Tell them before the first ticket shows an internal note from something that is not a person. Rumour will fill the gap with “it is here to replace you”, and you will spend the first month undoing that instead of looking at reroutes.
The true design is also the message that lands. The agent takes the repeatable steps. The team keeps anything that can change a customer’s money or their legal position. If that is not true of what you are about to ship, do not ship it, and do not say it.
Say which steps move
On a support queue, the first release we would put live reads the ticket, sets the group and the tags, writes a private note explaining why, and does not speak to the customer. That is triage. It is dull in a demo and it is the version a team can live with.
Write those steps on one slide, or in one message, with field names they recognise. “It will set Group and add the intent tag. It will not send a public reply. It will not issue a refund.” If you cannot name the fields, you are not ready to tell them, because you are not ready to go live.
For sales operations the equivalent is: it will enrich and score and fill proposal fields. It will not email the prospect. For documents: it will extract and check. It will not book a payment.
Say which steps stay
Refunds, goodwill, cancellation, anything that changes a contract. Outreach and discounts. Payment facts, claims, legal positions. Those stay with a named human until you, not the vendor, approve a wider write.
People who work the queue already know which items can hurt the company. If the agent is forbidden from those, say so. If you plan to widen later, say that too, and say it will not happen silently.
The exception list is part of this conversation. Items the agent cannot finish will land with a person, with the source and the proposed action attached. That is not the agent dumping work. That is the agent stopping. If the packet is just “needs review” with no evidence, you have not designed the exception path, and the team will correctly treat it as extra work.
Who to tell, and when
The people who work the queue, their lead, and the person who owns access. Do it while the agent is still in shadow mode, so they can see the internal notes on real tickets before anything is written for real. A town hall after go-live is a briefing about a decision they were not in.
Invite the objection. “Will this rate us” is a fair question. Answer with the steps that stay, and with the fact that reroute rate is how you will judge the agent, which means their corrections are the measurement, not a mark against them.
If you want help putting that into one page before the agent is live, bring the queue to the assessment. The customer support page is the public version of what goes live and what stays with the team. Use it. Do not invent a softer story for internal use. They will test it on Monday.