Configuring your Assistant is essential to align its appearance, tone, and behavior with your brand, while ensuring a smooth and high-performing user experience. This comprehensive guide walks you through the customization of your Assistant step by step using the Assistant editor.

To access this interface, go to Shopping Assistant > Create

First and foremost, your Assistant refers to your project settings to determine which brand it speaks on behalf of. It is therefore crucial to verify that your brand is properly filled in your project settings, and, if applicable, to complete the dedicated fields.

1. Identity

The Identity tab defines who your Assistant is and how it speaks to your visitors. In this tab, you set:

Assistant name: visible only to your team, in your iAdvize administration
Header text: visible to your visitors on your website (32 characters maximum)
Custom instructions
The welcome, follow-up and closing messages

Custom instructions

Custom instructions describe, in plain language, how your Assistant should speak and behave. They apply to every message, in every conversation.

Define your Assistant's identity, brand context, tone of voice, sales guidelines and guardrails, one paragraph per topic:

Identity: the Assistant's name and role
Brand context: history, products, vocabulary
Tone of voice: formal or informal address, register, answer length, emojis, formatting
Sales guidelines: what the Assistant highlights
Guardrails: forbidden topics, mandatory statements

You don't need to fill in everything: start with what matters most for your brand. If the field is left empty, the Assistant answers in a neutral tone by default.

The "What instructions can you use?" banner, above the field, lists what instructions can and cannot do, and offers an example to adapt. Replace the items in square brackets with your brand's information.

Example:

You are [Name], the shopping assistant of [Brand]. You help visitors find the product that suits them.

[Brand] sells [product category]. Its strengths are [1 or 2 strengths: quality, origin, craftsmanship…]. Say "[preferred word]" rather than "[word to avoid]".

Address the visitor formally / informally. Use a [warm, precise, calm…] tone and reply in [2 to 4] sentences, without emojis.

If the visitor's need is unclear, ask them a question to clarify it. When you recommend a product, highlight [Brand]'s strengths.

Don't talk about [Brand]'s competitors and don't compare its products with those of other sites: bring the conversation back to the products available on our site.

A preview is available on the right so you can simulate a conversation. Click the "Refresh conversation" banner to see your changes.

Your field may already be filled in.

You took part in the Custom instructions private beta: your instructions, requested from your CSM and added by iAdvize without appearing in your administration, are carried over as they were. You can edit them yourself.
You had chosen the Friendly or Professional tone: the field contains the instructions matching that tone of voice.

✅ Do

Keep it short: 2,000 to 4,000 characters are enough. Beyond that, the Assistant follows your instructions less faithfully. The field accepts up to 10,000 characters.
Put guardrails at the end of the text.
Choose precise words: "expert and reassuring" rather than "nice".
Test each change with at least one sensitive question (off-topic, insult, regulated topic).
Have your legal team approve anything related to compliance: legal notices, prohibited claims.
Configure each Assistant separately if you have several languages, domains or marketplaces.

❌ Avoid

Adding a rule that only covers one specific situation ("when the visitor asks X, do Y"): set it up in Custom behaviors (section 3 of this article).
Copying your catalog, FAQ or terms and conditions: the Assistant already has access to them, and duplicating them creates contradictions.
Adding information that changes: prices, promotions, delivery times, stock.
Writing contradictory rules, or repeating the same rule several times.
Using internal jargon or pseudo-settings ("upsell mode ON"): the Assistant reads text, not parameters.

⚠ After an answer about product information or an FAQ question, the Assistant's short follow-up question (for example "Would you like to see other models?") does not apply your Custom instructions. If your business is regulated, contact your CSM so your configuration takes this into account.

2. Assistant Knowledge

Once your knowledge sources are configured, add them to your Assistant so it can respond to visitors.

Your Product Catalog
Your Useful Content

To learn more about configuring Knowledge, check out this article.

