Agents
Industry models
What the agent knows about your industry before it meets your first customer, how that knowledge is carried between deployments, and how your own configuration sits on top.
On this page
A general-purpose AI model can talk fluently about property, travel or insurance. It does not know that the next instalment on an off-plan unit depends on which construction milestone the project has reached, or that a guest on a non-refundable rate has different options from one on a flexible rate. The industry model is what gives a Telonic agent that knowledge: the things your industry runs on, the rules attached to each, and how they relate. It is the foundation of specialisation, and the reason the agent's answers make sense in your customers' world.
What an industry model contains
An industry model describes the entities in one industry (the things the business runs on) and the rules attached to each. To the agent, a unit is not just a word. It belongs to a project, has a payment plan, a construction stage, a handover status and a list of open defects, and each of those decides what can be true and what can happen next.
| Part | What it describes | Property example |
|---|---|---|
| Entities | The things the industry runs on | Unit, payment plan, snagging item |
| Attributes | What each entity holds | A unit's tower, floor, view and completion stage |
| Relationships | How entities connect | A payment milestone belongs to a payment plan, which belongs to a unit |
| States | The stages an entity passes through | A snagging item is reported, inspected, fixed and closed |
| Rules | What must be true, and what follows from it | On a construction-linked plan, the next instalment falls due when the project reaches a milestone, not on a calendar date |
The technical detail
The industry model is a structured description of entities, relationships, states and rules, sometimes called a domain model or ontology. It sits in Telonic's software around the language model (the AI component that interprets the conversation and composes the reply), alongside your limits and the connections to your systems. The language model works with it, rather than standing in for it.
When the agent looks something up, the result is read against the industry model. A record from your property management system becomes a unit with a stage, a payment plan and open items the agent can reason about. Mapping your own objects and fields onto the industry model is part of connecting each system. See How a system gets connected.
Property
A developer's relationship with a buyer can run for years on an off-plan unit (one bought before construction is complete). The property model covers the whole of it, from enquiry to service charges.
| Entity | The rules attached | What it means in a conversation |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Belongs to a project and tower. Has a status, such as available, reserved, sold or handed over | Availability is answered from the unit's status in your inventory |
| Off-plan purchase | Sold before completion, so the buyer's questions follow construction progress | Progress and handover questions are answered for the buyer's project |
| Payment milestone | On a construction-linked plan, falls due when the project reaches an agreed stage | "What do I owe next, and when?" is answered from the milestone the project has reached |
| Snagging item | A defect reported at handover, with a process and a window your team sets | Logged against the right unit, and the buyer is told what happens next |
| Service charge | The charge for shared areas and services, set per project | Answered for the buyer's own project from your data |
| Registration and escrow | Questions about registering a sale with the Dubai Land Department (DLD), and about escrow and the other rules the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) applies at each stage | Answered from the material your team approves. Anything beyond it goes to a person |
Travel and hospitality
Travel is at least three businesses: airlines, hotels, and tour operators whose trips depend on several suppliers at once. The travel model covers the entities they share and the rules that differ between them.
| Entity | The rules attached | What it means in a conversation |
|---|---|---|
| Booking | Has a reference, travellers, services and suppliers | Found from the reference and confirmed with the identity checks you set |
| Fare class and fare rules | Set what a ticket allows: changes, fees and refunds | A change is offered only where the fare rules permit it |
| Flexible or non-refundable rate | Decides whether a stay's dates can change, and at what cost | "Can I change my dates?" is answered for the guest's own rate |
| Itinerary | Several flights, nights and transfers treated as one trip | A change to one leg considers the hotel night and transfer that depend on it |
| Schedule change, delay or cancellation | What a passenger is owed depends on whether the change was their choice or the airline's | The options offered reflect whose change it was |
Insurance
Insurance lines behave differently. Motor is high-volume and price-sensitive at renewal. Health questions rarely stop, and are often handled by a third-party administrator (a company that runs claims and servicing for the insurer).
| Entity | The rules attached | What it means in a conversation |
|---|---|---|
| Policy and schedule | The schedule is the document that sets out who and what is covered, the limits and the dates | Coverage questions are answered from the policyholder's own policy |
| Excess | The part of a claim the policyholder pays | Stated from the policy, not estimated |
| Exclusion | What the policy does not cover | Explained from the wording your team has approved |
| First notice of loss | The first report of a claim. The questions and their order depend on the claim type | A motor claim is taken with the questions your motor process requires |
| Claim status | Follows the stages in your claims system | "Where has my claim got to?" is answered from the claim itself |
| Renewal and no-claims discount | A no-claims discount is the reduction earned for claim-free years, and it carries into the renewal | Renewal questions reflect the policyholder's history |
| Network and pre-approval (health) | "Am I covered?" is three questions: the plan tier, the provider network, and whether the treatment needs pre-approval | The agent works through all three rather than giving a single yes or no |
Built once per industry, carried into every deployment
Telonic builds the industry model once for each industry, then carries it into every deployment in that industry. Each deployment adds workflows, edge cases and patterns that later deployments benefit from. A developer deploying Telonic starts with everything learned from the property deployments before it.
What carries across is industry knowledge. Your customer data never does.
| Carried from one deployment to the next | Stays in your deployment only |
|---|---|
| The industry model: entities, relationships, states and rules | Your customers, their records and their conversations |
| Workflow and conversation designs for the industry | Your documents, prices, terms and policy wordings |
| Edge cases learned in earlier deployments | Your limits, escalation rules and tone |
| Test sets built from conversation patterns in the industry | Anything drawn from your systems |
How your configuration sits on top
Two developers share the property model. They do not share a business. One sells on construction-linked plans, and the other offers post-handover plans, where payments continue after the keys are handed over. One gives buyers a longer defects window than the other.
Your configuration sits on top of the industry model and describes your business: your projects, products, rates and policy wordings, the way your processes run, your limits and your tone. Where your process differs from the common pattern, your configuration applies in your deployment. Your systems then supply the live facts for each customer.
In practice
Sahel Crest Properties, a Dubai developer, uses a Telonic agent for post-sale questions on WhatsApp.
- Yousef, a buyer, writes in English and Arabic: "Is my next payment due? I heard the tower is finished."
- The agent confirms his identity with the checks the developer has set, and finds unit B-0907 on a construction-linked plan.
- It looks up the project's stage in the developer's property management system. The structure is complete, but the finishing works milestone has not been reached.
- Because the industry model ties the instalment to the milestone rather than to a date, the agent explains that the next instalment is not yet due. It gives him the amount and the milestone that triggers it, both taken from his schedule.
- The conversation, the lookup and the answer are saved to Yousef's record, so the handover team sees it when his handover approaches.
What your team controls
- The products, projects, rates and policy wordings the agent uses.
- Where your processes differ from the industry pattern, and how.
- Which entities the agent can read, and which it can change, in each system.
- Which questions always go to a person, such as registration questions beyond your approved material.
Related
- Workflows and customer journeysAgents
- Policies as limitsAgents
- How an agent worksAgents
- PropertyIndustry guides
- InsuranceIndustry guides
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