AI Agent Development
AI agent development: custom agents that do the work, then tell you what they did.
AI agent development from Ironbridge AI Advisory is a service for companies that want custom AI agents built into the systems they already use and kept running afterward. An AI agent is software that reads a request, decides what to do, takes the action in your tools and reports back. Our senior team scopes, builds, integrates and operates each agent for one flat monthly fee, month to month.
What the service covers
From choosing the first agent to running it in production.
Strategy and scoping
We identify the agent worth building first, define its one job, and agree on what good output looks like before any code is written.
Custom agent engineering
Agents built around your operations, with the instructions, context, tools and limits they need to act on their own.
Chat and voice assistants
Conversational agents that recognize intent, keep context through a conversation and sound like your company.
Systems integration
Agents connected to your CRM, ERP, inbox, calendar, helpdesk and internal APIs, with access limited to what the job requires.
Agent assist
Behind-the-scenes agents that summarize, suggest and fetch information so your people move faster on the work they keep.
Multi-agent systems
Several agents that each own a step, such as research, drafting and checking, for work too involved for one.
Agents by team
Each of these has its own page with use cases and questions specific to that team.
- Sales
- Prospecting, inbound response, follow-up, call prep and CRM updates. See our AI agents for sales page.
- Customer support
- Ticket resolution across chat, email and voice, with a clean handoff to a person. See our AI customer support agents page.
- Small business
- A receptionist, lead triage and back-office help for teams without spare headcount. See our AI agents for small business page.
- Managed service providers
- Ticket triage, first-line resolution, QBR preparation and after-hours coverage. See our AI for MSPs page.
- Operations and finance
- Document intake, approvals, reconciliation and scheduled reporting, usually paired with our workflow automation services.
- Research and analysis
- Agents that read across your data and documents, answer questions with citations and flag what changed.
Where agents create the most value
The pattern is the same in most businesses: repeated decisions, a lot of information and work that does not stop at five.
High-volume decisions
When people approve, route, classify or prioritize the same kinds of requests all day, an agent applies the same logic every time.
Information-heavy work
Agents read structured records and unstructured text together and surface what matters while there is still time to act.
Coverage outside business hours
Agents monitor, respond and escalate overnight and on weekends, when a person would not be available.
Growth without matching headcount
Agents absorb repetitive volume so output can grow without payroll growing at the same rate.
How an agent goes live
- 1
Scope
Pick one workflow, define the outcome, the tools the agent may use and the rules for escalating to a person.
- 2
Build and test on history
We run the agent against past examples from your own systems and compare its output with what your team did.
- 3
Shadow
The agent drafts, a person approves, and we measure how often they agree.
- 4
Go live
Easy cases run on their own. Edge cases and anything low-confidence stay with a human.
- 5
Improve
Every correction feeds back in, and a monthly report shows what the agent handled and what it saved.
Guardrails on every agent
Least access
Each agent gets only the permissions its job needs, and write actions are limited to named systems and fields.
Confidence thresholds
Below a set level of certainty the agent stops and hands off with full context, instead of guessing.
A full log
Every input, decision and action is recorded, so you can see why the agent did what it did.
A named owner
One person on your side and one on ours are responsible for each agent, with a regular review of its exceptions.
What we measure for every agent
- Share of requests the agent completes without a person
- Agreement rate between the agent and your team during shadow mode
- Response time before and after
- Hours of repetitive work returned to the team
- Escalations, and what each one taught the agent
Questions we get asked
What does an AI agent development company do?
It designs, builds and maintains AI agents for a client's specific workflows. Ironbridge does this as an embedded team: we choose the first agent with you, build it into your systems, test it against your history and operate it after launch.
What is the difference between an AI agent and a chatbot?
A chatbot answers questions. An agent also takes actions, such as updating a CRM record, booking a meeting or creating a ticket, and decides when to escalate. Many agents never chat at all and work in the background.
How long does it take to build a custom AI agent?
A single-job agent in modern tools moves quickly. Agents that span several systems or need a complex approval flow take longer. We give a schedule after scoping, once we have seen the integrations involved.
Which systems can your agents connect to?
Anything with an API, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Zendesk, Intercom and common ERP and helpdesk tools. For older systems without an API we use screen automation.
Which AI models do you use?
We choose per task from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and open-source providers, and route simple work to cheaper models. Agents are built so a model can be swapped without a rebuild.
How do you stop an AI agent from making mistakes?
Narrow scope, least-privilege access, confidence thresholds, a shadow period where people approve its work, and a log of every action. Anything risky or uncertain goes to a person.
How much does AI agent development cost?
Ironbridge charges one flat monthly fee, month to month, that covers building and running your agents. The amount is scoped on a strategy call.
Last reviewed by the Ironbridge AI Advisory team.
Ready to put an agent to work?
Book a strategy call and we will identify the highest-return agent in your operations, whether or not you hire us.