Set Up Sam

Set up, customize, and test automated AI voice check-in surveys with Sam to gather worker feedback across key employment milestones.

What you need before you begin

To set up Sam you need admin access in Fountain and the Talent Agents product enabled on your account. The Sam workspace has three tabs:

• Surveys (where you activate and configure check-ins)
• Responses (individual completed calls)
• Insights (aggregated themes)

This article will focus on the Surveys tab.

Each check-in is called a survey: a specific conversation Sam conducts with a worker at a particular milestone. You can activate as many or as few as you want. On the Surveys tab, the available templates are organized under All surveys, Active, and Inactive.

Survey Templates

Pre-first day check-in

outreach to new hires 3 days before their start date to confirm logistics, set day-one expectations, and catch any last-minute blockers that could cause a no-show.

Post first day check-in

a feedback conversation after a new hire's first day, capturing logistics issues, gaps in onboarding, and first-impression signals.

First week check-in

an end-of-first-week call to confirm role clarity, training adequacy, and goal-setting before first impressions harden into disengagement.

30 day check-in

a 30-day check-in to assess early settling-in, role confidence, and team integration. Catches at-risk workers before the 30-day mark becomes a turnover event.

60-day check-in

a 60-day call to assess manager relationship depth and engagement, designed to surface "quiet quitter" signals before they crystallize into attrition.

90-day check-in

a 90-day milestone check at the end of onboarding, covering overall satisfaction, long-term commitment, and likelihood to recommend the company.

Exit interview

a pre-final-day call to capture honest feedback on why workers leave (pay, management, culture, or personal reasons), to help reduce future attrition.

Activate a check-in survey

Activating a survey is a staged process: turning it on doesn't make it go live right away, so you have a chance to review everything first.

1. Open Talent Agents → Sam and stay on the Surveys tab.

2. Find the survey you want to run and click Activate on its card. This immediately creates the survey's pre-configured segment, but the survey does not go live yet.

3. You land on the survey's page, marked This survey is not active yet. Review and adjust the trigger, the questions, and any custom instructions, and test the conversation (see below).

4. When you're happy with the audience and the questions, click Activate again (top right) to take the survey live. Sam then starts reaching matching workers automatically.

Choose who Sam targets

When you activate a survey, Sam automatically creates a pre-configured segment for it. Each survey has its own default: for example, Exit interview targets workers whose termination date is tomorrow, and the milestone check-ins are based on start date and employment status.

You can keep the default segment or change it before going live:

• Swap in a different segment from your account, for example, one scoped to a specific location, brand, or employment type.
• Target an attribute change or worker update instead of a segment, for example only workers who have completed their first shift.
• Add filters to narrow who's included.

Make your changes and click Save. Sam uses Fountain's automation center to send notifications based on these conditions.

Edit a survey's trigger

On a survey card, open the ⋮ menu and choose Edit (or click Edit directly), then click Edit on the Trigger row. This opens the survey's installation editor as a full page.

Only Triggers And Filters Are Editable In the trigger editor, the source and agent are locked to the values chosen when the survey was installed; only the Trigger and Filters can be changed here.

The editor has three blocks:

• Source (a worker)
• Trigger (choose at least one)
• Filters (optional).

Click Add under Trigger to pick a condition from the menu: when a worker enters or exits a segment, is created, deleted, or updated, or when a worker's attribute, job, location, Onboard status, or status changes.

Customize Sam's questions

To adjust what Sam asks, open the survey ( ⋮ → Edit, or Edit on the card). The survey page shows the Trigger, Questions, and Custom instructions together, with Test and Save at the top right.

The Questions box holds one question per line. For example, the Post first day check-in ships with:

• "So, first day done! How did it go? Was it what you expected?"
• "Did you find the location easily?"
• "Did you have everything you needed today? Was anything missing or confusing?"
• "How was it meeting your team and manager? Did someone take care of you and show you the ropes?"
• "Is there anything you're still unsure about going into your next shift, like your pay, your schedule, or where to go?"

Edit the wording, add a question, or remove one that isn't relevant to your workers. Keep the list focused: three to five substantive questions per call.

Add custom instructions

Use the Custom instructions box to tell Sam anything it should say or handle a specific way during the call. For example: "During the introduction, mention that you only speak English and apologize if it's not their preferred language."

Click Save when you're done, then republish.

Test Sam before workers see it

Use the Test button at the top right of the survey page to hear the conversation yourself before it reaches workers.