Configuring your Inbox agent persona

When you activate the Inbox agent, Shopify Inbox creates a default persona profile for you based on your store content. You can review, edit, and test this persona before or after you start using the Inbox agent.

Your Inbox agent's persona determines how it communicates with customers on your online store. You can edit the tone of voice and safety limits at any time to match your brand.

Inbox agent persona settings

Your Inbox agent persona includes the following settings:

Tone and personality: How your Inbox agent interacts with customers in conversations. You can describe the tone, such as casual, professional, or enthusiastic, and any personality traits. You can edit the persona at any time.
Guardrails: The Inbox agent includes built-in safety guardrails. You can refine these guardrails through your persona to set additional rules for what your Inbox agent should avoid and how it handles difficult situations. For example, you can instruct the Inbox agent not to discuss competitors or to avoid making claims about product specifications that aren't in your product listings.

Data sources

The Inbox agent answers customer questions by using your product catalog, store policies, Knowledge Base facts and files, and published storefront content such as pages, blog posts, sizing guides, and product care guides. The Inbox agent can also use cited web search as a secondary source for product-adjacent content such as usage ideas, styling tips, and reviews when your store information doesn't provide an answer. Product recommendations given by the Inbox agent are based on your store catalog only.

When customers ask the Inbox agent to review an order from a chat, the customer is prompted to sign in first. The Track my order option (order number and email) is available as an instant answer regardless of whether your Inbox agent is active.

Chat greeting

Your chat greeting isn't set as part of the Inbox agent persona. For online store chat, you manage the greeting message in the theme editor. If you leave it blank, an automatic greeting is displayed based on your store name and whether the customer is signed in.

Safety limits

The Inbox agent includes safety limits that help keep conversations on topic, within appropriate boundaries, and protected against misuse.

Conversation limits

The Inbox agent includes conversation limits to prevent excessively long exchanges and deter misuse. These limits are generous and designed not to restrict typical customer interactions:

In a single conversation, the Inbox agent responds to up to 100 messages for customers who aren't signed in and up to 1,000 messages for signed-in customers.
Each customer can start up to 50 conversations per day with your store.

When the Inbox agent reaches a limit, it stops responding and hands off that conversation to your staff if staff handoff is available. If staff handoff isn't available, the customer receives your store's sender email address and can contact you by email. Your Inbox isn't affected by the Inbox agent's limits, and your staff can continue the conversation directly.

Built-in safety features

The Inbox agent includes built-in safety features that don't require any configuration:

Rate limiting: Rapid-fire messages from the same visitor are throttled to deter misuse.
Bot and spam detection: Automated checks help filter out bot traffic and spam.
Blocked senders and IP addresses: Conversations detected as spam or from blocked senders are automatically filtered.

Staff handoff

If the Inbox agent isn't confident in its response, or a customer asks to speak with a person, the conversation can be handed off to your staff. To learn more, refer to Managing customer conversations.

You can control what the Inbox agent should and shouldn't discuss through your persona guardrails.

Edit your Inbox agent persona

You can update your Inbox agent persona at any time. Changes take effect immediately in new conversations.

Steps:

From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Inbox.
In the Persona section, click Edit.
Edit the Inbox agent persona. You can enter text directly in the text field.
Click Save.

When you train your Inbox agent by rating responses, the training system can generate updated persona suggestions. You can review and compare these suggestions with your current persona before accepting them.