Give AI exactly the capabilities you trust it with.
You are putting something in front of real customers, using real systems, on your own number. The reasonable question is not “can it?” but “what stops it?”. Autonomy should be earned through clearly defined permissions — so here is the control model, before the capabilities.
The business stays in control.
Not as a setting buried in an admin screen. These are the four questions a pilot answers before Adjutant answers anybody.
What it’s allowed to know
Adjutant answers from the knowledge you give it — your prices, policies, products and procedures. Nothing is assumed, and nothing outside that set is treated as fact.
Which systems it can reach
Each connection is a named capability with a narrow job, not general access to a system. If a tool doesn’t exist, the action is not available — there is no way to improvise it.
What it can do unattended
Answering a stock question and issuing a credit note are not the same risk. You set which actions Adjutant completes on its own.
What needs a person first
Anything above a value, outside a policy, or simply on your list waits for a human decision. Adjutant prepares the action and asks.
The pause is a feature.
An action that needs authority should stop and ask for it.
When Adjutant hits an approval gate it doesn’t abandon the conversation or invent a way around it. It does the preparation, holds the action, and puts a specific decision in front of the person who owns it — with everything already checked.
Your customer isn’t left waiting in silence either. They’re told what’s happening and roughly when to expect an answer.
Discount of 18% requested on quote Q-3320 (R42,400). Your standing limit is 12%. Customer has bought four times in the past year. Approve, adjust, or decline?
Everything before the decision is already done. All that is left is the judgement, which is the part that needed a person.
Control you can’t see isn’t control.
Every conversation, and every action inside it, is recorded and reviewable.
The point isn’t an audit log nobody opens. It is that when a customer says “but I was told…”, you can go and look — at what was asked, what Adjutant knew, which tool it used, what came back, and whether a person was involved.
The same record is how a pilot improves: you read what it got wrong, and correct the knowledge or the rules behind it.
What Adjutant knows
The knowledge available to it, and where each piece came from.
Which systems it can access
Every connected tool, and the specific capability each one grants.
Which actions it performed
What ran, in which conversation, with what result.
Why an action occurred
The request that led to it, and the rules that permitted it.
When a human was involved
Every handoff and approval, and who handled it.
Humans remain part of the system.
Human handoff is not a failure state. It is a designed one.
Low confidence
If Adjutant isn’t sure it has understood, it stops rather than guessing well.
Authority required
Refunds, exceptions, discounts, anything above your thresholds.
Emotion matters
A complaint, a bereavement, an angry customer. These belong to a person.
They asked
A customer who wants to speak to someone gets someone. Immediately.
Conversations contain personal information.
So they get treated as such, and the specifics get agreed in writing.
Customer messages, contact details and records reached through your systems are personal information under POPIA, and your business remains the responsible party for them. What Adjutant may access, how long conversation records are kept, who in your organisation can read them, and how a customer’s request to be forgotten is handled are all decisions we work through with you during onboarding rather than assume.
If you have an obligation we need to design around — a professional body, a medical context, a financial licence — raise it early. It changes what Adjutant should be allowed to do, and that is easier to build in than to retrofit.
- What data Adjutant may access
- How long conversations are retained
- Who can read them
- Which actions require approval
- How handoff and escalation work
- How deletion requests are handled
We would rather have a slower first week and a system you can actually defend to a customer.
The promise isn’t “let AI run your business”.
It’s that you give it exactly the capabilities you trust it with, watch what it does with them, and widen from there.