Nextiva

During a conversation an AI Employee can create leads and open support tickets in HubSpot, Salesforce or Zoho, update contacts in HubSpot and Zoho (the Salesforce functions stop at cases and leads), and check availability, book, reschedule or cancel appointments in Google Calendar and Outlook, which run through a Workato integration, as well as in Calendly, Square and GoHighLevel. Administrators choose which functions each skill may call, and when a CRM connection fails the lead data is cached for a later retry. Standalone XBert does not turn conversations into native tickets.

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A Default Receptionist skill runs every conversation and routes intent among the other skills, support, lead generation and scheduling, carrying context from one to the next, so an appointment request flows through an availability check, a booking and a confirmation text. The runtime caps repeated function attempts and escalates when a skill keeps failing. Guided training turns answers about the business into each skill's instructions and conditions, and skills can be added or removed without rebuilding the AI Employee; an Advanced Editor for direct changes is still labeled beta.

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Knowledge bases are kept as collections searched by Document Search or Structured Data retrieval, filled from uploaded files or imported website content, and attached to the AI Employees and skills that should use them, with a view of where each collection is in use. Setup can also start from the business's Google Business Profile, from which XBert learns services, policies and FAQs. Imported web pages do not resync on their own, so a changed site has to be imported again.

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When a customer needs a person, standalone XBert transfers the call to a chosen external number or alerts staff by email or text with a conversation summary, and skill instructions set when that happens, such as after an unsupported request or repeated failures. The standalone product has no internal team transfer or supervisor view, and every user is an administrator. Bookings, CRM updates and follow up messages go through without anyone approving them first.

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Single sign on is available for XBert, and the wider NEXT administration adds identity provider setup and directory sync. The platform behind XBert is SOC 2 Type II audited, ISO 27001 certified and PCI DSS compliant, its data centers meet ISO 27001 with independent verification, and healthcare use becomes HIPAA eligible once a BAA is signed. Permissions inside standalone XBert are flat: every user is an administrator, with no separate agent or supervisor roles.

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An AI Employee Engagement dashboard and an AI Employee Report track conversations handled, their length, the share answered without a transfer, transfers to an external number and escalations by notification, and reports can be filtered by time or channel, downloaded and scheduled. Each conversation in the inbox keeps its transcript, recording and summary. Which function a skill called, with what inputs and result, does not appear anywhere, and standalone XBert has no live supervisor monitoring.

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Context for a conversation comes from the customer's identity and whatever CRM lookups return, such as earlier tickets or contact details, and it carries between skills while the conversation lasts. Transcripts, summaries and recordings stay in the shared inbox for staff. The AI Employee keeps no store of its own for facts learned across conversations, with a set scope, retention or edit controls, so a returning customer is recognized through the CRM record and the conversation history on their contact.

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XBert is a hosted Nextiva service, sold on its own or inside NEXT, with numbers, SMS and web chat configured in Nextiva's cloud and nothing installed in the customer's environment. Eight points of presence and carrier grade data centers with 99.999% uptime keep the network redundant, but none of those locations is a storage region a customer can choose, and there is no private cloud, customer tenant or on premises edition of the AI Employee.

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Setup starts from a prebuilt Receptionist, Sales or Support role, and a skill picker adds packaged skills for appointments in Google Calendar, Outlook, Calendly, Square or GoHighLevel, Shopify support, and Zoho, HubSpot or Salesforce customer workflows, grouped by category such as CRM and sales, ecommerce and field service. Guided training asks business questions and adapts the chosen skill's prompts and conditions. Some packages are lighter than others: the in person service scheduling option sends a booking link, while connected appointment skills book directly.

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Inbound calls, SMS and website chats start an AI Employee conversation automatically, and channel settings decide whether it answers first, steps in as a fallback or covers set hours. Standalone XBert keeps every channel for a customer in one General Inbox thread, has no email or social channels and cannot place outbound calls, so follow up runs through a callback request or a text from the inbox number. An AI call ends automatically after 45 minutes.

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Personalization covers the AI Employee's name, voice, greeting, instructions, skills and language: English, Spanish, French and German are on by default, and Ukrainian, Mandarin and Indian languages and accents are switched on through account support. None of those settings selects the language model, and XBert names neither the model nor its provider, so customers can neither pick one nor bring their own key or endpoint.

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Nextiva's developer platform publishes a TypeScript WorkitemService SDK whose methods fetch work items and control calls, hold, hang up, mute and warm transfer, with notifications as their state changes, so customer software can act on the platform directly. Standalone XBert settings have no REST API page, and no public API creates or edits AI Employees themselves, so building and changing agents stays in the admin interface while the SDK works on the conversations they hand off.

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Before launch, administrators preview the AI Employee in chat and work through a testing checklist covering common questions, each skill, requests it cannot handle and handoff to a person, then revise training and instructions. After launch the engagement dashboard and report show how sessions and skills performed. Simulated customer runs, scored results and a check that holds back a weaker version from going live are not part of the product.

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Business actions run through connected CRM, calendar, commerce and messaging functions, the website widget is where customers talk to the agent, and website imports feed the knowledge base ahead of time. When a system has no supported connection, the AI Employee has no way to work its screens instead, so the task goes to a person through a transfer or a notification, and staff reach the product itself through its web application.

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