Strategize your voice, tone, and communication style
Not only do you need to make sure your agent is equipped to accurately respond to questions, but Agent governance is key. For example:
- How should it behave?
- What should your Agent handle?
- When should it escalate?
Establishing this structure is a crucial part of your customer experience design. In Klaviyo, you can configure this by heading to Customer Agent > Guidance. Here you can configure key settings, like:
- Brand summary
- Voice and tone
- Language
- Communication rules
- Escalation rules
In the video below, take a look at how athletic apparel brand Eastie governs their Customer Agent with tone and communication style choices.
Configure your guidance in Klaviyo
Once you’ve planned how you want to configure your Agent guidance, head into Klaviyo and click Customer Agent > Guidance. Now, click the tabs below to learn how to set up each section.
Brand summary
Your brand summary is the first section within the Guidance tab.
Here, use up to 500 characters to describe your brand: who you are, what you do/sell, and who makes up your customer base.
These details will help give Customer Agent important business context so they can emulate your brand when answering customer questions.
Voice and tone
The voice and tone selections provide Customer Agent with guidance around the way they should interact with your customers. This is your Agent’s personality: it dictates not the information they say, but how they say it.
Think of the personality our brand exudes across your website, marketing, and all other communications. You should tailor your Agent to match the same style.
You can choose between preset options on the Voice and tone card, like:
- Neutral (e.g., “You can find our shipping policy at example.com/shipping.”)
- Professional (e.g., “Our shipping policy is available at example.com/shipping. Please let me know if you have questions.”)
- Friendly (e.g. “Happy to help! You’ll find our shipping info at example.com/shipping.”)
- Playful (“Got you! Shipping deets right here: example.com/shipping.”)
Or, you can create your own custom voice and tone. To do so, just select Custom and describe your ideal voice and tone in natural language. It’s recommended you write your custom tone concisely (keep it to around a paragraph), and include specific descriptors and analogies.
Communication style
Where voice and tone dictate your Agent’s general personality, communication style decides your Agent’s more specific response habits. These are the “do’s” and “don’ts” of how your customer should communicate with your customers that are layered on top of your set voice and tone.
For example, here are some example communication style rules you might configure:
- Lead with the answer to a question, and include details afterward.
- Do not use exclamation points.
- Say “guest” instead of “customer”.
- If describing a step-by-step process, use numbers or bullets.
To create new communication rules, scroll to the Communication style card and click Add rule. Give your rule a title and a clear, informative description. Make sure you toggle on Enable when you’re ready to go live.
When writing your communication rules, follow these best practices:
- Be specific.
- Phrase them as an action (do or don’t do this).
- Keep them focused (1 action per rule).
Keep in mind that while you can set up each of these manually, you can also use the Agent Builder to build each of these quickly, using natural language and descriptions.
To access Agent Builder, click on the Preview button within Customer Agent, and then describe the guidance you’d like to add or refine on the Build tab.
Learn how to use the Agent Builder to configure your agent guidance.
Set up escalation rules for appropriate human handoff
While Customer Agent can support a thorough range of customer inquiries and questions, there are certain situations you may want a human agent to handle instead.
Escalation rules allow your Agent to understand when they should route a customer to your support team. Do note that you can create up to 20 total escalation rules.
- Head to Customer Agent > Guidance > Escalation rules card.
- Click Add rule.
- Add a title for your rule.
- Write your trigger description. Be specific about when exactly it should route the conversation to a human agent.
- Click Save.
Examples of escalation rules
Click through the dropdowns below to learn some examples of escalation rules, and how you may write them to ensure the Agent hands off when expected. Do keep in mind that common escalation rules will vary by industry: the list below are some general examples.
Damaged or defective item report
What this means: Someone reports that their product arrived damaged, broken, or defective.
Why you should escalate it: This may require refunding or replacements that should be handled by your support team.
Best practices for writing it: Include specific language a customer might use to report this (like broken, defective, damaged, not working, malfunction, doesn’t work as promised, etc.).
Legal threat or compliance issue
What this means: Someone threatens legal action in some shape or form.
Why you should escalate it: These types of concerns or threats should always be handled by a human support agent.
Best practices for writing it: Include specific language a customer might use to report this (like lawyers, lawsuit, compliance, regulation issue, sue, legal action).
Profanity or abusive language
What this means: Customer is using inappropriate language or tone when communicating with the Agent.
Why you should escalate it: These types of communications signal a very frustrated customer, and a human can help de-escalate or end the conversation.
Best practices for writing it: Include specific language or tone descriptions that a customer may use to signal this (profanity, aggressive tone, abusive language, etc.)
Explicit request for a human
What this means: Customer has explicitly asked to speak to a human support agent rather than the Customer Agent.
Why you should escalate it: Their inquiry may require a human handoff, and continuing to talk to Customer Agent may increase frustration or friction.
Best practices for writing it: Include specific language a customer might use (talk to human, talk to representative, connect me to person).
Diagnose Customer Agent issues and implement solutions
We’ve now learned a lot about configuring your content and guidance for Customer Agent, and the importance of testing. Now, let’s say you see something off while you’re testing - what do you do next? How do you know what needs fixing?
Let’s take a look at some common issues you might see, identify the likely root cause, and explore potential solutions.
Response issue | Likely root cause | Where to fix it | Example fix |
|---|---|---|---|
The agent doesn’t answer the question | Missing factual knowledge or missing source content | Content | Add or upload the missing FAQ, policy, help-center page, or approved source that directly answers the question |
The answer is vague, incomplete, or not very helpful | Source content is unclear, too broad, or not written in an agent-ready way | Content | Rewrite the source more clearly and directly so the agent can reuse it well |
The agent uses old information like outdated promos or policies | Outdated content is still indexed or synced | Content | Re-sync or delete outdated sources and replace them with current approved content |
The answer sounds off-brand, robotic, too formal, or awkwardly AI | Guidance is too weak or too generic around voice, tone, and behavior | Guidance | Update brand summary, tone of voice, and communication rules so replies sound warmer, clearer, and more brand-aligned |
The agent answers when it really should hand off, or hands off a question that it should be able to answer. | Escalation rules are not clear enough, or are too weak or too strong | Guidance | Add clearer escalation instructions for that scenario and define when the agent should collect info, guide, or route to support |
Preview and testing best practices
Whenever you add or refine the content on the Guidance tab (brand summary, tone and voice, communication rules, escalation rules), we recommend testing your agent to ensure it’s behaving as expected.
To do so, head to Preview > Preview tab, and ask mock questions as if you were a customer. If you notice anything off or incorrect about how the Agent is behaving, that’s a signal to refine your guidance.
Make sure to expand the dropdown tool to check where it's coming from.