Lately, we’ve been witnessing a real boom in AI assistants designed for client communication.
Companies are eager to use these technologies for:

• Communicating with customers via Direct messages
• Searching through the company’s knowledge base
• Searching product databases
• Providing answers in a specific tone, imitating a real employee

We also receive numerous requests from businesses seeking to implement such a solution.
And although we have our own in-house product (you can add the link here), we’ve identified two key issues currently present in the market:

1. A lack of understanding among clients of how the system should work as a whole
2. A large number of offers that, in our opinion, are incomplete and disconnected from the company’s real operational context

The goal of this article is to help you avoid such fragmented solutions and to explain the advantages of a comprehensive, integrated approach.

We’re fully aware that information about ChatGPT and AI agents becomes outdated at lightning speed.
However, we continuously update our website content and hope that the core principles described below will remain relevant for a long time.

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What Businesses Really Want — and Where Most AI Solutions Fall Short

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When a business owner connects an AI Assistant to their Instagram Direct, their goals are quite clear:

• Reduce the workload on managers
• Free managers from handling simple, repetitive responses
• Save operational costs

However, many of the AI assistant solutions on the market — even though they claim to provide automation — fail to answer one crucial question:
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What happens next?

Imagine a typical situation: you have a manager working in Instagram Direct.

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You’ve connected an AI assistant. Now how do you:

• See where the manager is communicating and where the assistant is?
• Stop the assistant when necessary?
• Moderate its responses?
• Transfer a conversation to a human?
• Automatically change the conversation status after human intervention?

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Or consider an example of product database search.
Where should the assistant get that database from?
Where should it send orders — a Google Sheet?

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Or, in the case of an HR agency, when the assistant processes resumes — why should it handle every one if some candidates are unsuitable from the start?
How can an HR specialist get a report showing which candidates were suitable and which weren’t? How can they step into the process?

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The “Service Zoo” Problem

If you decide to implement an AI assistant, it’s crucial not to add yet another isolated tool to your workflow.
Otherwise, you end up with what we call a “service zoo”, where:

1. The new resources used to manage the assistant are not connected to your operational environment (CRM, Help Desk, etc.).
2. It becomes inconvenient to work — you get some data in one place, other data somewhere else.

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The goal of this article is to help you avoid such fragmented solutions.

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An Integrated Approach: How It Works in Planfix

Unlike the “service zoo” model, our solution ensures that the AI Assistant becomes a seamless part of your business operations.
Here’s how it works in Planfix:

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1. Seamless Integration and Full Control

The Planfix AI Assistant integrates directly into your system.

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You get a single platform that allows you to:

• View and manage conversations by status
• Moderate the assistant’s responses and intervene when needed
• Access all files, histories, and changes in one place

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You’re not getting just a detached module — you’re getting functionality that’s part of a comprehensive business operating system.

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2. Direct Connection and Proactivity

Our system connects Planfix and OpenAI directly, without intermediaries.

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This provides:

• A convenient interface for monitoring and moderating the assistant’s work or delegating tasks
• Intelligent triggers — without them, a standard AI assistant replies once and “freezes.”
  In Planfix, the assistant can proactively follow up when a client doesn’t respond or when a specific date/event occurs — keeping the conversation alive.
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3. A Unified Platform for Growth

Having a unified platform allows you to easily add new channels and scenarios —
Instagram, Telegram, Email, Google Forms, WhatsApp — all while maintaining full business context.

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This means you can:

• See exactly how your AI assistant operates inside Planfix
• Accept and manage orders in one place
• Expand your functionality, reporting, and analytics
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Everything is centralized, accessible, and permission-controlled.
The AI Assistant should not act as a separate app — it should work as a logical extension of your business processes.

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📎 Learn more about the product: AI Assistant for Instagram Direct www.processfather.com/en/ai-assistant-for-instagram-direct

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