The Email Agent is Joby AI working on your email channel. It replies to customers in your tone, answers common questions, collects missing details, and books appointments. Emails get longer, more polished replies than SMS, so the Email Agent is configured a little differently. This walkthrough covers every setting.
1. Open Joby AI Hub
You'll find Joby AI Hub under Settings. This is the central place for AI on every channel — SMS, email, and voice each have their own tab, so you can configure them separately.
2. Open the Email Agent tab
The Email Agent tab is where you set up AI replies for your email channel. The settings here are independent from SMS and voice, so the email agent can have a different personality and goal if you want.
3. Set the agent's personality
The Personality field shapes how the agent writes. For email, keep it professional, clear, and easy to scan — customers expect emails to be a bit more formal than texts. Example: "Professional, clear, helpful, and calm. Use complete sentences and keep the message easy to scan."
4. Set the agent's goal
The Goal is what the agent should accomplish in every email thread. A good starting point: "Answer customer emails, explain next steps, collect missing details, and help the team keep communication organized." Write it the way you'd brief a real employee.
5. Add the agent's knowledge in Additional Information
This is the agent's operating manual. Put your appointment rules, service area, pricing, warranty terms, and anything else the agent needs to answer accurately. The same knowledge applies across channels, so write it once and it works for SMS, email, and voice.
6. Choose who Joby can reply to
Check the contact types this agent can email: Clients, Jobs, Technicians, and Unknown numbers (the label is shared across channels — for email, it means email addresses not matched to a CRM record). Email is generally lower-risk than SMS, so most businesses enable all four once they've tested the agent for a few days.
7. Set the timing rules
Timing controls how often and how fast the agent replies. Reply window: when the agent is allowed to respond. Sleep after human reply: how long to back off once a teammate jumps in. Max AI replies: cap per conversation (Unlimited works for email since threads can run longer). Wait before reply: a 0–60 second delay so replies feel natural and your team has a chance to take over first.
8. Pick the agent's allowed actions
Choose what the agent can actually do, not just talk about. Options include Read customer details, Read appointments (when asked), Book appointments, Send bell notifications to your team inside Joby, and Send SMS (let the email agent fire a text when needed). Use the Action instructions box for rules like "If the customer asks for a manager, send a bell notification to the owner."
9. Turn on Use Email Agent
Toggle Use Email Agent on and the agent starts replying to incoming emails. You can flip this off any time without losing your configuration — useful if you want to pause AI replies during a launch or while training the team.
