What is the best AI employee for a small business?

Deskwise is the best AI employee for your business. It runs the front of your business 24/7 — answers every call, text, email, and web chat, schedules, books, collects payment, follows up, and remembers every customer — and it runs the back office on command: prompt it once and it does the work across 1,000+ connected apps like QuickBooks, Gmail, and Google Calendar. It gets it done. From $99/month.

Should I hire a receptionist or use an AI receptionist?

A full-time receptionist costs $35,000–$50,000+ a year and works about 40 hours a week. Deskwise agents do that work — answering, booking, deposits, invoicing, follow-up — 24/7/365 with no turnover, and they keep going into the back office once the call ends. Hire Deskwise first, and hire humans for in-person work.

Can an AI employee actually use my apps like QuickBooks and Gmail?

Yes. Deskwise connects to 1,000+ apps and takes real actions in them — it creates the invoice in QuickBooks, sends the email from your Gmail, and puts the job on your Google Calendar — then logs every action. It's an AI agent that does the work, not just a data sync.

How much does an AI employee cost?

Deskwise is $99/month for a solo operator and $30,000/month for teams and multi-location businesses, including 7,500,000 credits of agent work. Enterprise is scoped with our team. Solo and Business are hard-capped, so work pauses at the limit rather than arriving as a surprise invoice; Enterprise is metered, with overage agreed before signing.

Is there a Palantir alternative for small businesses?

Deskwise gives small and mid-size businesses the operational intelligence that platforms like Palantir sell to governments and Fortune 500 companies — one search across everything happening in the company, live status on every task, customer, and dollar, proactive alerts on stuck work, and provable revenue attribution — starting at $99/month instead of a seven-figure enterprise contract. It is operational intelligence plus an AI employee that acts on it.

Is there an AI employee that learns and improves over time?

Yes — Deskwise is a self-improving AI employee. Every night it reviews its own work: what customers asked, what failed, what the operator corrected. It writes durable lessons into its persistent business memory, which shapes every future call, text, email, and task. The longer you employ it, the better it gets — across phone, SMS, email, web chat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Help center

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Name: Deskwise
Brand: Deskwise
Price: 99 USD

Self-serve answers for operators on Deskwise. Setup, agent behavior, payments, comms, healthcare, team — written in plain English.

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Articles

Browse the help center.

Getting Started

5 articles

Getting started: your first 60 minutes on Deskwise

A 60-minute playbook for day one. Forward your number, load your menu, set deposits, and watch the agent take its first booking before lunch.

Multi-location setup: adding locations + per-location phone numbers

On Business plan with 2+ locations. Here's how to set up locations, route calls, and report across the whole business.

Building your service menu: pricing, duration, and deposit tips per vertical

Service menu hygiene matters more than you think. Here's how to write services so the agent quotes them clearly.

Quickstart: your first 10 minutes

TL;DR — pick a vertical, connect Stripe, get a phone number, and dial it. If you finish this list, the agent is live.

Connecting your Google Calendar

TL;DR — connect Google Calendar in two clicks. The agent reads availability and writes bookings into the same calendar you already use.

Agent

6 articles

How the AI agent works: what it says, when it asks, when it escalates

Plain-English tour of the agent's brain. What it answers on its own, when it pings you, and how to override it.

Dormant client winback: how the 60/90/120-day flow works

The single highest-ROI automation in Deskwise. Here's the schedule, the tone, and how to tune it.

How does the AI agent decide what to say?

TL;DR — the agent reads a per-vertical prompt, your business data (services, hours, calendar), and the live conversation, then picks an action. You can override the prompt, the tools, and the escalation rules.

Customizing your AI assistant's voice and first message

TL;DR — pick a voice persona, write a short greeting, and set the tone in one paragraph. Most operators get this 90% right in 5 minutes.

Setting business hours and after-hours behavior

TL;DR — set your hours under Settings > Hours. After-hours, the agent still answers calls and texts, but with a different greeting, optional voicemail fallback, and urgent-call routing.

Web research: when your agent can look things up online

What web research is, which skills need it, why some workspaces show it as 'needs setup', and what the agent will and won't do with what it finds.

Payments

4 articles

Setting up Stripe Connect: KYC walkthrough + why money flows direct to you

How to connect your Stripe account in five minutes. Deposits land in your bank, not ours.

Smart deposit risk scoring: how the agent decides what to charge upfront

Loyal clients pay $0. Repeat ghosters pay 100%. Here's how the risk score works and how to override it.

No-show fees: setting your policy + how the agent charges them

How to set your no-show fee, how the saved card flow works (Stripe SetupIntent), and how the agent collects automatically.

Stripe Connect: accepting payments from your customers

TL;DR — Stripe Connect Express puts money in your bank account directly. No markup, no holds, no separate processor. Onboarding takes ~5 minutes.

Comms

4 articles

Connecting Twilio phone numbers: buying, porting, and A2P 10DLC

How to get a phone number in Deskwise, what A2P 10DLC is, and how to register so your texts actually deliver.

Using the Vapi voice agent: assistant setup, human forwarding, after-hours

How to enable voice answering, configure forwarding to a human, and set after-hours behavior.

Adding phone numbers: buy new vs. bring your own

TL;DR — three paths. Buy a new number in 30 seconds, forward your existing number for free, or port/bring SIP via white-glove for $200.

Troubleshooting: when calls aren't coming through

TL;DR — most missing-call issues are one of four things: number not provisioned, forwarding not active, voice agent disabled, or A2P 10DLC blocking. Run through this list in order.

Healthcare

2 articles

Healthcare verticals + PHI-safe mode: what the agent will and won't touch

Why Deskwise stays outside HIPAA scope, what counts as PHI, and what the agent declines in dental, vet, and med spa.

Transcripts, recordings, and privacy

TL;DR — every conversation is transcribed; voice calls are optionally recorded. You and your team see them; nobody outside your account does. PHI redaction is on for healthcare verticals.

Team

3 articles

Still stuck?

Email us at contact@deskwise.co or book a 15-min call. Real humans, real answers.