Set up and use AI Agent on Chat (beta)

Beta feature: AI Agent on Chat is currently in Open Beta. It is available to any customer that subscribes to Automate. During the Beta, you can expect ongoing changes as we work to improve AI Agent on Chat based on your usage and feedback. Please note that AI Agent Actions are not currently supported on Chat.

When you set up AI Agent for your store, you can choose to connect it to your Chat channels.

For stores with a high volume of Chat tickets, enabling AI Agent on Chat allows you to automate repetitive tickets for your team and gives shoppers relevant answers to questions about your products, policies and brand in a conversational format.

In this article, you'll learn how to connect AI Agent to a Chat, plus what to expect when it sends messages to shoppers or hands over tickets to your team.

Requirements

You must have an active Automate subscription
You must have Lead or Admin permissions to set up AI Agent
You must have a Shopify store connected to Gorgias
- AI Agent is not supported on stores that use BigCommerce, Magento or WooCommerce

Before you begin

In order to use AI Agent to answer shoppers’ questions in Chat you must first:

Install Chat on your website or Help Center and connect it to the store where you want to use AI Agent
Onboard AI Agent with knowledge from your Help Center, website, or create Guidance.
- Onboarding equips AI Agent with the information to answer questions about your brand, products, and to follow your support processes.

Connecting AI Agent to a Chat

Once you’ve installed Chat and onboarded AI Agent, you can connect AI Agent to your Chat so it can start answering customer questions.

Go to AI Agent from the main menu
Select your store from sidebar, then click on Settings
Select the Channels tab
Under Chat Settings, open the dropdown menu and select one or more Chats from the list
Select Save Changes

When you’re ready, select the ON/OFF toggle to Enable AI Agent. AI Agent will automatically start to respond to tickets that you receive through Chat.

Note: Article Recommendations are automatically disabled when you enable AI Agent on Chat. We do this to create a better experience for shoppers and to avoid conflicting messages with AI Agent.

The Channel settings page for AI Agent in Gorgias with the "Enable AI Agent" toggle selected for Chat. A dropdown menu to select a Chat is highlighted.

How AI Agent responds to Chats

When a shopper enters a message in Chat, AI Agent automatically responds to the conversation to answer their question.

The AI will also respond to shoppers if they indicate they need more help after completing a Flow on Chat. Learn more about how AI Agent replies after a Flow.

To answer a shopper’s question, AI Agent replies using knowledge from your Help Center, website, Guidance and other resources
- You can add or update knowledge in AI Agent’s settings to onboard it with more information about your products and support processes.
AI Agent uses your tone of voice settings when speaking with customers. On Chat, your instructions for tone of voice are adapted to be more conversational, quick and concise.
To respond to shoppers with personal details, like order history or addresses, AI Agent will ask shoppers to sign in via email or SMS so that it can securely answer their inquiry. Learn more about shopper authentication.

A Gorgias chat interface. The user asks, ‘What’s the battery life like on this speaker? And is it waterproof?’ The automated response says, ‘The battery lasts up to 12 hours. Totally waterproof too! 🌊🔋’ Below, the system asks, ‘Was that helpful?’ with buttons for ‘Yes, thanks’ and ‘No, I need more help.’ A text input field is also visible at the bottom.

How AI Agent hands over Chats to live agents

AI Agent automatically hands over Chat conversations to your team whenever it lacks confidence in an answer, encounters a listed handover topic, or does not find any relevant knowledge to answer the shopper's question.

You can customize how AI Agent communicates with shoppers when it hands over a conversation. Learn more about how to customize AI handovers on Chat.

Responding to shoppers after a Flow

AI Agent can reply to shoppers after a Flow if they need further assistance.

You can add up to six Flows to your Chat to address common FAQs from shoppers. If a shopper indicates “No, I need more help” after a Flow, AI Agent will continue the conversation and attempt to resolve their inquiry.

Here’s how it works:

A shopper interacts with a Flow that you’ve added to Chat — for example “Where can I find your size guide?”
The Flow provides an automated response
If the shopper still needs help or asks a different question, the AI will pick up the conversation and try to resolve their inquiry
AI Agent will hand over the conversation to your team if it does not have knowledge about the topic, the shopper explicitly asks to speak with a human, or if it detects anger or frustration

Shopper authentication on Chat

When a shopper requests personal information from AI Agent on Chat, like details about their latest order, the shopper must first authenticate (sign in) before the AI can answer.

If the shopper cannot sign in, they can select Send us a message to connect with a human agent instead.

When asked for personal information, AI Agent prompts the shopper to sign in
The shopper selects Continue to sign in
The shopper can choose to receive a one-time code via Email or SMS
When the shopper enters a valid code, the conversation continues. AI Agent is able to provide information about their order history and other personal details.

Customer chat asking to track an order, followed by a prompt to sign in with email or SMS to proceed, highlighting an option to send a message if unable to sign in.

Abandoned conversations on Chat

Sometimes shoppers begin a conversation on Chat and become inactive after AI Agent has responded.

In these cases, conversations are considered abandoned after 10 minutes of inactivity and the ticket will be automatically closed. This helps keep your inbox organized, and allows your team to focus on conversations that require their attention.

Limitations

AI Agent can respond to shoppers’ questions using knowledge from your Help Center, website or Guidance that you create.

However, at the moment, AI Agent cannot perform the following tasks when messaging shoppers on Chat:

AI Agent cannot use Actions to automate tasks in 3rd-party tools in Chat, like cancel an order in Shopify or update a shipping address [Coming soon]

We are currently working on improving this experience. Check back later for updates.

FAQs

Do I need to create separate Guidance or tone of voice for AI Agent on Chat?

No, your settings for AI Agent are the same regardless of whether you use AI Agent to respond to questions on email or on Chat. Any new Guidance you create informs how AI Agent responds to tickets on both channels.

For settings like tone of voice, AI Agent continues to speak to customers based on your instructions, but automatically adapts its messages on Chat to be shorter and more concise compared to email.

Should I disable Article Recommendations or auto-replies if I use AI Agent on Chat?

When you enable AI Agent on Chat, Article Recommendations are automatically disabled to create a better experience for shoppers and avoid conflicting messages with AI Agent.

If you’ve r have created custom Rules to automatically reply to messages on Chat (for example, sending “Hey, thanks for your message” when a shopper starts a conversation), you may consider updating these messages or disabling them altogether when AI Agent is enabled on Chat.

Can I customize AI Agent’s initial greeting message?

When a shopper starts a new Chat , AI Agent first responds with the message “👋 Hey” to greet your shopper.

Your tone of voice settings affect how AI Agent speaks to shoppers, but it does not affect the initial greeting message.

If you want to edit the initial greeting to better align with your brand voice, you can edit the default text values found in Chat. Please note, this solution does require some technical skills, like using your browser console and editing code. You’ll want to look for the aiAgentHey key under sspTexts object to edit the value of the initial greeting message.

Set up and use AI Agent on Chat (beta)Updated 20 minutes ago