Self-setup guide · No code required
Hal AI Playbook
A step-by-step guide to setting up your Hal AI account yourself. No developer needed. Set aside two to three hours, spread across a few days — most of it is answering questions and uploading things you already have.
Here's the Shape of It
Everything in Hal is built in four parts. Each one builds on the last, so the order matters. Most small business owners complete the full setup in two to three hours — and you can spread it across a few days.
- Set the Foundations1
Tell Hal about your business, what you know, what you sell, and where it talks to customers.
- Turn On the Jobs2
Enable Sales, E-commerce, Support, or any mix. Each has a short setup and a few tuning options.
- Add the Extras3
Follow-ups and workflows — optional, and best added once the basics are working.
- Test, Then Go Live4
Try Hal yourself, replay your real past chats, then switch it on. Nothing goes live on a guess.
Part 1 · Set the Foundations
Do these first. Everything else builds on them. You'll see small "gap" markers next to anything you skip — you can come back and fill them in anytime, or leave them if they don't apply to you.
- Business Profile~5 minutes
Your short "who you are" page. Almost everything else reads from it.
- What Hal Knows20–40 minutes
Your FAQs, policies, shipping rules, warranty terms — anything you'd normally send a customer.
- What Hal Sells30–60 minutes
Add your products or services with the details that matter. Skip if you don't sell anything.
- Your Channels20–40 minutes
Connect where Hal talks to customers. Start with WhatsApp — it's the main channel.
- Team & Handovers15–30 minutes
Add the people who'll take over from Hal, and set the rules for when that happens.
Business Profile
Hal Settings → Business Profile · ~5 minutes
- Whether you sell products, services, or both
- Your industry (pick from the list)
- A one-line description of what you offer
- Your locations and the area you serve
- Business hours and customer languages
- Your website
What Hal Knows
Knowledge · 20–40 minutes
Upload your FAQs, policies, shipping and return rules, warranty terms, how-to guides — anything you'd normally send a customer. Hal answers only from what your documents actually say. If your documents don't mention something, Hal hands the question to a human. It will not make up a plausible-sounding answer. This is on purpose — a confident wrong answer costs you more than a handover.
- Coverage beats volume. Ten pages that answer real questions beat a 90-page brochure. Start with what customers actually ask.
- Write answers, not headings. A "Returns" heading with marketing copy won't help Hal. "Unused items can be returned within 14 days" will.
- Watch your handover list. Every unanswered question is logged and sorted by frequency. Check it weekly and fill the top gaps.
What Hal Sells
Products & Services · 30–60 minutes
Add your products or services with the details that matter — size, material, price, duration, whatever tells one apart from another. Upload a spreadsheet, a price list, or add them by hand.
One setting is worth two minutes: mark which details qualify and which differentiate.
- Qualifying detail — decides what's even relevant: "eggless, or a regular cake?"
- Differentiating detail — a preference within the relevant set: "chocolate, vanilla, or red velvet?"
Hal asks qualifying questions first, because that's how people actually shop. Your industry starter kit sets sensible defaults; correcting them takes a moment and improves every sales chat.
Your Channels
Channels · 20–40 minutes
Connect where Hal talks to customers. Start with WhatsApp — it's the main channel, and it recognises returning customers automatically, so a repeat customer isn't asked who they are.
Two WhatsApp rules that shape everything:
- More than 24 hours after a customer's last message, you can't send free text — only a pre-approved template. That's WhatsApp's rule.
- Templates need approval, and it takes time. Submit your common ones on day one — order confirmation, appointment reminder, "still interested?" — so they're ready when you need them.
Your Team & When Hal Hands Over
Escalation · 15–30 minutesAdd the people who'll take over from Hal, and create the inboxes conversations get routed to — a sales inbox, a support inbox, a specific person. Then set your handover rules: bring in a human when an order is above a certain value, when a customer sounds frustrated, after a few failed attempts, or after hours.
Set Your Rules
Each rule needs an inbox to route to and, ideally, a line for Hal to say as it hands over: "Let me get Priya on this — one moment." Use your own currency and real numbers for thresholds. Vague ones ("big orders") won't save — Hal will ask you for the number.
Always-Applied Handovers
Hal always hands over in these cases, no matter your settings — and you'll see them listed, read-only, on the same page so you don't waste time writing rules that already exist:
- It can't confirm who it's talking to for a sensitive action
- It doesn't know the answer
- Someone seems to be attacking or manipulating it
- A lead is borderline rather than clearly not a fit
Part 2 · Turn On the Jobs
Enable Sales, E-commerce, Support, or any mix. Each has a short setup and a few tuning options.
Hal handles incoming leads — understands what someone needs, works out whether they're a good fit, captures the details your team needs, and routes them the right way. You describe your sales job by answering three plain questions. Hal turns your answers into the routing behind the scenes — you never touch settings directly.
