Support AI assistant configuration
The AI Assistant settings pair a support agent persona with guidance — instructions that shape how the AI speaks and behaves in your conversations.
Selecting a support agent
The Support agent select on the AI Assistant page chooses which agent persona handles support conversations. If none is selected ("No support agent selected"), AI support cannot start — enabling the assistant with no agent selected is blocked with a warning.
Agents available here are the workspace's configured support agents (see the Automation module's agent management for creating and editing agents). The selected agent's prompt defines its base behavior; your guidance adds workspace-specific instructions on top.
Guidance
Add guidance creates instruction items the AI follows alongside its base prompt. Each guidance item has:
Title — a short label for the rule.
Question patterns — phrases or intents this guidance applies to (multiple patterns, one per line).
Answer/instruction — the guidance text: what the AI should do when these patterns appear.
Language (optional) — scope the guidance to a language.
Status — active or disabled; disabled guidance is retained but ignored.
Writing effective guidance
Guidance works best as short, imperative rules tied to observable situations:
Good: "When asked about refunds, first ask whether the request is within 30 days of purchase."
Good: "Tone: concise, no emoji, never promise timelines."
Less useful: "Be helpful and friendly." (The base prompt already covers this.)
Patterns should reflect what customers actually type — include common phrasings ("cancel", "unsubscribe", "delete my account") rather than your internal terms.
How guidance interacts with answers
Guidance shapes how the AI responds, not what it can know:
Guidance is applied on top of retrieved content; it cannot make the AI answer from content that isn't in your knowledge sources.
Guidance does not override safety behavior — hard escalations (abuse, PII, safety) always win.
Conflicting guidance items are resolved by the agent; keep instructions consistent to avoid unpredictable behavior.
Disabling the assistant safely
Turning Enable off stops AI handling for new messages. Existing AI-handled conversations complete their current turn; no new AI replies are generated. Conversations that were escalated remain in their queues. Re-enabling resumes the pipeline for new messages.
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