As businesses look for ways to scale without adding overhead, many turn to AI to help automate communication, workflows, and client-facing tasks. The challenge is that most AI tools are generic. They require constant prompting, deliver inconsistent answers, and don’t follow the real processes a business depends on.
What SMBs and partners actually need is a custom AI assistant that behaves like a trained team member, one that understands their data, follows their rules, and completes tasks the way their staff would.
That is exactly what Vendasta delivers with our new Custom AI Employees.
A Custom AI Employee is an AI assistant trained on a company’s knowledge, pricing, processes, and systems. It can perform real jobs across chat, websites, and automated workflows, and it delivers consistent, reliable work every time.
And the results speak for themselves. Below are two real-world examples of how partners are transforming operations with custom AI assistants and how you can get started today.
Automate every step of the customer journey with AI employees
TL;DR
- Custom AI assistants are intelligent AI agents trained on a business’s own knowledge, processes, and data. They handle tasks like proposals, follow-ups, client communication, and internal workflows with accuracy and consistency.
- Blue River Digital and The Xcite Group are already seeing transformational results, including proposals generated in minutes, faster deal cycles, higher close rates, and new recurring revenue through AI-powered services.
- Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees make this possible by allowing partners to create, train, and deploy AI assistants in minutes. They can then be assigned to internal chat, website chat, or automated workflows so they perform real jobs at scale.
How Blue River Digital Scaled Proposals, Follow-Ups, and Internal Operations with a Custom AI Employee
As Blue River Digital scaled, keeping proposals, follow-ups, and internal processes consistent became increasingly difficult. Bringing in a Custom AI Employee was initially seen as a way to ease the workload, but it ended up transforming how the agency operated.
Nick Prentice, VP of Growth and Development, described the shift best: “It really molded our company into a well-oiled machine.”
What They Built
Blue River Digital created Banks, a Custom AI Employee trained on:
- Pricing sheets and service tiers
- Sales processes and methodology
- Meeting notes and call transcripts
- Internal documents and SOPs
Because Banks is trained on the agency’s own knowledge and rules, it behaves like a seasoned team member and produces accurate proposals, consistent follow-ups, and consolidated insights from multiple contributors. The output is polished, reliable, and ready to use.
The Impact
- Proposal creation time reduced from days to minutes
- Follow-ups that are consistent and keep deals moving
- Hours saved each week on repetitive internal processes
- Faster deal velocity through timely, personalized proposals
- Sales operations that scale without additional hiring
Banks did more than speed up tasks. It standardized them, giving every team member access to the same source of truth and creating a more consistent experience for clients.
How The Xcite Group Uses Custom AI Employees to Scale Expertise and Accelerate Sales
For The Xcite Group, managing advanced digital campaigns with a lean team became increasingly challenging. Deep expertise sat with a few senior team members, which slowed proposal timelines and made it difficult to respond quickly during sales conversations.
Michael Klabon, the agency’s co-founder, describes the shift: “We’re not just talking about AI anymore. We are showing clients what it can do before they even sign, and that is powerful.”
What They Built
The Xcite Group created Klaygent, a Custom AI Employee trained on:
- Years of internal advertising data
- Pricing models and media strategies
- Sales materials and campaign playbooks
Klaygent produces tailored recommendations, budget estimates, and next steps within minutes. This gives every team member access to expert-level insight without waiting for specialists.
The Xcite Group also builds personalized demo employees trained on each prospect’s website and business information. These demos let prospects experience AI-powered support during the sales process, which increases engagement early in the relationship.
The Impact
- Proposal and recommendation turnaround significantly accelerated
- More deals closed through hands-on, AI-powered demos
- New recurring revenue from offering setup and management of Custom AI Employees
- Higher client satisfaction due to faster and more accurate insights
With Klaygent, The Xcite Group scaled expertise across the entire team without increasing headcount.
Why Custom AI Assistants Are Essential for Partners and SMBs
The success of Blue River Digital and The Xcite Group reflects a major shift in how businesses think about AI.
Many teams start by looking into AI to support their workflows, but quickly discover that generic assistants are limited. To create real business value, AI must behave like a trained employee that understands your rules, follows your workflows, and works wherever your team does.
