Documentation

Cleo answers calls, texts, and messages for your business, qualifies who's writing in, and keeps your team on top of every conversation. Here's the shortest path from a new account to Cleo actually handling something real.

1. 1Create your account and confirm your email.
2. 2Fill in your Business Profile (name, what you offer, hours, service area) — Cleo reads this to answer questions accurately, not generically.
3. 3Open Apps in the left menu and connect at least one channel: email, SMS, or a Meta channel (WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger).
4. 4Try it yourself first in the Simulator before connecting anything live — it's the same Cleo, just talking only to you.
5. 5Once you're happy with how Cleo answers, connect a real channel from Apps. From that moment, real messages start arriving in your Inbox.

Nothing sends or answers on your behalf until you connect a real channel. Testing in the Simulator is always safe.

The Apps page (left menu) is where every channel Cleo can use lives. Each one shows its real status: Connected or Not connected, plus which account or number it's using.

Meta channels — WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger connect through your Meta Business account. You'll be asked to log into Meta and choose which Page, Instagram account, or WhatsApp Business number to connect. Cleo only ever acts on the specific account you approve.

SMS — connect your own number, or have Cleo help you get a new number without leaving the app. Once connected, texts to that number reach Cleo directly.

Email — connect Gmail or Outlook. Cleo reads new mail in that inbox, decides whether it's a real inquiry or not (see "How Cleo classifies email" below), and can draft or send a reply.

• Connect — starts the provider's own official login/authorization flow. You approve access on their site, not ours.
• Disconnect — immediately stops Cleo from using that channel. Nothing is deleted; you can reconnect any time.
• A red or missing status means Cleo cannot send or receive on that channel right now — check the error message shown on the card.

You can connect more than one number or account of the same kind (e.g. two WhatsApp numbers) if your plan allows it — each is managed and shown separately.

Every message Cleo receives — from any connected channel — becomes one Conversation. You can see the channel it came from, the contact, whether Cleo answered it or handed it to your team, and its current status.

The Tasks page (left menu) is your real to-do list, not a decorative dashboard. It's built from what's actually happening: a conversation Cleo handed off to a person, a lead nobody has followed up with yet, an unconfirmed appointment coming up, or a conversation that's gone quiet after your last reply.

Below that list, Assigned tasks shows anything specifically assigned to someone on your team — either created by a teammate directly, or created by Cleo itself the moment it hands a conversation off to a human, with the real reason it did so.

• Urgent / Overdue / Today / Can wait — Tasks are grouped by how soon they need attention, most urgent first.
• Every handoff task shows exactly why Cleo created it — never a mystery task with no explanation.
• Mark a task done and it disappears from the list immediately.

A Contact is created for anyone who has a real conversation with your business. A Lead is created specifically when that conversation looks like real commercial interest — someone asking about pricing, availability, or wanting to book something.

Spam, newsletters, and unrelated promotional email are filtered out before they ever reach your Contacts or Leads — Cleo classifies every inbound email first, and only a genuine inquiry becomes a CRM record. Nothing you'd have to manually clean out.

Each Lead carries a status (New, Qualified, Contacted, Won, Lost) that your team moves along as the conversation progresses. Every note, document, and conversation tied to that lead stays attached to it.

Today, a customer who writes in from two different channels (say, email and then WhatsApp) is tracked as two separate Contacts. Automatic cross-channel matching is on our roadmap.

Cleo answers only from what it actually knows: your Business Profile, your services, and the conversation itself. It does not invent prices, policies, or promises you haven't given it.

When Cleo can't answer something confidently, or a caller explicitly asks for a person, Cleo hands the conversation off — it stops responding, notifies your team, and (where applicable) creates a task so it's tracked, not lost.

• Cleo replies in the language the customer is writing or speaking in.
• Every conversation, contact, and lead is strictly private to your organization — Cleo never shares or mixes data between businesses.
• You can turn Cleo off at any time from Customize; nothing answers automatically while it's paused.

Automations react to real events in your business: a new lead, an incoming message, a document being viewed or accepted, a team invitation, a completed task, and more. Build one from Agents → Automations, or describe what you want in plain language and let Cleo draft the workflow for you.

• Triggers — the real event that starts the automation (e.g. "a new lead is created").
• Conditions — narrow it down (e.g. only if the lead's score is above a threshold).
• Actions — what happens: send an email or SMS, update a lead's status, add a note, notify your team, and more, depending on what's actually connected.

An automation only ever uses a channel you've actually connected. If SMS isn't connected, an SMS action in a workflow simply won't have anything to send through.

Invite teammates from Settings → Team. Each person gets a role (Admin, Manager, Sales, Support, Reception, or a custom set of permissions) that controls what they can see and do — from sending messages to managing billing.

A role or permission change is emailed directly to the person it affects, so no one is ever surprised by a change to their own access.

Only the account Owner and Admins can manage billing, connect or disconnect channels, and manage the team itself.

Your plan sets how many AI credits and voice minutes are included each billing cycle, along with how many team members, agents, and numbers you can have. Usage resets at the start of each cycle.

If you go over your included usage, you decide what happens next in Settings → Plan: stay within your included amount (Cleo pauses AI replies once you hit the limit), or turn on additional usage and keep going, billed for what you actually use.

You'll get a real email at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of your included usage each cycle — never a surprise bill with no warning first.