Getting this right is the whole job. An agent that treats everything as a promise can't do any work. An agent that treats nothing as a promise is exactly what you were worried about.
Three kinds of promise, and only one is a problem
| sounds like | leaves behind | |
|---|---|---|
| complete | the migration will be done by 14 November | something with a date that someone is counting on |
| open | I'll find out and come back to you today | something you owe, with no answer yet |
| vague | we should be able to sort that | a hope that nobody can act on |
Vague is the one to stop. You can check a complete promise. An open one is honest that you don't know yet, and it just needs closing. A vague one feels safe to send, and afterwards nobody can say what was agreed.
The sentence that promises nothing and still causes trouble
The sentence most likely to end up with a lawyer is usually true. Someone can say we work with several firms in your sector with a straight face. The buyer hears you've done this before, for someone like me. Nothing was said outright, and yet the buyer came away believing something.
We treat this as a fault in the sentence. When a person does it, they are being slippery. When software does it, that is a bug, so no setting allows it.
What is worth recording about each promise
- what was promised, and which of the three kinds it is
- what it depends on, if anything
- the facts it relied on, and whether each one was up to date at the time
- who or what sent it, and whose rules it was following
- the sentence it was made in, and nothing else from the message
Knowing the state at the time is what makes the record useful a year later. It quoted your security certification means little if you can't tell whether that fact was up to date when it was quoted.
Where Reynforce fits
The Activity page keeps that list for every promise an agent checks with Reynforce. We measured how consistently our way of sorting sentences puts them into these kinds, and we published the result, along with what it can't tell you.
When Reynforce is the wrong choice
- You want every word your agents send kept as an archive. Reynforce keeps only the sentence a promise was made in. Use your email archive to keep everything else.
What it costs
£99 a month for each agent for your first 10 agents. After that it is £79 a month for each agent, up to 49 agents. If you pay for a year at once, you get two months free. If you want us to set it up and get it signed off with you, that starts at £2,500, paid once, and the price depends on the agent's job. Pricing has the rest.