Software that reads input, decides what's needed, acts on it within its permissions using business information and rules, and escalates what it shouldn't handle.
The technical term for what sits behind the “AI employee” idea. An intelligent agent doesn't just return an answer — it takes a sensible next step: ask for the missing detail, check availability, book, log, hand over.
The “intelligent” part matters: it understands free-text messages rather than matching keywords. The “agent” part matters: it acts, within limits you set.
For a small business, the practical intelligent agent is usually the one on WhatsApp that answers customers from the business's own information.
In South Africa, that WhatsApp agent handles mixed-language enquiries, keeps working through load shedding because it lives in the cloud, and applies POPIA-aware rules to the customer details it captures.