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×Pilot proposal for Criteo’s long-tail team, 4 November 2026
An AI assistant that answers your long-tail advertisers, explains your products, reads their performance from your MCP and books a strategy call when there is budget to unlock.
Next step11 questions to scope the pilotFor the long-tail team, account management, IT and Legal
The gap
Each account strategist covers about 175 long-tail accounts. Emails go unanswered, calls can’t be taken, and the clients who could spend more never learn how.
Your figures from the 29 October call: about 8 account strategists with about 175 accounts each, calls of 15–30 minutes, ideally one call a month per client. Full-time equivalent at 168 hours a month.
Strategist time it would take every month
700 hours
about 4.2 full-time strategists, on top of the team you have today
How a conversation works
Finds the account in Salesforce from the number or email, before saying hello.
Product question, performance review, growth idea or a technical issue.
Reads that account’s performance from your MCP and your product documentation.
When there is budget to unlock, books a strategy call in the strategist’s calendar.
Technical issues go to customer care, as today. What it doesn’t know, it never invents.
An example conversation, with example data
AdvertiserMy campaign spent less this month. Is something wrong?
AssistantNothing is broken: your budget ran out early on 9 of the last 30 days, on days with good results. Want to see what more budget could bring?
AdvertiserYes, but I’d rather discuss it with someone.
AssistantSure: your strategist is free Tuesday at 10:00. Shall I book it?
What it covers
Assistant
What a Criteo product does, when it fits, how to set it up, from your help center and internal documents.
Assistant
Spend, results and trends of that advertiser’s campaigns, read live from your MCP and explained in plain words.
Assistant
Spots budget caps or products not yet used, and offers a strategy call with the strategist.
Customer care
Collects the details and passes the case to customer care, with the account already identified.
The scenarios are a first draft from our demo assistant. Your team decides the final list, the wording and where each case ends.
Two ways to start a conversation
Reactive · the pilot starts here
A client calls or writes in. The assistant recognises the account, understands the need and starts the right workflow: an answer, a strategy call or a hand-over to customer care.
Proactive · later, for clients who opted in
A signal in your data, for example a budget cap or a product not yet adopted, starts an n8n workflow. The assistant calls with that context and proposes a strategy call.
Always
Your strategists keep the human touch when they are available. The assistant covers the accounts and the moments they can’t.
Example signals, to define with you
The workflow passes the context to the assistant, so the client never has to repeat who they are.
What the strategist receives
Strategy call booked
Example Shop Ltd · performance review
Next action Prepare a budget scenario for the call.
Sent to customer care
Product feed not updating. Account, feed name and contact collected.
Identification
Known number or email
Before the conversation starts, the assistant finds the account in Salesforce and goes straight to the point.
Unknown contact
It asks for the account and checks it with the method you choose, for example a code sent to the registered email.
Not verified
General product information only, no performance data. The request goes to the team.
What the assistant can read
How a client is identified is question 5 of our list: the method is yours to choose.
For IT
HTTP requests load the account before the call, fetch data during it and write the outcome afterwards.
Requests only leave from these addresses, for your allowlist:
128.140.42.143 128.140.34.113 167.233.91.1 167.233.75.149 178.105.222.76
REST endpoints or an n8n workflow are enough. Proactive calls start from your workflow through our Outbound API.
Salesforce and your MCP via their APIs, with n8n where useful; MCP access is question 6. Docs: HTTP request · Outbound API.
For Legal and Infosec
Application and data run on Hetzner servers in Nuremberg, inside the EU.
Conversation data is not used to train artificial intelligence models.
On request, conversations are processed and not stored: the data stays in your systems.
Data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR, with the list of sub-processors.
Clients always know they are talking to an AI assistant: the greeting says so.
In this design the assistant reads performance data and never changes campaigns or budgets.
Contract details in the DPA. Single sign-on and custom agreements (DPA, NDA) are available for enterprise accounts.
The pilot
How it works
What we need from you
Cohort size, duration and channels are decided together in the scoping call, from your answers to the 11 questions.
How we measure the pilot
Conversations closed without a strategist, on accounts that got no answer before.
Qualified calls added to the strategists’ calendars from the cohort.
Your hypothesis: more attention, better product use, more spend. Measured against a comparable group.
No invented answers: every unknown case escalated and tagged.
Review every week
Targets and the comparison group are agreed together before the start (question 11).
The proposed timeline
29 October
Together
Two segments, the long-tail gap, reactive first.
29 October
fonio
Sent by email, also on slide 18.
November
Criteo
Cohort, Salesforce fields, MCP access, documentation.
November
Together
Pilot plan, scenarios, KPIs and the offer.
After scoping
fonio
Assistant, Salesforce and MCP via n8n, then live on the cohort.
After the pilot
Together
All long-tail accounts, then proactive calls and customer care.
Timeline proposed by fonio, to be confirmed together once the answers are in.
How pricing works
The main driver. The pilot is sized on the cohort; the price per minute goes down as volume grows.
Phone and WhatsApp today, email when fonio’s email assistant is released.
Simultaneous conversations and a number per market, if you want local numbers.
Salesforce and your MCP through n8n. A one-off cost on monthly billing, included on annual billing.
From short support packages to continuous optimisation of the assistant by our team.
Standard storage is included; zero data retention is an option.
We price the pilot after the scoping call, on the cohort and channels you choose. Prices exclude VAT; 30-day money-back guarantee. Pricing page.
Real cases
Kur + Reha · network of 12 clinics
5,000
calls a month pre-qualified and handled automatically
The AI recognises the request, answers general questions and passes the relevant conversations to the advisory team, saving several hundred hours of phone time a month.
Read the case (in German)Volkswagen VGSG · branches in Germany
100%
of unanswered calls go to the AI
The assistant answers, gives a first consultation and forwards the request with a summary to the right person. The first agent was ready in under an hour.
Read the caseLike your long tail: many clients with repetitive questions, and an expert team whose time should go where it counts.
What we need from you
| # | Question | Area |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | How many accounts in the first cohort, and which markets and languages? | Pilot scope |
| 2 | Inbound only, or also outbound to propose strategy calls? | Pilot scope |
| 3 | Channels: phone, email, or both? | Pilot scope |
| 4 | How is an account structured in your CRM, and which fields should the assistant read? | CRM and data |
| 5 | How do we identify the client: phone number, email, account ID? | CRM and data |
| 6 | Which metrics does your MCP expose, and how is access handled? | CRM and data |
| 7 | Where does product information live today: help center, internal docs, PDFs? | Knowledge |
| 8 | Strategy calls: whose calendar, and with which rules? | Flows |
| 9 | Escalation to customer care: call transfer, ticket or email, in which tool? | Flows |
| 10 | After each conversation: CRM note, summary to the strategist, task? | Flows |
| 11 | Which KPI defines a successful pilot? | Success |
Frequently asked questions
It doesn’t invent: it collects the request and passes it to you, or transfers the call during opening hours. You get analysis tags for every case where it couldn’t answer, so you can train it continuously and improve it over time.
Answers come from your knowledge base and your systems. When the information isn’t there, the assistant says so and hands over. Unanswered questions appear in a dashboard, so your team can add the answer once.
No. It serves the accounts nobody can serve today. Strategists keep the strategy calls, customer care keeps the technical cases.
No. The pilot is reactive. Proactive calls come later and only for clients who opted in.
On servers in Germany. Conversation data is not used to train AI models.
More than 60, and it switches language automatically during the conversation.
No. We connect through APIs only to the endpoints your IT opens.
Sources
Full help center: fonio.info/en
×Next call: as soon as the answers are in