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AI employees · An AI workforce that runs 24/7

Hire AI employees that do the work, not just chat about it.

Some teams call them AI teammates, AI workers or digital workers. They are AI agents with a job: a recurring task, the apps to do it, a schedule, and a human to escalate to. DeskFerry lets you hire one — or a whole AI workforce — in plain English, across 1,500+ apps you already use.

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Hire your first AI employeeSee pricing

AI Sales department

An always-on outbound team.

  • AI SDR

    Owns outbound sequences and inbound first replies

    GmailHubSpotLinkedInCalendar

    KPI Qualified meetings booked per week

  • AI Researcher

    Builds account and contact intel before every send

    ApolloCrunchbaseLinkedInWeb

    KPI Enriched accounts per day

  • AI CRM Updater

    Keeps every record clean without nagging the team

    HubSpotSalesforceGmailSlack

    KPI Deals with complete data at each stage

AI Operations department

The back office that runs itself.

  • AI Invoicing Clerk

    Sends invoices, reconciles payments, chases what is late

    QuickBooksXeroStripeGmail

    KPI Days sales outstanding

  • AI Inbox Triage

    Sorts the shared inbox, drafts replies, routes the rest

    GmailOutlookSlack

    KPI First-response time on inbound mail

  • AI Reporting Analyst

    Builds and delivers the metrics digest, daily

    NotionSlackGA4Stripe

    KPI Reports delivered on time

AI Support department

First response in minutes, without hiring.

  • AI Tier-1 Responder

    Resolves common questions end-to-end

    ZendeskIntercomHelp docs

    KPI Tickets resolved without a human

  • AI Escalation Router

    Hands tough tickets to the right human, with context

    SlackLinearZendesk

    KPI Time to the right human

  • AI Knowledge Updater

    Turns real tickets into better docs, every week

    NotionIntercomGitHub

    KPI Help articles refreshed per week

Every AI employee has the same anatomy: a role, the tools to do it, and a KPI you can see.

Definition

What is an AI employee?

An AI employee is an AI agent that owns a recurring job inside your company — with the tool access, memory, and triggers to do it without being prompted each time. Four things separate it from a chatbot.

01

A recurring job, not a one-off prompt

It owns one role — first reply on every inbound lead, every overdue invoice, every tier-1 ticket — and is measured against a KPI you can see, the way a new hire would be.

02

Access to the tools the job lives in

It reads and writes in your inbox, CRM, helpdesk, and billing system through 1,500+ integrations, and picks the right tool for the moment rather than replaying a fixed path.

03

Memory across runs

It remembers the people, accounts, and history it has already handled, so Tuesday's follow-up knows what happened on Monday and the same customer never gets the same question twice.

04

Triggered, not prompted

It runs on a schedule or when something happens — a new ticket, a paid invoice, a form submission — and escalates to a human with context when an action needs approval or it is stuck.

Several AI employees working together, handing work between each other, is an AI workforce. Definitions in the glossary: AI employees and AI workforce. For the business case, read AI agents for business.

Automation vs AI employee

Where automation stops, an AI employee starts.

Keep your zaps for the deterministic work — “new Stripe charge, new row in Sheets” will always be a workflow. An AI employee is for the judgment-heavy work: replies, triage, exceptions, follow-ups. Three asks, answered both ways.

When you ask

Reply to every inbound lead within the hour.

A workflow automation

“New form submission → send template email #3. If the lead replies with a question, nothing happens until a person reads the thread.”

DeskFerry

  1. Reads the lead's reply and their website
  2. Finds the right talking point and drafts a tailored answer
  3. Logs the activity and moves the deal stage
  4. Offers times and books the meeting

A qualified meeting on your calendar, CRM already clean.

When you ask

Chase overdue invoices without upsetting customers.

A workflow automation

“Invoice 7 days late → send reminder. Sends the same reminder to the customer who paid yesterday by bank transfer.”

DeskFerry

  1. Checks which invoices are actually still open
  2. Matches payments that arrived out of band
  3. Writes a reminder that references the specific invoice and history
  4. Asks you before escalating anyone to a final notice

Cash collected sooner, and no awkward reminder to someone who already paid.

When you ask

Answer tier-1 support tickets, escalate the rest.

A workflow automation

“Ticket contains 'refund' → tag as billing, assign to queue. Every other ticket waits for the next shift.”

DeskFerry

  1. Reads the ticket and the customer's account history
  2. Finds the answer in your help docs
  3. Replies in your tone and closes the loop
  4. Opens an issue and pings the right teammate when it is a bug

Minutes to first response, and the hard tickets reach the right human with context.

Departments

AI teammates for every department.

Most platforms sell you a single agent and leave the team-building to you. DeskFerry ships ready-made departments — bundled roles that hand off to each other, share context, and report up. Pick a template, then toggle the AI employees you want.

Sales

Operations

Support

What each department ships

Three departments, employee by employee.

Each department is three coordinated AI employees with their own roles, tools, and KPIs. Here is what they do on day one.

AI Sales department

An always-on outbound team.

Finds the right accounts, opens the conversation, qualifies inbound replies, and lands meetings on your calendar — while the CRM stays clean on its own. Built for founders selling without a sales team and for small revenue teams that need more throughput without more headcount.

