Meet Carly. The benefits expert for every employee.

Employees can ask Carly anything they'd ask your benefits team, and Carly answers from your whole program, 24/7, in the tools they already use. That includes plan comparisons (medical, dental, vision, and supplemental insurance), coverage details, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, HSA and FSA contributions, 401(k) enrollment, leave of absence policies, COBRA, and wellness program eligibility. Employees can also ask Carly to help them think through specific scenarios, like choosing between an HDHP and a PPO based on their expected healthcare usage, or what happens when they have a baby, take leave or plan for retirement. Carly answers across every benefit involved in a life event, from leave to 401(k), any time of year.

Carly goes beyond simple lookups. Employees can upload documents like an Explanation of Benefits or a spouse’s plan summary and ask Carly to identify differences or compare options across plans. The types of questions Carly handles will expand over time as your organization adds more data sources and benefits documentation to the platform.

Carly is highly accurate because every answer comes from your program and is checked for accuracy and safety before employees rely on it. Avante is built around a 0% hallucination tolerance standard. 100% of Carly’s responses are evaluated against rigorous criteria for accuracy, groundedness, and helpfulness. Every answer Carly provides is grounded in your organization’s specific benefits documentation, not general knowledge, and 100% of sources are cited with direct links to the exact reference material.

Guardrails keep Carly within the rules: they stop answers it shouldn't give and route them to your team. When Carly encounters a question it cannot answer with confidence, it escalates to the appropriate resource rather than guesses. The platform includes built-in guardrails, human oversight protocols, and continuous monitoring led by Avante’s co-founder and AI ethicist, Dr. Carly Eckert. In benefits, there is zero tolerance for wrong answers, because an incorrect response can lead to real financial or health consequences for an employee. Avante is built to be right for your employees and safe for your company.

No. Carly answers from your organization's own plan documents, data and policies, which the Benefits Ontology organizes into a trusted model of your program. Avante does not train models using your data. Carly layers on third-party data such as regulatory and leave policy information to enrich its answers, and every source is vetted and curated before it enters the platform. When Carly answers a question, it cites the exact source it drew from, so employees and your HR team can verify every response. And unlike a general-purpose chatbot, which answers only the literal question, Carly guides employees to the right next step, so they find and use the benefits they need.

Carly personalizes its answers using your program, what employees choose to share, and, if you connect it, HRIS data. At a baseline, every response is grounded in your organization’s specific benefits documentation, so employees always receive answers relevant to your plans and policies rather than generic information.

Beyond that, employees can share context directly with Carly at any time. The more an employee shares about their situation (an upcoming procedure, a life event, their family size, a spouse’s coverage), the more tailored Carly’s guidance becomes. Employees control what they share and can provide as much or as little as they are comfortable with.

For deeper personalization at scale, employers can connect HRIS data so Carly automatically knows each employee’s enrollment history, plan selections, location, and other relevant attributes. For example, Carly can reference an employee’s current plan when answering a coverage question, or surface location-specific options when plans vary by state. Most employers start without HRIS integration and layer it in over time.

Importantly, Avante believes employees should always have the choice to opt in to tools like Carly. No employee should ever be required to share personal data or use a decision support tool as a condition of enrolling in their benefits. When employees do engage with Carly, their personal information is encrypted and stored separately from aggregate data. Individual employee data is only accessible by the employee themselves. HR leaders and benefits teams see aggregate patterns and trends through Ava, never individual employee conversations or personal details.

Carly doesn't guess: when a question is outside its scope or it can't answer with full confidence, it tells the employee and routes them to the right resource. Guardrails stop answers Carly shouldn't give and route them to your team. Carly clearly tells the employee that it does not have enough information to respond and provides a path to the right resource. That might mean directing the employee to a specific HR contact, a benefits help desk, a carrier’s member services line, or a relevant page in their benefits portal. The escalation paths are configured during implementation based on your organization’s existing support structure, so employees always land in the right place.

Carly also includes safety protocols for sensitive situations. If an employee expresses signs of emotional distress or risk of self-harm, Carly is designed to respond with care and immediately surface appropriate resources, including your organization’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and crisis support services. These safe-response protocols are built into the platform and reflect Avante’s commitment to employee wellbeing beyond just benefits navigation.

Carly works directly in the tools employees already use: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, ServiceNow, and a dedicated web experience. Because Avante is headless, Carly can also sit behind the enterprise AI your company already runs, like Copilot, Gemini or Claude. There is no separate app to download and no additional login required. Employees get benefits guidance inside the workflow they are already in, which removes friction and drives higher engagement. 16 to 43% of questions arrive after hours, which means employees are getting help at the moments they actually need it, without adding to HR’s queue.

Yes. Carly can be white-labeled to match your organization’s brand, visual styling, and tone of voice, to align with your internal benefits communications strategy and materials. The goal is for the experience to feel like a natural extension of your organization’s benefits program, not a third-party tool.

Most employers are live with Carly in weeks, typically within 30 days. Implementation starts with Avante ingesting your benefits documentation (SPDs, plan guides, enrollment materials) into Vault and configuring Carly for your organization’s specific plans, policies, and terminology. From there, Avante connects Carly to the delivery channels your employees already use. There is no heavy IT lift. Avante’s implementation team manages the setup end to end, and your HR and benefits team reviews and approves the configuration before launch.

Adoption starts with meeting employees where they already are. Because Carly embeds into Slack, Teams, Outlook, and other tools employees use daily, there is no new app to learn or habit to build. Avante also provides launch support including communication templates, internal announcement guidance, and best practices for rolling Carly out across your organization.

From there, engagement tends to build organically. When employees get a fast, accurate, helpful answer to a benefits question, they come back. Avante sees 60% adoption and 93% employee satisfaction, and customers see 7x higher engagement than legacy decision support and benefits navigation tools. Usage data is visible through Ava, so your team can track adoption in real time, see where confusion is building, and adjust communication strategies based on what you see.

Yes. Plan comparison is one of Carly’s most-used capabilities. Employees can ask Carly to walk them through the differences between your organization’s plan options, including cost breakdowns based on their specific situation (family size, expected utilization, preferred providers). Carly can also help employees compare your plans against a spouse’s or partner’s employer coverage. Employees can upload a spouse’s plan summary or benefits guide, and Carly will help them evaluate the options side by side. This is especially valuable during open enrollment, when employees are making decisions that affect their household’s healthcare costs for the entire year.