Guide 
You’ll Have a Working Genie Before Lunch
By the end of this guide, you’ll have a live voice AI genie that answers questions about your business, captures leads, and runs 24/7. No developer. No integration project. No discovery phase.
Just a working genie, deployed from your browser, in about ten minutes.
This isn’t a teaser for a 3-month rollout. It’s a literal description of what you’re about to do.
Before You Start
You don’t need much. Here’s what to have ready:
A free Help Genie account. Sign up at helpgenie.ai. No credit card required. The free plan gives you a working genie with 10 conversations per month, which is plenty to get started and see the value.
A few of your existing business documents. Think: your FAQ page, a price list, a service menu, your website URL, or a policies document. You don’t need all of these. Even one will do. The more context you give your genie, the better it answers.
Five minutes of clear thinking. Know roughly who your customers are and what tone fits your brand. Casual and friendly? Professional and precise? You’ll set this in Step 2.
That’s it. No spreadsheet of requirements. No IT sign-off. Let’s go.
Step 1: Create Your Genie
Action: Log in to Help Genie and create a new genie.
Once you’re in the dashboard, hit the button to create a new genie. You’ll be asked for a name. Pick something that fits your brand. It could be your business name (“Ask Maple Roofing”), a product name, or something simple like “Support” or “Sales.”
This name is what customers will see when they talk to it. Keep it short and clear.
Verifiable result: You have a named genie in your dashboard, ready to configure.
Step 2: Tell Your Genie What It’s Doing
Action: Write a short description of your business, your customers, and the tone to use.
This is the part that surprises most people. You don’t fill in a complicated form. You write a short paragraph, like you’d explain your business to a smart new hire on their first day.
Something like:
“We’re a plumbing company in Austin, Texas. We serve homeowners and small commercial clients. Our tone is friendly but professional. We handle general plumbing repairs, water heater installations, and emergency call-outs. We don’t do new construction.”
That’s enough to get started. Your genie uses this as its core understanding of who it’s working for and what it should focus on.
You’ll also set the conversation tone here. If your brand is warm and casual, say so. If you’re a law firm and need formal and precise, say that instead. The genie will match it.
Verifiable result: Your genie has a clear persona and a defined scope. It knows what it’s there to do.
Step 3: Build the Knowledge Base
Action: Upload your existing documents and add your website URL.
This is where your genie gets smart about your specific business.
Go to the knowledge base section and start adding content. You can:
- Paste in your FAQ
- Upload a PDF (price list, service menu, product spec sheet, terms and conditions)
- Add your website URL so the genie can reference your published content
- Type in answers to common questions manually
You don’t need a perfectly formatted document library. A copied-and-pasted FAQ from your website is enough to start. Your genie pulls answers directly from whatever you upload, so the more relevant material you add, the fewer gaps it’ll have.
One practical tip: include the questions customers ask most often. Think about what your front desk or inbox deals with every week. Those are the questions your genie will face first.
Verifiable result: Your knowledge base has at least one source. Your genie can now answer questions based on your real business content, not generic AI guesses.
Step 4: Brand It and Customise
Action: Set your colours, choose a voice, and configure lead capture if you want it.
Your genie should look and sound like yours. This step is quick.
In the customisation panel, you can:
- Set your brand colours for the chat widget
- Choose a voice style that fits your tone
- Add a welcome message (what the genie says first)
- Turn on lead capture so the genie can collect names, emails, and phone numbers during conversations
Lead capture is worth switching on even if you’re not sure you need it yet. If a customer asks about pricing and you want to follow up, the genie can collect their details naturally as part of the conversation.
You can also set what happens after a conversation ends. An email summary of the conversation can go straight to your inbox, including any lead details collected.
Verifiable result: Your genie looks like your brand, sounds right, and is set up to capture leads or route conversations the way you want.
Step 5: Publish and Go Live
Action: Hit publish and choose where to deploy your genie.
This is the moment. Hit publish.
You’ll get several deployment options:
- Website embed: A small snippet of code you paste into your website. Takes about two minutes.
- Direct link: A URL you can share anywhere. Email signature, social bio, QR code at a trade show.
- QR code: Download and print it. Put it on your counter, your van, your packaging.
- Phone number: Add a phone number so customers can call and speak to your genie directly.
For most small businesses, the website embed and a direct link is enough to start. You can always add more channels later.
Verifiable result: Your genie is live. You can visit the link or embed, ask it a question, and get an answer based on your knowledge base and business context.
That’s ten minutes. You now have a working voice AI genie.
Common Gotchas
“My genie gave a wrong answer.” This almost always means the knowledge base is missing something. Add the correct answer as a document or a manual FAQ entry. The genie learns from what you give it, so gaps in the knowledge base create gaps in answers.
“The tone feels off.” Go back to Step 2 and rewrite the persona description. Be more specific. “Professional but approachable, like a helpful expert, not a corporate script” is more useful than just “professional.”
“I don’t have any documents ready.” Start with your website URL alone. Even that gives your genie a working knowledge base. You can add more over time.
“A customer asked something outside my scope.” Your genie can be configured to handle out-of-scope questions gracefully. Set a fallback message like “That’s outside what I can help with directly. Here’s how to reach us.” This avoids dead ends.
“I’m not sure which channel to deploy first.” Start with the direct link. Share it in a few emails or on social. Get a feel for what your customers ask before you embed it on your website. There’s no wrong answer here.
What Businesses in 11 Industries Are Already Using It For
Voice AI genies are live across automotive dealerships, real estate agencies, trades businesses, marine dealers, home builders, event companies, and more. If you want to see how businesses in your specific industry use them, check out the industry pages for practical examples.
You can also run the numbers on what a live genie might mean for your revenue using the ROI calculator.
Your Next Step
The genie you just built is a starting point, not a finished product. The more conversations it has, the more you’ll learn about what your customers actually need. Add to the knowledge base as questions come in. Refine the tone. Turn on more channels.
But first, get it live. The ten minutes you spend today is the cheapest competitive advantage your business will build this year.
No credit card. No developer. No waiting.