Introduction
What is Iterochat
Iterochat is an AI-first customer support chat you embed on your website. When a visitor opens the chat, the AI answers their questions directly from your knowledge base (the documents you've given it).
That means most conversations are handled instantly, around the clock, without a person on the other end.
When the AI can't help, it hands the conversation to your human team instead of guessing. This covers cases like:
- A refund request
- A complaint
- An account problem
- Anything it isn't confident about
The AI only answers from what you've told it, so it doesn't invent facts, and it knows when to step aside.
How it works
Every conversation follows the same path:
- A customer opens the widget on your site and sends a message.
- The AI reads your knowledge base and replies in the customer's own language. While the AI is handling the conversation, no agent needs to be involved.
- If the AI hits something it shouldn't answer on its own, it escalates. This includes a sensitive request like a refund or complaint, an account issue, or a question it isn't confident about. On escalation, it writes a short handoff summary (a 2 to 4 sentence recap of what the customer needs) and moves the conversation into your queue.
- One of your agents claims the conversation, reads the handoff summary, and takes over the live chat. When the issue is resolved, the agent marks it done.
The AI stops responding the moment a conversation is escalated. From that point on, the customer is talking to your human agent, and the AI won't speak over them.
Core concepts
A few terms show up throughout these docs:
- Organization: your workspace in Iterochat. It holds your widget, your knowledge base, your team, and your conversations. A person can belong to more than one organization.
- Widget: the embeddable chat that lives on your website. It connects to your organization through a widget key.
- Knowledge base: the set of documents the AI is allowed to answer from. Answers are grounded in these documents.
- Roles: what each team member can do, set per organization.
- Owner: full access. Whoever creates the organization becomes its owner.
- Admin: manages the knowledge base and the team (members and invites), but only over agent-level people and invites, not other admins or owners.
- Agent: works conversations only, with no access to the knowledge base or team settings.
- Escalation: the handoff from AI to a human agent, with a written summary attached.
- AI-only mode: an organization setting for teams that want the AI to handle conversations without a human fallback. Configure it in Settings (see AI configuration).
What you'll set up
To get from zero to a working support chat, you'll do three things:
- Get the widget live on your site: sign in, copy your embed snippet, and paste it into your pages.
- Build your knowledge base: give the AI the documents it answers from.
- Configure the AI: shape its tone, suggested questions, and when it hands off to your team.
Start with the quickstart to see the widget on your site, then come back to build out your knowledge base. You can refine the AI's behavior at any time.