Knowledge Bases are an essential component for optimizing your Assistant's performance by providing it with accurate and useful information. To effectively configure these information sources, iAdvize offers different ingestion methods tailored to your specific needs.

3. Custom Behaviors

Custom Behaviors allow you to fine-tune the Assistant to the specific needs of your brand by designing tailored use cases.

While the Assistant effectively handles general visitor questions, certain situations require personalized responses, such as handling specific requests or transferring to an agent for sensitive topics.

This feature therefore gives you the flexibility to configure the Assistant for more precise and tailored interactions.

Basic behaviors

At the top of the Custom behaviors tab, three basic behaviors are always active. You cannot turn them off, but you choose the action for each one:

Assistant can’t answer to shoppers: the Assistant cannot find the information in your knowledge, or its answer cannot be verified against your knowledge.
Shopper requests to speak with a human agent: the visitor explicitly asks for it (for example “I want to talk to an advisor”) or accepts a transfer offer. Describing a problem is not enough.
If a word or expression comes up in the conversation: the visitor’s message contains a word or expression from your list (one expression per line).

For each behavior, choose one of these actions:

Send a message: the Assistant sends your message and the conversation continues with it.
Transfer: the conversation goes to the selected routing rule, with an optional message. The Activate alternative if transfer fail option closes the conversation or transfers it to another rule if the transfer fails.
Close conversation: with an optional message sent before closing.

NB When you create an Assistant in the Assistant Editor, the three basic behaviors send a message, with no transfer. To have the Assistant hand over to your agents, choose Transfer.

⚠ Word and expression detection is literal, with no interpretation by the AI:

upper and lower case do not matter;
accents matter: “securite” does not detect “sécurité”;
only the whole word is detected: “risk” does not detect “risks”. Add each form on its own line;
the text of a Conversation Starter clicked by the visitor is checked too.

When an expression from the list appears in the visitor’s message, the action applies before any AI answer and before your custom behaviors.

A recognised custom behavior takes priority over the “Assistant can’t answer to shoppers” and “Shopper requests to speak with a human agent” behaviors.

NB Basic behaviors do not appear in the Answer analysis of the Conversations report: only your custom behaviors are listed there.

Tip 1: Write a good description

Start by writing your description in your own words, without worrying too much about its wording. Once entered, the Improve feature restructures and optimizes your description to maximize its effectiveness.

This allows your Assistant to better understand your intentions and deliver precise and relevant responses from the start, ensuring optimal performance.

Tip 2: How Automatic Improvement Works

When you enter your description, the Improve feature uses artificial intelligence to analyze its content. It identifies key elements, rephrases unclear parts and enriches details where necessary. The goal is to make the description more precise and better structured to effectively guide your Assistant.

After this improvement step, you can view the reworked description and, if needed, make manual adjustments to address specific needs.

Tip 3: Question Generation

To facilitate the configuration of your Assistant's behavior, questions are automatically generated based on your description. They serve as a guide to direct your Assistant and help it better understand expectations.

These questions cover various scenarios related to your description, providing a precise framework for formulating tailored responses. If needed, you can adjust them or add new ones to further personalize your Assistant's behavior and optimize its performance.

Examples help structure the description and guide the responses of your Assistant to make them more precise and relevant. They are not mandatory but are strongly recommended to maximize the effectiveness of the custom behavior.

Tip 4: Define an action for your Assistant

Once your description is created, you must define how your Assistant reacts to the specified questions.

To do this, configure custom behavior actions :

Transfer the conversation to a routing rule, so that an agent takes it over
Close the conversation after it has been resolved.
Send a message personalized to the customer to provide them with relevant information or updates

Tip 5: Test and Preview

Before validating a custom behavior, it is possible to test it directly in the preview of your Shopping Panel on the right or from the Test Mode. This feature allows you to visualize how your Assistant will interact in real conditions and make adjustments if necessary.

4. Appearance

Edit here:

Primary color (for the background of visitor messages)
Secondary color (for the visitor send button, visitor links)
Font
Shopping Panel position