- Good Lead?
- Must-Know Info
- Route Outcome
Then set your destinations — the handful of places a sales conversation can end. Typically: talk to our team, shop directly, and not ready yet. Keep them few and clearly different.
Tune It
- Adjust what counts as a good fit. "An order of 20 servings or more is worth a call" — change it in seconds.
- Change what Hal learns. Add a question if your team keeps needing something Hal didn't capture.
- Set how Hal sounds. Brief it like a new hire: "warm and efficient, never pushy." Note that tone never changes routing — if you want different decisions, change the fit and the destinations, not the personality.
- Escalate the big ones. Add a rule to bring in a person when a deal is above a value you care about.
Keep in Mind
- Three to five destinations, plus the built-in two. Seven is the hard limit. If you can't tell two of them apart in one sentence, merge them.
- Borderline always goes to a human. You can't route a marginal lead to a brush-off, by design.
- Decide where small buyers go. Send them straight to checkout, or capture them for later — your choice.
Runs the buying conversation end to end — helps customers find the right product, answers questions, sends a payment link, and confirms the order, all in one chat.
Setup
- Make sure your products are in (Part 1)
- Connect payments so Hal can send a link and confirm receipt
- Pick your buying destinations — "check out now" and "help me choose"
- Turn on cart recovery (optional)
Hal never places an order off a vague mention. It only checks someone out when they've clearly said yes — "I'll take it," "go ahead." Everything up to that point is easy to undo; the actual purchase rests on a real yes.
Payment confirmations aren't marketing. If a customer pays at 11pm, the receipt goes at 11pm — quiet hours don't hold it back, because a late receipt is a broken promise.
Answers customer questions from your knowledge, looks up orders, handles common requests, and brings in a person when it should. This is the job every account starts with.
Setup
- Check your knowledge covers your real FAQs
- Confirm your handover rules and inboxes are set
- Add a post-resolution check-in (optional)
Tune It
- Fill knowledge gaps from the handover list. The list of questions Hal couldn't answer, sorted by frequency, is your writing to-do list. Answer the top one, and Hal starts answering it too.
- Set the tone. Calm, apologetic where appropriate, efficient.
- Tune when Hal steps back. If customers are reaching a person too early, ease the frustration or failed-attempt rules; if too late, tighten them.
Hal handing a question to a human is not a failure — a confident wrong answer is. When you see a handover for something Hal should know, that's a gap in your knowledge base to fill, not a setting to force.
Part 3 · Reaching Out & Automating
Optional, and best added once the basics are working.
Follow-ups
Reaching out to customers first
There's one control — "Follow up after ___" — and what you type decides what kind of message it is. Hal names it back to you as you set it:
reaching back out about an abandoned cart or a quiet lead.
Start follow-ups in your review queue. Each one lands in your team's inbox with the reason it fired, a draft, and one tap to send, edit, or skip. Watch a week of it, then let it send on its own once you're happy.
Workflows
Connect Hal into an automated flow
Workflows let you build a sequence of steps — trigger on something (a form is submitted, a cart event happens), do a few things, and hand off to Hal when a real conversation is needed. You drag steps together in the builder; no code.
The step that matters most is "let Hal take over." When a flow reaches it, Hal picks up the conversation already knowing everything the flow gathered — so its first line can be "Since you're ordering cakes for a party of 30 on the 14th…" with no "please tell us your requirement again."
When Hal is done, it hands a clear result back to the flow (booked, bought, escalated, resolved, gave up) so the next steps can branch on what happened.
Part 4 · Test, Then Go Live
Don't skip this. It's the part that makes going live safe.
1 · Practice Conversations
Talk to Hal yourself, as if you were a customer. Every tool runs in a safe sandbox — a booking says "you're booked for Thursday 11am" and reads exactly as it will for real, but nothing actually gets booked.
2 · Force the Situations You Can't Act Out
There are buttons for it: pretend the customer is frustrated · pretend this order is ₹80,000 · pretend it's 11pm · pretend this is the third failed attempt. Watch each handover rule you wrote actually fire before you publish it. A rule you've never seen fire is a rule you don't really have.
Pick a situation to see which rule fires.
3 · Replay Your Real Past Chats
Use your actual past conversations as test cases. If Hal handles them well in the playground, you're ready. If it doesn't, you've caught the gap before a customer did.
Replay your real past chats
- "where's my order?"handled
- "do you do eggless?"handled
- "what's your GST number?"gap — add to knowledge
Illustrative. In the playground these are your own conversations.
4 · Switch It On
Once you've tested the key paths and seen your rules fire, enable Hal on your live channels. Start with one channel if you like — you can add the rest once you're comfortable.
Your checklist
Kept in this browser, so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off.
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