AI SDR

Owns outbound sequences and inbound first replies

Tools
Gmail, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Calendar
KPI
Qualified meetings booked per week

A day in the role

Pulls a target account list, drafts a personalised opener, sends from your inbox, handles the back-and-forth, and books the meeting on your calendar.

AI Researcher

Builds account and contact intel before every send

Tools
Apollo, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Web
KPI
Enriched accounts per day

A day in the role

For every account, reads the site, finds the right buyer, pulls recent news or funding events, and writes a two-line talking point the SDR uses to personalise.

AI CRM Updater

Keeps every record clean without nagging the team

Tools
HubSpot, Salesforce, Gmail, Slack
KPI
Deals with complete data at each stage

A day in the role

Watches inbox, calendar, and Slack, logs activities, updates deal stages, fills missing fields, and pings the rep only when human judgment is genuinely needed.

AI Operations department

The back office that runs itself.

Handles the unglamorous work that drains a small team — invoicing, inbox triage, reporting — so the humans can stay on the customer-facing work that moves the company forward.

AI Invoicing Clerk

Sends invoices, reconciles payments, chases what is late

Tools
QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, Gmail
KPI
Days sales outstanding

A day in the role

Drafts invoices from completed milestones, matches incoming payments, and runs a polite collection sequence on overdue accounts — asking a human before any final notice.

AI Inbox Triage

Sorts the shared inbox, drafts replies, routes the rest

Tools
Gmail, Outlook, Slack
KPI
First-response time on inbound mail

A day in the role

Reads every new message, classifies it (lead, billing, support, vendor, noise), drafts a reply where appropriate, and routes anything that needs a person to the right teammate with full context.

AI Reporting Analyst

Builds and delivers the metrics digest, daily

Tools
Notion, Slack, GA4, Stripe
KPI
Reports delivered on time

A day in the role

Each morning, pulls revenue, pipeline, support load, and product metrics, writes a five-bullet digest with last week's delta, posts it to Slack, and flags anomalies for the founder.

AI Support department

First response in minutes, without hiring.

Answers customers the moment they write in, escalates the hard ones with full context, and quietly rewrites your help docs from what real customers ask.

AI Tier-1 Responder

Resolves common questions end-to-end

Tools
Zendesk, Intercom, Help docs
KPI
Tickets resolved without a human

A day in the role

Reads the ticket, finds the answer in docs and live product data, replies in your tone, and closes the loop — flagging any reply a customer rated negatively for review.

AI Escalation Router

Hands tough tickets to the right human, with context

Tools
Slack, Linear, Zendesk
KPI
Time to the right human

A day in the role

When a ticket needs a person, classifies it (billing, bug, enterprise, churn risk), pings the right teammate in Slack with the conversation summarised, and opens a Linear issue if it is a bug.

AI Knowledge Updater

Turns real tickets into better docs, every week

Tools
Notion, Intercom, GitHub
KPI
Help articles refreshed per week

A day in the role

Reads the week's tickets, finds the questions the docs failed to answer, drafts updates, opens a pull request or a Notion draft, and asks the team for one-click approval.

These are three of 200+ templates. Browse the marketplace for marketing, finance, HR, and more — or build your own in the AI agent builder.

Terminology

AI employee vs AI agent vs digital worker.

Three names for one idea, from three directions. The technology underneath is the same; what changes is whether it has been given a job.

AI agent

The building block.

An AI agent is a model given tools and instructions so it can take actions, not just answer. On its own it is capability without a job: it can send an email or update a CRM, but nothing has told it when, for whom, or what done looks like. You build one in the AI agent builder.

AI employee

An agent with a job.

An AI employee is an agent that has been given a standing role: a recurring task, access to the apps that task lives in, a schedule or trigger, memory of what it has handled, and a human to escalate to. Same technology, different framing — one is a tool, the other is a hire. Also called an AI teammate, AI worker, AI coworker, or AI staff.

Digital worker

The enterprise word for the same thing.

“Digital worker” comes from the RPA world, where it meant a bot replaying a scripted process on a virtual desktop. Larger companies now use it for AI employees too. The difference from the old meaning is judgment: a modern digital worker reads context instead of following a fixed click path.

Put several of them on related jobs, let them hand work to each other, and you have an AI workforce. For one person’s own inbox and calendar rather than a team function, the right product is DeskFerry Assist.

Pricing

What an AI employee costs.

Nothing per employee. Every plan includes unlimited agents, so there is no per-agent charge — you choose how much work they get through each month, and whether the workspace is yours alone or shared. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, no credit card.

Starter

Your first AI hire

$19/month

Agents
Unlimited agents
Credits
2,000 vendor credits / month

A personal workspace and enough credits to run your first always-on agent.

Growth

Room to run

$49/month

Agents
Unlimited agents
Credits
5,000 vendor credits / month

Several agents in parallel across sales, support, and ops, plus premium apps like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Pro

AI across the company

$99/month

Agents
Unlimited agents
Credits
10,000 vendor credits / month

Teams sharing one workspace, or agencies running separate workspaces per client.

Billed monthly, renews until canceled. Vendor credits pay the model provider’s price for the AI models your agents use.

See full pricing and compare plans

Hire your first AI employee today.

Pick a job you do on repeat, describe it in plain English, connect the apps, and let it run — with you approving anything that matters. 7-day free trial, no credit card.

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FAQ

AI employee questions, answered.