What Karas is and how it works

Karas is a support assistant that answers your customers' questions using your own help centre, and shows them which article each answer came from. It sits on your website as a chat widget, and hands a conversation to your team when the customer asks for a person.

What it does

When a visitor asks a question, Karas searches your documentation, reads the most relevant passages, and writes an answer grounded in them. Every answer carries links to the articles behind it, so the visitor can read the source and your team can audit what was said.

It is built for the questions your team answers over and over — delivery times, returns, sizing, account changes, how a feature works. Those questions are usually already documented, and they are the bulk of most support queues.

What it will not do

Karas answers from your documentation and nothing else. It has no access to your orders, your customer records, or your payment system, so it cannot look up an individual order or make a change to an account. It is also prevented, in code rather than by instruction, from promising a refund, claiming an account has been charged or cancelled, or saying it has taken an action on someone's behalf. See What Karas is not allowed to say.

When your documentation does not cover something, Karas says so rather than inventing an answer.

How a conversation ends

Most conversations end with an answer and a link. When they do not, the visitor can press Talk to a human at any point. They leave a name and an email, and a ticket appears in your helpdesk with the conversation already summarised. See How a visitor reaches a person.

What you need to run it

A help centre or documentation set in almost any form, and the ability to paste one line of HTML into your site template. There is nothing to install, and no work for your developers beyond that line. See What happens when you sign up.