Assigning your Inbox agent to conversations

Shopify Inbox includes an Inbox agent that can chat with customers who visit your online store. You can choose whether to activate the Inbox agent and which types of conversations it handles. Before activating Inbox, your conversations stay with your staff until you turn on the Inbox agent. You can switch between assignment modes at any time.

How the Inbox agent works

The Inbox agent uses your store's product catalog, store policies, and page content to respond to customer questions in real-time through the chat widget on your online store. The Inbox agent can answer product questions, make personalized recommendations, help with order lookups, and add items to a customer's cart.

Review the following details about how the Inbox agent works:

• It uses information from your store, including product catalog, policies, pages, and Knowledge Base. It can also cite web search results as a secondary source for product-adjacent content, but doesn't represent generic web results as if they were your store's knowledge.
• It handles customer data independently for each store and doesn't share customer information between stores.
• It only operates within your online store's chat widget.
• Personalized features, such as order lookups, are only available when the customer is signed in.

Requirements for using the Inbox agent

Your store must meet the following requirements to use the Inbox agent:

• Your store has Shopify Inbox installed.
• Your store has an active online store.
• Your store uses new customer accounts. The Inbox agent doesn't work with classic customer accounts. If your store uses classic customer accounts, then your conversations stay with your staff until you upgrade.

You can configure your customer account settings in Settings > Customer accounts, including your accounts experience and authentication methods.

Considerations for using the Inbox agent

Review the following considerations before you activate the Inbox agent:

• The Inbox agent generates responses using information from your products, store policies, and pages. Keeping this content accurate and complete improves the quality of responses.
• The Inbox agent handles common shopping questions. For complex or sensitive inquiries, the conversation can be handed off to your staff. When a customer asks to speak with a person, or the Inbox agent determines that a conversation needs staff attention, the following happens:
  • If staff handoff is available, then the conversation moves to your staff. The AI's prior context carries over to your staff.
  • If staff aren't available, the Inbox agent shares your store's sender email address so the customer can email you. To learn more, refer to Managing customer conversations.

Assignment modes

You can choose when the Inbox agent handles conversations by selecting one of three assignment modes. Your store's assignment mode determines whether the Inbox agent responds to customers automatically, only during specific hours, or not at all.

The following assignment modes are available:

You can switch between assignment modes at any time, and the assignment switch doesn't require reconfiguring your Inbox agent.

Customer experience

When a customer opens the chat widget on your online store and the Inbox agent is assigned, the Inbox agent is available to help answer their questions.

The Inbox agent can help customers with the following tasks:

• Product questions: Answer questions about product details, availability, and pricing.
• Product recommendations: Suggest products based on what the customer is looking for.
• Order lookups: Help customers check the status of an existing order. The customer is prompted to sign in before the Inbox agent shares order information.
• Add to cart: Add recommended products directly to the customer's cart.
• Replies in the customer's language: The Inbox agent replies in the language that the customer uses in the chat. Product titles and other catalog details might be displayed in your store's language.

Visitors can start chatting without signing in. Personalized features and order lookups are only available when the customer is signed in. If a customer asks the Inbox agent to review an order in a chat, the customer is prompted to sign in first.

Exclude products from the chat

When a customer opens your online store's chat widget, recommended products are displayed before they type a message. These products are selected based on your store's best-selling inventory, and they're displayed whether the Inbox agent is turned on or off.

You can exclude products that you don't want displayed in the chat, such as free gifts or operational items.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.

2. Select the product that you want to exclude from the chat.

3. In the Tags field, add the tag storefront-ignore.

4. Click Save.

After you save the product, it can take up to 24 hours for the exclusion to take effect. These products are cached for 24 hours, so the excluded product is no longer displayed in the chat after the cache expires.

Disclosing the Inbox agent to your customers

When you activate the Inbox agent, it uses your store's product data, policies, and pages to respond to customer questions. Customer chat communications are processed to generate responses and to improve the quality of the Inbox agent over time.

Customers receive a notice that the chat is powered by Shopify and that they're chatting with AI. This notice is displayed automatically and can't be removed or customized.

How data is handled

Review these details about how the Inbox agent handles data:

• The Inbox agent uses your store's existing product catalog, policies, and page content to answer customer questions. No additional data sharing is required to activate the feature.
• Customer chat communications are processed in real time to generate responses. Conversation history is accessible from your Inbox conversations.
• The Inbox agent handles customer data independently for each store and doesn't share customer information or conversation data across different stores.

Updating your privacy policy

If you use the latest version of the Shopify template privacy policy, then the Shopify template includes disclosures about Shopify's role in processing customer data for AI-assisted chat. Review your privacy policy to confirm that it accurately describes your business, data practices, and legal obligations.

If you use a custom privacy policy, then review it before you activate the Inbox agent. Your custom privacy policy should include the following information:

• A disclosure that you use Shopify to power AI-assisted chat on your online store.
• A disclosure that Shopify processes customer data, including chat communications, to generate responses and to improve the quality of the Inbox agent over time.

Change conversation assignment mode

You can change when the Inbox agent is assigned to conversations from your Inbox settings.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Inbox.

2. In the Inbox agent section, turn the Inbox agent on or off:

   • To stop the Inbox agent from handling any conversations, turn it off. Only your staff respond to customers.
   • To have the Inbox agent handle conversations, turn it on.

3. If you turned the Inbox agent on, choose an assignment option:

   • All conversations: The Inbox agent handles all new conversations.
   • Only when your staff is unavailable: The Inbox agent handles conversations only outside the availability hours that you set.

Your assignment change takes effect immediately for new conversations.