Vendasta’s solution meets this need through Custom AI Employees, our version of a custom AI assistant that is trained to operate the way a business actually works.
Custom vs. Standard AI Employees
Vendasta offers both standard AI Employees, which are pre-configured for common tasks, and Custom AI Employees, which businesses build to match a unique role. Both function as AI assistants, but they serve different purposes.
Use a standard AI Employee when:
- You need immediate value with minimal setup
- You want common actions like lead capture or review response
- Your workflows do not require deep customization
Build a Custom AI Employee when:
- You need AI to follow your specific policies or internal processes
- Your workflows require deeper reasoning or multi-system integration
- You want to replicate the role of a specialized staff member
A Custom AI Employee is ideal when you want an AI assistant that feels uniquely yours—built around your business, deployed across your channels, and reusable as an asset you can scale and resell.
How to Build and Launch a Custom AI Employee With Vendasta
Creating a Custom AI Employee takes minutes. The Vendasta framework uses shared tools, knowledge, and capabilities, so no technical expertise is required.
Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Define the Role: Choose the job the AI Employee will fill, such as estimator, project manager, sales enablement assistant, proposal builder, or onboarding coordinator.
- Train It on Your Knowledge: Upload documents, spreadsheets, pricing sheets, SOPs, transcripts, and website content to create a unified source of truth.
- Configure Behavior: Set tone, personality, rules, fallback behavior, and escalation paths.
- Deploy It Anywhere: Assign your AI Employee to internal chat, website chat for lead capture or customer engagement, or automated workflows where it can interpret context and take action.
- Optimize and Scale: Monitor usage, refine training content, and clone successful Employees to resell or deploy across clients.
With these steps, you can turn any business role into a reliable, scalable AI assistant that operates exactly the way your business does.
Why Vendasta Is Leading the AI Workforce Era
Businesses are moving beyond simple chatbots and generic AI tools. They need AI that can step into real roles, follow real workflows, and support real teams. Vendasta is leading this shift with Custom AI Employees, intelligent AI assistants that operate inside a business with the same context, rules, and responsibilities as a trained staff member.
This evolution reflects a larger transformation in how partners and SMBs approach efficiency. Instead of relying on disconnected tools or one-size-fits-all AI agents, they want flexible AI that can take on specialized jobs, integrate with their systems, and deliver consistent work anywhere customers or staff interact.
Vendasta’s AI Employee Framework makes this possible. It allows businesses to create an AI workforce that is tailored to their exact processes, trained on their knowledge, and capable of taking meaningful action across their organization.
AI Employees Built for Real Business Workflows
With Vendasta, companies can hire AI Employees for specific roles. These employees can handle estimating, project updates, sales enablement, payment coordination, and many other functions that usually require trained staff. Instead of answering general questions, they follow the company’s rules, pricing, approvals, and workflows with accuracy.
Imagine:
- A job estimator that produces consistent quotes using real pricing data
- A project manager that pulls information from external systems and updates customers automatically
- A sales enablement assistant that gives accurate answers about products and processes without the team digging through documents.
These scenarios are already happening across Vendasta.
AI That Works Everywhere Your Business Does
Custom AI Employees are not limited to a single channel. They can:
- Support teams through internal chat
- Engage customers through website chat
- Drive decisions and actions inside automated workflows
Because the same employee works across channels, businesses avoid the inconsistencies that happen when multiple disconnected tools try to share the same responsibilities. One trained employee can deliver a unified, reliable experience whether interacting with customers or supporting internal teams.
Powered by Each Business’s Unique Data
Every Custom AI Employee learns from the company’s documents, pricing, service tiers, SOPs, meeting transcripts, and other knowledge sources. This creates a single source of truth and ensures every output reflects real business rules.
This advantage becomes even more powerful when combined with Vendasta’s seventeen years of proprietary SMB data, which helps accelerate training and improve accuracy.
A Complete Platform for Partners and SMBs
Vendasta was built for agencies, franchisors, software vendors (ISVs), and other partners who support local businesses. Custom AI Employees extend this capability by giving partners new ways to automate client work, reduce manual effort, and generate ongoing revenue through AI services.
Partners can:
- Create and deploy AI Employees for internal use
- Build role-specific Employees tailored to their clients
- Package and resell AI-powered services
- Offer new value without adding new staff
This positions partners as trusted advisors in the AI transition and opens new recurring revenue opportunities.
