Use this guide when you want Hellotext to collect missing customer profile information through an AI conversation.
Property Collector is an AI capture playbook. It asks for the properties you configure, validates and saves the answers, and avoids asking for values already present on the customer profile.
It can work as a direct capture playbook or step in temporarily when another playbook needs profile data before it can continue.
What Property Collector does
Property Collector turns profile enrichment into a focused conversation.
It can:
- Collect standard profile information such as name, phone, and email.
- Collect custom customer profile properties configured by the business.
- Ask only for selected properties that are still missing.
- Follow the configured property order.
- Distinguish properties that must be collected from optional properties.
- Clarify ambiguous or invalid answers instead of guessing.
- Normalize values when there is a deterministic rule, including converting local phone numbers to international format with the business calling code.
- Record when a customer declines an optional property.
- Return the conversation to the original playbook after a prerequisite collection is complete.
- Derive or assign the conversation when a person should take over.
Property Collector stays focused on profile data. It is not a general support or sales agent.
Two ways it can participate
As a direct capture playbook
Use Property Collector directly when the main purpose of the conversation is to enrich a customer profile.
The playbook follows its configured collection list, asks for missing values, and saves valid answers to the profile. This works well when the business needs a reusable conversational capture for selected properties.
As a prerequisite for another playbook
Other AI playbooks can include a Property Collector subcomponent with the profile data they need.
When the source playbook detects that one or more configured properties are missing, it can temporarily hand the conversation to the enabled Property Collector. Property Collector asks only for that active set of missing properties.
The original playbook remains responsible for the customer’s task. Once the required collection is resolved, the conversation returns to that playbook instead of permanently changing ownership.
Subscriber Booster uses this model to choose which profile properties to collect together with subscription consent.
Choose properties intentionally
Collect only data that has a clear use in customer experience, segmentation, personalization, support, or another playbook.
Available choices can include:
- Name.
- Phone and email properties.
- Business-defined customer profile properties such as company, gender, numbers, short text, or long text.
Property Collector does not need to ask for a configured value that is already present on the customer profile.
Use clear property names. A customer should understand what the AI is requesting without seeing internal database or CRM terminology.
Required and optional properties
Each selected property can be marked as required or optional.
When a customer declines an optional property, Property Collector records that decision for the active collection and can continue without asking for the same optional item repeatedly.
A required property remains part of the active collection until it is resolved or the conversation is derived. Mark a property as required only when the originating task genuinely cannot continue without it.
Too many required fields make a conversational capture feel like a form with no exit. Keep the required set small.
What it needs before launch
Before enabling Property Collector, confirm:
- The profile properties already exist in Hellotext and have useful customer-facing names.
- You know which properties are required and which are optional.
- The selected incoming channels are connected.
- The business country and calling code are correct if phone numbers will be collected.
- Assignment or derivation has an appropriate teammate or team.
- Any playbook that uses Property Collector as a prerequisite explains why it needs the information.
What you can configure
Open Playbooks, click Explore playbooks, find the Captures group, and choose Property Collector.
Property Collector exposes:
- Properties: the ordered profile fields the playbook can request.
- Must collect: whether each selected property is required for the active collection.
- Incoming channels: where the playbook can respond to customer messages.
- Tone: the voice used while requesting information.
- Assignment or derivation: who should take over when collection cannot continue automatically.
Other compatible playbooks can expose a Property Collector subcomponent with their own prerequisite property list. Property Collector must be enabled before that prerequisite configuration can run.
How the AI handles answers
Property Collector should save only information the customer actually provides.
It can ask a concise clarification when:
- A value is ambiguous.
- A phone number or another structured value is incomplete.
- The answer does not match the property being requested.
It should not invent, infer, or fabricate profile data. When a deterministic normalization rule exists, it can apply that rule before saving the value.
If the customer changes the subject during a prerequisite collection, the conversation can return to the source task or follow the configured derivation path instead of letting Property Collector answer outside its scope.
How to test it
Use the Playground and test customer profiles before enabling the playbook broadly.
Test:
- A profile missing every configured property.
- A profile that already contains some of the selected properties.
- A valid answer for each property type.
- An ambiguous value that should produce a clarification.
- A local phone number that should be normalized with the business calling code.
- A customer who declines an optional property.
- A required property the customer does not provide.
- A prerequisite collection started by Subscriber Booster or another compatible playbook.
- The return to the original task after collection finishes.
- Assignment or derivation when the playbook cannot complete the collection.
Verify that Playground events and the resulting customer profile match the answers given during the test.
What to review after launch
Review:
- Whether the playbook asks only for properties that are actually missing.
- Whether customers understand each property request.
- Whether saved values use the correct profile property.
- Whether optional declines are respected.
- Whether required properties are truly necessary.
- Whether phone numbers and other structured values are normalized correctly.
- Whether prerequisite collection returns customers to the original playbook.
- Whether derivations reach the correct teammate or team.
If customers abandon collection often, reduce the number of properties, improve their labels, or reconsider which fields must be collected.