individual writing styles. It is particularly valuable for onboarding new agents who are still learning your company's communication standards.

Tip: Encourage agents to write quick, rough replies and then use Captain to polish them. This workflow is often faster than trying to write a perfect message from scratch.

AI-Powered Labels and Priority

Captain can automatically analyze conversation content and suggest appropriate labels and priority levels. This helps teams organize their workload and ensure urgent issues receive prompt attention.

How AI-powered labeling works

  • When a new conversation comes in, Captain reads the initial message and suggests relevant labels based on the topic and content.
  • Captain also evaluates the urgency of the message and suggests a priority level (e.g., low, medium, high, or urgent).
  • Agents can accept, modify, or dismiss the suggestions.

Benefits

  • Faster routing -- Conversations are automatically tagged, making it easier to assign them to the right team or agent.
  • Better organization -- Consistent labeling across all conversations improves reporting and analytics.
  • Hands-free categorization -- Combine AI suggestions with automation rules to create fully automated workflows. For example, Captain labels a conversation as "billing" and an automation rule routes it to the billing team automatically.
  • Priority management -- Urgent conversations are flagged immediately, so they do not get lost in a busy queue.

Configuration

  1. Go to Settings → Captain.
  2. Enable the Auto Labels and Auto Priority options.
  3. Optionally, define a set of preferred labels that Captain should use for categorization.
  4. Set up automation rules (under Settings → Automation) to act on the labels and priorities that Captain assigns.

Tip: Start with a small set of well-defined labels. Captain produces more consistent results when working with a focused taxonomy rather than an overly broad one.