A day with an agentic employee

"Agentic employee" is a phrase that gets stretched until it means nothing. Here it means something specific: an agent with a job, a face, your knowledge and a place to stand, doing work a person would otherwise do, on its own, all day. This post follows one through a day. It keeps to what an agent on NetShow can do today, and it names the edges honestly as it reaches them.

Before anyone arrives

An agentic employee starts the day already briefed. Its instructions say who it is and what it is for: greet people, answer questions about the business, point them to the right next step, and hand anything unusual to a person. Its knowledge is the material you gave it: your hours, your services, your policies, the questions you answer every week. The free plan includes a core knowledge upload, so this part costs nothing to set up.

It also has a face. Before the first visitor of the day, the face is already drawn and waiting. It is not a video waiting for a play button. It is a small program that the visitor's own browser will draw the moment the page opens.

The first visitor

At nine in the morning someone lands on the page. They did not come to talk to anyone. They came to find out whether you do what they need.

A text box in the corner would wait for them. An Alive avatar does not wait. It greets them. On our own front door, Mrs. NetShow says "Hi, I'm Mrs. NetShow. Tell me what you need done," and the dock beside it greets them too, with a button that says "Tap to talk". The visitor did not have to find the conversation. The conversation found them.

This is the most important thing an agentic employee does all day, and it happens in the first second. Everything else depends on someone deciding to answer.

Mid-morning: questions it has been asked before

Most of what the agent hears by eleven is familiar. What are your hours. Do you cover my area. How long does it take. What does it cost. These are the questions a person at a front desk answers twenty times a day, and they are exactly what the knowledge you gave it is for.

The agent answers from your material, in your voice, as many times as it is asked, with the same patience at the twentieth as at the first. When it does not know, a well-instructed agent says so and offers the next step instead of guessing. That instruction is yours to write, and it is the single most valuable line in the whole job description.

Midday: the next step

An answer is not the end of a conversation; the next step is. A good agentic employee knows what the next step is for each kind of visitor. For someone just curious, it might be a page to read. For someone ready to start, it might be the sign-up. For someone with a problem only a person can solve, it is a handoff.

On our own front door you can see this directly. Mrs. NetShow offers three ways to start, "for me", "for a business" and "just curious", because the right next step is different for each. The agent's job is to find out which kind of visitor it has, and then to take them one step closer to what they came for.

Afternoon: the visitor who comes back

At three o'clock, someone returns. They spoke to the agent last week.

This is where memory earns its place. On our front door, a visitor can keep a conversation with a free account, and the agent keeps what it has learned so far. The second conversation does not start from zero. It is also the visitor's choice: there is a link on the same page that says "Ask me to forget you", and it means exactly that. An employee people trust is one that remembers what it should and forgets when asked.

Evening: when you have gone home

The hour an agentic employee pays for itself is the hour nobody else is working. Our post The 7pm Call is about exactly that moment: the phone rings in the truck, you are on a job, and the customer is still yours in the morning because something answered.

On the web, the same thing happens without the phone. At eight in the evening a visitor lands on your site, and the same face that greeted people at nine in the morning greets them now, with the same knowledge and the same next steps. It does not get tired, and it does not cost more after hours. The face runs in the visitor's browser, so an hour on screen costs what a minute costs.

The edges, honestly

An agentic employee on NetShow today is strong at greeting, answering, remembering and guiding. It has limits worth knowing before you hire one.

• Volume. The free plan covers one agent and 50 conversations a month. The larger plans are listed on the plans page; at the time of writing they are marked "Coming soon", with a list to join if you want to hear the day they open.
• Phones. Voice minutes are listed on the larger plans, so an employee that answers the phone waits on those.
• Live voice for strangers. On our Meet page the hosts say it plainly: their faces move at no cost to you, and live voice is not open to visitors yet. A free account opens the live stage where you can talk with them.
• Judgement. The agent answers from what you gave it. It does not know what you did not tell it, and its instructions should say when to hand over to you.

None of these is hidden. They are the difference between an agent that does a day's work and one that is promised to.

What you would see at the end of the day

At the end of the day an owner wants two things: to know what happened, and to know it was handled well. The best signal is the questions the agent could not answer, because each one is the next line to add to its knowledge. That loop, a day of work and then a better brief for tomorrow, is what makes it an employee rather than a widget.

FAQ

What makes an agent an "agentic employee" rather than a help widget?

A job, a face, your knowledge and a place to stand. It greets people first instead of waiting, answers from your material, takes each visitor to the right next step, remembers returning visitors who chose to be remembered, and hands over to you when it should.

Does it keep working after business hours?

Yes. The same agent, with the same face and knowledge, greets visitors at any hour. The face is drawn in each visitor's browser, so there is no per-minute cost to keeping it on screen.

Can a visitor ask the agent to forget them?

Yes. On our front door there is a link that says "Ask me to forget you". Keeping a conversation is a choice the visitor makes with a free account; forgetting is a choice they can make as well.

What does the free plan cover?

One agent and 50 conversations a month, with a core knowledge upload and a web deployment, and no credit card. The plans page lists everything each plan includes.