GA
Payroll Agent
Finds the errors before the payroll run, not after.
4x1 (modeled outcome) faster resolution of payroll compliance issues
HR agent
GAHelp Desk Agent
The Help Desk Agent is a governed AI agent that answers employee questions from policy and the system of record.
How it works
What the Help Desk Agent does
Resolves employee questions about pay, time off, benefits, and policy using your handbook and HRIS data. Opens, routes, and closes cases with a complete record.
- 01
Connect policy and people data
Point the agent at your handbook, policy library, and HRIS. It indexes documents by jurisdiction, entity, and effective date, and maps employee fields such as PTO balance, pay group, and benefits elections.
- 02
Set scope and escalation rules
Choose which topics the agent may answer, which it may act on with approval, and which route straight to a human. Sensitive categories escalate by default.
- 03
Answer, act, or route
Employees ask in Slack, Teams, email, or the portal. The agent answers with citations, submits routine changes for approval, or opens a case with context gathered and assigns it.
- 04
Measure and tune
The Registry reports deflection rate, resolution time, and satisfaction by topic. Unanswered questions become a queue for your policy owners to fill gaps.
app.meridian.example/agents/help-desk/queue
Case queue · today
1,284 resolved7 escalated
| Case | Question | Workspace | Status | Time to resolve |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CASE-48211 | PTO carryover for part-time nurses | Halvorsen Health | Resolved | 1m 40s |
| CASE-48209 | 401(k) contribution change | Bluepeak Energy | Resolved | 2m 12s |
| CASE-48208 | Garnishment order question | Atlas Manufacturing | Escalated | 4m 03s |
| CASE-48205 | Parental leave eligibility | Verdant Foods | Resolved | 0m 58s |
| CASE-48203 | Tuition reimbursement cap | Orion Retail Group | Resolved | 1m 21s |
The agent contract
Six terms, applied to this agent
Every Meridian agent runs under the same six terms, enforced at the Gateway below the agent. Here is what each one means for the Help Desk Agent.
Scoped to one workflow
Answers HR questions and runs case intake. Nothing outside HR topics.
Reads only permitted data
Inherits the asking employee's HRIS entitlements. It has no permissions of its own.
Every action logged
Full transcript and action log retained under your retention policy, visible in the Registry.
Consequential actions require human approval
Pay, tax withholding, and bank-detail changes wait for employee confirmation and HR approval.
Measurable outcome
Deflection rate, resolution time, and satisfaction reported by topic in the Registry.
Runs on your chosen model
Pin a model provider and region per workspace. Sensitive topics escalate regardless of model.
Scope
Data, actions, and approvals
What the Help Desk Agent reads, what it does on its own, and where a person signs.
Data it reads
- Employee handbook, policy library, and benefits plan documents
- HRIS employee record: job, manager, location, entity, employment status
- PTO, sick, and leave balances and accrual rules
- Benefits enrollment, dependents, and qualifying life-event windows
- Pay schedule, payslips, W-2 and tax-form availability
- Prior case history and knowledge articles
Actions it takes
- Answer a policy question with a citation to the section and effective date
- Look up the employee's own PTO balance, next pay date, or benefits election
- Submit an address change, direct deposit update, or W-4 change for approval
- Open a case with category, priority, and gathered context, then assign it
- Route tier-2 cases to the correct HR partner by topic, entity, and location
- Close a resolved case and record the resolution for the knowledge base
What needs approval
- Reads only the records the asking employee is entitled to see
- Changes to pay, tax withholding, or bank details require employee confirmation and HR approval before they post
- Every answer cites a source; when confidence is low the agent escalates rather than guesses
- Harassment, accommodation, immigration, and medical-leave topics route to a human immediately
- Full transcript and action log retained under your retention policy and visible in the Registry
Outcomes
Numbers the Help Desk Agent is accountable for
Modeled outcomes from design-partner deployments. The Registry reports your actuals from the first week an agent is live.
75%
of HR case volume deflected1
−30%
median resolution time1
< 2 min
first response, any hour, any time zone
100%
of answers cite a source document or record
- 1.Modeled outcome from design-partner deployments. ↩
“Our HR partners used to start every case by asking the employee the same four questions. Now the case arrives with the answers attached. The deflection number is real, but the bigger change is what the team spends its day on.”
71%
of HR cases resolved without a human at Halvorsen Health1
Integrations
Systems it works with
Connected through prebuilt connectors and zero-copy warehouse access in Data Fabric. The agent acts as the user and inherits each system’s permissions on every read.
- HRIS
- Payroll providers
- Benefits administration
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- ITSM and ticketing
Credits
What the Help Desk Agent costs
Included on every plan: Starter with 5,000 credits per month, Growth with 30,000, and Enterprise with custom pools. Credits are consumed per completed action, never per message. Usage beyond the plan is billed at $0.12 per credit.
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Case resolved end to end | 2 |
| Question answered, no case opened | 1 |
| Case triaged and routed to a human | 1 |
Questions
Questions about the Help Desk Agent
Answered the way buyers ask them. Each answer is also published as structured data.
An AI help desk agent is software that answers employee HR questions and completes routine HR transactions by reading your policy documents and the employee's own HRIS record. Unlike a search box, it can act: it opens cases, submits changes for approval, and routes work to the right person. Unlike a general assistant, it is scoped to HR topics and to data the employee is allowed to see.
Three ways. It reads live system-of-record data rather than a static FAQ, so it can tell an employee their actual PTO balance instead of the accrual policy. It takes actions inside your systems with approval gates. And every answer carries a citation and a log entry, so HR can audit what was said and why.
No. The agent inherits the asking employee's entitlements from your HRIS security model. A manager can ask about their direct reports' PTO balances if your HRIS permits that today. An individual contributor cannot. The agent has no permissions of its own.
It says so and opens a case. It never composes an answer from general knowledge when your policy is silent. Unanswered questions are grouped by topic in the Registry so policy owners can see which documents need to be written or clarified.
Design partners went from kickoff to a live pilot in 3 to 5 weeks. Week 1 connects the HRIS and imports policies. Weeks 2 and 3 tune scope and escalation rules against your real case history. The pilot then runs for one department before rollout.
Related agents
Agents most often deployed alongside the Help Desk Agent, on the same data and the same approval policy.
Get started
Put the Help Desk Agent to work.
Start with one workflow, one approver, and one number to move. Most design partners were live in five weeks.