A Unified System That Replaces Fragmentation
Unlike traditional AI tools, which only handle isolated tasks or require complicated setups, Vendasta provides everything needed to run marketing, sales, reputation, communication, and automation workflows in one place. AI Employees sit inside this ecosystem, giving businesses consistent data, shared knowledge, and smooth handoffs between tools.
When an AI Employee books an appointment, updates a customer, writes a follow-up, or generates a proposal, all activity happens inside the same platform. That eliminates errors, reduces context switching, and ensures every interaction is tracked and actionable.
A Modern Workforce Made of Humans and AI
Vendasta’s vision is not to replace human roles but to elevate them. AI Employees take on the repetitive, time-sensitive, or documentation-heavy tasks that slow teams down. Staff can then focus on strategy, creativity, and building stronger client relationships.
This is the future of work for SMBs and partners: small teams augmented by AI employees who never miss a task, never forget a rule, and always act in alignment with the business.
The Next Step in Your AI Journey: Transforming Work With Custom AI Assistants
The stories from Blue River Digital and The Xcite Group reveal what many businesses are discovering: a custom AI assistant can do far more than answer questions or automate isolated tasks. When built with the right foundation, it becomes a dependable team member that streamlines operations, improves client experiences, and accelerates growth.
Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees bring this vision to life. They act on real business data, follow established workflows, and work across every major channel your team relies on. Instead of forcing your staff to adapt to yet another tool, AI Employees adapt to your business and take on meaningful roles that free up time, reduce bottlenecks, and create better experiences for customers.
For partners, the opportunity is even greater. Digital agencies and technology providers can use Custom AI Employees to differentiate their offerings and deliver new AI-powered services to clients.
The businesses you serve are already searching for better ways to automate proposals, follow-ups, onboarding, reporting, and customer communication. With Custom AI Employees, you can meet that demand immediately, without custom development or complex integrations.
Streamline workflows, enhance customer engagement, and unlock new revenue opportunities today. Request a demo to see how your first Custom AI Employee can transform your operations.
Custom AI Assistant FAQs
1. What is a custom AI assistant?
A custom AI assistant is an AI agent trained on your business’s own knowledge, processes, and rules. Vendasta’s version, called Custom AI Employees, can perform real jobs such as estimating, follow-ups, customer communication, and internal support.
2. How does a custom AI assistant work?
A custom AI assistant uses business-specific documents, pricing, and workflows to deliver accurate outputs. Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees take this further by integrating with systems and automations so they can take action, not just provide answers.
3. What can a custom AI assistant do for small businesses?
Custom AI assistants can automate tasks like quoting, scheduling, follow-ups, onboarding, reporting, and communication. Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees help SMBs operate more efficiently without adding staff.
4. Do I need technical skills to build a custom AI assistant?
No. Vendasta’s AI Employee Framework allows you to create, train, and deploy AI Employees with no code. You upload your knowledge, configure preferences, and launch the Employee in minutes.
5. How is a custom AI assistant different from a chatbot?
A chatbot answers simple questions. A custom AI assistant behaves like a trained team member. Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees use real business data, follow rules, and can perform actions in your workflows.
6. Can a custom AI assistant integrate with my CRM or tools?
Yes. Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees can integrate with CRM, scheduling, communication tools, and automations, which allows them to take actions such as booking appointments or sending updates.
7. How much does a custom AI assistant cost?
Pricing depends on the AI plan and capabilities you enable. Vendasta includes AI Employee creation in its paid AI products, with no additional charge per Employee during general availability.
8. Can agencies resell custom AI assistants to clients?
Yes. Partners can use Vendasta to build and resell Custom AI Employees as part of their service offerings. This allows agencies to generate new recurring revenue and deliver high-value automation to clients.
9. How do I train a custom AI assistant on my business?
You upload your documents, pricing sheets, SOPs, service descriptions, and transcripts. Vendasta’s Custom AI Employees learn from this data to deliver accurate, business-specific output.
10. Is a custom AI assistant secure for sensitive business information?
Yes. Vendasta securely stores the knowledge you provide and uses it only to power your Custom AI Employees. This ensures your information remains private and your outputs remain consistent.
