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Every OpenCX agent is the same five pieces wired together. Once you understand the shape, every channel, feature, and integration fits the same mental model.

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The flow

  1. A message arrives on one of your channels — widget, phone, WhatsApp, email, or SMS.
  2. Autopilot decides whether the AI replies or the message goes straight to your team.
  3. If the AI replies, it reads from your Knowledge, optionally calls Actions (your APIs), and sends a reply back on the same channel.
  4. Anything the AI cannot confidently handle (low confidence, prohibited topic, frustrated user) hands off to a human.

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The five pieces

Each channel (widget, phone, email, SMS, WhatsApp) captures messages from your customers and normalizes them into sessions. A session is the OpenCX-wide unit of a single conversation regardless of channel. See Build Agents.
The AI answers from two sources: Help Center content (articles you write) and Knowledge Sources (connected systems like Zendesk, Notion, Google Drive, your website). It also uses Training Scenarios you write by hand for exact answers. See Agent Knowledge.
Autopilot is the on/off switch per channel. When on, the AI responds automatically. When off, every message routes to your team’s inbox. You can also gate autopilot by topic — reply to billing questions, hand off login issues. See Autopilot topics.
Actions let the AI call your APIs at conversation time — look up an order, cancel a subscription, update a field. You define them with an OpenAPI-style spec and the AI picks the right one based on the customer’s intent. See AI Actions.
When the AI hits its limits, the session hands off to a human. OpenCX syncs the full conversation to your helpdesk (Zendesk, Hubspot, Intercom, etc.) so your team sees the context. See Handoff.

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Why this shape

Most customer support tools either automate everything (and answer the easy questions but fail on the hard ones) or route everything to humans (and burn payroll on FAQs). OpenCX separates the decision from the answer. Autopilot decides, Knowledge + Actions answer, Handoff catches the rest. You tune any piece without rebuilding the others — swap the helpdesk without retraining, add a channel without redoing autopilot rules.

Core Concepts

The vocabulary: session, ticket, autopilot, handoff, action, insight.

Quickstart

Skip the theory — stand up your first agent in 10 minutes.

Build Agents

Pick a channel and go live.

AI Safety

What the AI won’t do — PII redaction, prohibited topics, inspect mode.