Create guidance to give AI Agent knowledge about your businessUpdated 8 hours ago

Guidance is reference knowledge you write for AI Agent in your own words. Think of a guidance as an internal article AI Agent looks up to answer the everyday questions shoppers ask that aren't tied to a specific request, like Do you have physical stores? or What payment methods do you accept?

Guidance is part of your knowledge. AI Agent finds the guidance most relevant to a shopper's question by matching the question to the content — if a shopper asks how to pay, it draws on your payment methods guidance; if they ask about your loyalty program, it draws on your loyalty guidance. Unlike a skill, a guidance isn't triggered by a detected intent; it's retrieved by relevance, which makes it the right home for general information that applies across many conversations.

In this article:

• What to use guidance for
• Create a guidance
• Add variables to guidance
• Include an action in guidance
• Convert guidance to a skill
• Duplicate guidance
• Write and format guidance
• Test your guidance
• Improve your guidance over time
• FAQ

What to use guidance for

Each guidance should cover a single topic, so AI Agent can the guidance most relevant to a shopper's question. You can start from a template and adapt it to your brand, or write your own from scratch.

Common topics to cover with guidance:

• Store locations and visiting information — addresses, opening hours, and in-store services
• Payment methods and gift cards — accepted payment methods, buy-now-pay-later, and gift card usage
• Loyalty and rewards — earning and redeeming points, tier benefits, and referrals
• Brand and product standards — where products are made, materials, and certifications
• Ingredients, allergens, and certifications — what's in your products and who they're suitable for
• Sustainability and social responsibility — your environmental commitments and ethical practices
• Gift wrapping and packaging — gift wrapping services, gift notes, and presentation
• Repair and aftercare — product repair, alterations, and care instructions

Create a guidance

You create and manage guidance from Knowledge in your AI Agent settings. You can have up to 100 guidance enabled at a time per store, each with a 30,000-character limit.

Although AI Agent can read and understand multiple languages, we recommend writing guidance in English for the best results.

1. Click the dropdown menu in the top-left corner, then select  AI Agent.

2. Click Knowledge.

   • If you have more than one Shopify store connected to Gorgias, use the dropdown menu to select a store.

3. Click Create content, then select Guidance.

4. Choose Custom guidance to write your own, or select a pre-built template for a common topic like store locations or payment methods.

5. Enter a descriptive name for your guidance. A clear, specific name helps AI Agent find the right guidance when it's relevant to a conversation.

   • Name your guidance for the topic it covers, like Payment methods and gift cards or Store locations and visiting hours.
   • If you prefer, you can phrase the title as the question it answers, like WHEN: a shopper asks about payment methods, the same convention used for skills. Either style works; it isn't required.

6. Write what you want AI Agent to know in the text editor. You can add variables to pull in Shopify data, and include actions you've created.

7. Click Publish to finish, then click In use by AI Agent to make it available for use.

Add variables to guidance

Variables are placeholders for specific data points that AI Agent can reference, like a Shopify order's tags, shipping address, or fulfillment status. Insert variables into your guidance to improve AI Agent's accuracy and personalize its response.

For example, in a guidance about currency, you might write: IF the [shipping address country] is Canada, THEN share prices in Canadian dollars. Here, [shipping address country] is the variable AI Agent fills in from the shopper's order.

To add a variable:

1. Open an existing guidance or create a new one.
2. Select {+} Variables in the text editor.
3. Choose a variable to insert into your guidance.

Include an action in guidance

Actions are mostly used inside skills, where they run as a step in a procedure. You can also include an action in a guidance when it helps AI Agent give a more complete answer — for example, to look up an order's details while responding to a question about order status.

To reference an action:

1. Open an existing guidance or create a new one.
2. Select Actions in the text editor.
3. Search for and select an action to insert.

For more on creating actions, see [create an action to connect AI Agent to other apps].

Convert guidance to a skill

Sometimes a guidance grows into a full procedure for one type of request, the kind of content that belongs in a skill. When that happens, you can convert the guidance into a skill directly.

1. Click the dropdown menu in the top-left corner, then select  AI Agent.
2. Click Knowledge.
3. Open the guidance you want to convert.
4. Select Convert to skill.

The guidance is removed from your knowledge, and a draft skill is created with the same content. From there, link the intents that should trigger the skill and customize it further. See create a new skill for AI Agent.

Duplicate guidance

To reuse or adapt an existing guidance, you can duplicate it instead of starting over. This is useful when you have more than one Shopify store connected to Gorgias and want to copy a guidance from one store to another.

1. Click the dropdown menu in the top-left corner, then select  AI Agent.
2. Click Knowledge.
3. Select the checkbox next to one or more guidance.
4. Click Duplicate. If you have more than one store connected to Gorgias, select the store the duplicated guidance should belong to.
5. Click Apply to finish.

Write and format guidance

A guidance reads like a short reference article. A clear, consistent shape helps AI Agent find the right guidance and answer from it accurately.

• Open with a one-line summary. Start each guidance by saying what it covers and when it applies, like This guidance covers payment methods, gift cards, and currency. Use it when a shopper asks how they can pay. This helps AI Agent recognize when the guidance is relevant.
• Organize the body under clear headings. Group related details under headings, and use bullet points and bold text instead of one long paragraph, so AI Agent can find the part that answers the shopper.
• Personalize with IF and THEN. When the answer depends on the situation, use IF and THEN to lay out the conditions, usually based on what you know about the shopper. For example, IF the shopper's [tags] include loyalty-gold, THEN let them know they get free shipping on all orders.
• Set boundaries. Tell AI Agent what it shouldn't say or promise, like don't quote a specific tax or customs amount, so its answers stay within your policies.
• Keep each guidance to one topic. Focused guidance is easier for AI Agent to find and match to a conversation, and easier for you to maintain. If one covers several unrelated topics, split it.

Test your guidance

Before you publish a guidance, test how AI Agent responds with it in place. Send AI Agent a message that you want the guidance to address, and check that it follows what you wrote. Make sure the toggle In use by AI Agent is turned on for the guidance first.

See preview AI Agent responses with test conversations for how to run a test.

Improve your guidance over time

Once a guidance is live, you can see how it's working and adjust it.

• Check its performance. AI Agent tracks how each guidance performs over the past 28 days, including the number of tickets it was used on, handovers, and average CSAT. See how your skills and knowledge are performing.
• Restore a previous version. Every published change to a guidance is saved, so you can compare versions and roll back if a change doesn't land the way you expected. See compare and restore previous versions.

FAQ

Next steps

• Knowledge explained — how AI Agent uses guidance and your other content
• Create a new skill for AI Agent — when guidance should become a skill