The Booking Agent is a Merlin Engage agent that schedules appointments with your leads by text or email. Its goal is simple: get a confirmed time on the calendar.

The Booking Agent is configured by pointing it at one of your booking forms. It follows that form's existing rules for availability, staff assignment, round-robin distribution, etc. so appointments land exactly where they would if the lead had booked through the form themselves.

If you don't have a booking form set up yet, you can create one directly while setting up the agent.

The agent guides the conversation toward a time that works for the lead. If finding a time conversationally takes too long, it can send the lead a direct link to your booking form instead, so they can pick a time themselves.

The Booking Agent can be used on its own, or chained to another Engage agent so a lead moves straight from being qualified to booking a time, without a new conversation starting. From the lead's perspective, it feels like one continuous conversation even though a different agent has taken over behind the scenes.

You can set this up as a handover from any agent's outcome. For example, sending every Chase Hard lead from a Collect and Qualify Agent straight into the Booking Agent. You can also trigger these agents through an automation.

See Merlin Handovers for details on how that connection works.

It will never claim to be human. If a lead asks, you choose whether it acknowledges being AI and continues, or hands the conversation to your team.

Go to Merlin → Engage → Agents and click New Agent.

In the window that opens, choose Book a meeting as the agent objective.

Give it a name, choose the booking form it should use (hosts, availability, and confirmations all come from that form), and optionally turn on Analyze my firm's tone to have Merlin scan your past SMS messages for tone patterns before you start customizing:

Give the agent an Identity Name and, optionally, an Identity Role, and add one or more Supervisors.

Choose a Communication Tone (Professional, Balanced, Casual, or Empathetic), and set which Channels it can use (SMS, email, or both, with one marked as primary.)

If Email is toggled on, you'll want to configure your email settings, including:

Agents come with default instructions that they will always follow.

Add any Custom Instructions or Never Say Rules the same way you would for any Engage agent.

Add any specific SMS or Email instructions you might want to ensure different behaviors on different channels:

A Booking Agent needs something to trigger it.

This can be either a handover from another agent (see Merlin Handovers) or an automation action:

Choose how much autonomy the agent has:

Set your AI Disclosure preference: either Escalate to a Human immediately or Acknowledge & Confirm before moving on with the conversation. If you choose Acknowledge and Confirm, you have the option for a custom confirmation message:

Note: recurring follow-ups sent by text count against your firm's total SMS volume.

Determine if you want the agent to add a conversation summary to the matter's notes after engagement ends

Supervisors will be notified when a conversation completed, was escalated to your team, or stopped because an exit condition was met

Set whether stage or status changes should stop the engagement

A soft cap on total messages; the agent wraps up gracefully rather than cutting off abruptly)

Confirm or change the booking form it should follow. Availability, hosts, locations, and confirmations come from the booking form you choose. You can pick an existing form or create one directly from here. You can Also edit the form directly frm this page using the "Edit availability, hosts & location" option.

Then choose how it approaches scheduling:

Each attempt ends in one of four outcomes, visible in your reporting: Booked, Not booked, No response, or Handed to human.

Use the Test Agent tab to run through a conversation before activating — same as with any other Engage agent.

For pricing details, see Merlin Pricing.