Getting started with Customer Agent
You will learn
What Customer Agent is, how it works, and the steps to get from setup to launch. By the end, you’ll know which building blocks shape Customer Agent’s behavior and where to go to configure each one.
What is Customer Agent
Customer Agent is Klaviyo’s AI agent that resolves shopper inquiries on your behalf — on every channel your shoppers use to reach you: web chat, email, SMS, and WhatsApp. It’s one agent everywhere, drawing on the same knowledge and Guidance. It can track orders, answer product and brand questions, recommend products, process returns and exchanges, manage subscriptions, and hand off to a human when something needs personal attention.
Customer Agent comes with tools for common tasks and can use them directly when allowed. Connect your integrations, review tool permissions, and use Composer to add custom behavior when needed. You can also create custom skills and tools.
Customer Agent works on all your channels
Customer Agent meets your shoppers wherever they reach out, and it’s the same agent on every channel — same knowledge, same Guidance. Launch 1 channel or all 4; each is configured separately and they can run in any combination.
- Web chat — Customer Agent answers shoppers in the web chat widget on your site.
- Email — Customer Agent replies to inbound shopper emails.
- SMS — Customer Agent handles two-way text conversations.
- WhatsApp — Customer Agent responds to WhatsApp messages, within Meta’s messaging rules.
Customer Agent detects and replies in your customer’s language on every channel. On SMS, if you turn off a language, Customer Agent replies in your configured default language instead. See Customer Agent in your customer’s language. For step-by-step setup on each channel, see How to launch your Customer Agent.
Before you begin
You’ll need the following for the channels you want to launch:
- A Klaviyo account with Owner, Admin, or Manager role
- For web chat and email: configure web chat at klaviyo.com/settings/webchat/general and inbound email at klaviyo.com/settings/email/inbound-email-settings.
- For SMS: SMS configured at klaviyo.com/settings/sms, with a two-way SMS-enabled sender. SHAFT brands cannot activate Customer Agent on SMS. See Guide to using customer agent on SMS.
- For WhatsApp: WhatsApp configured at klaviyo.com/settings/whatsapp, with a verified Meta business account.
How Customer Agent works
When a shopper sends a message, Customer Agent runs through 4 steps:
- Receives the message across whichever channel the shopper used.
- Adds context — pulls in your brand summary, the shopper’s profile and history, and any active Guidance.
- Understands the request and selects relevant tools or a matching custom skill.
- Responds using your content, permitted tools, guidance, and any applicable skill instructions, or hands off when needed.
Customer Agent handles a wide range of shopper inquiries:
- Brand and product questions (“What’s your return policy?”, “Is this dairy-free?”)
- Product recommendations (“What do you suggest for sensitive skin?”)
- Order status and tracking (“Where is my order?”)
- Returns, exchanges, and order edits
- Subscription and loyalty management
- Small talk, greetings, and follow-ups
The 4 building blocks
Customer Agent’s behavior comes from tools, content, guidance, and optional custom skills. Start with your connectors and tool permissions, then add specific instructions as needed.
Skills
Custom skills define instructions for workflows with specific policies or steps, such as handling a refund request. They are optional: common tasks can use permitted tools directly.
Use Composer to describe the behavior you want. It can adjust tool permissions, create custom skills, and update guidance. Custom skills and previously customized default skills remain available; untouched default skills and their templates have been removed.
Tools
Tools are specific capabilities Customer Agent uses to fetch data or take actions during a conversation — like looking up an order, searching your catalog, or retrieving customer subscriptions. Customer Agent comes with a set of tools out of the box, and you can create fully custom tools that connect to public HTTP endpoints.
Content
Content is everything Customer Agent knows about your brand — your help articles, policies, product details, FAQs. When your storefront URL is available, Customer Agent starts importing it during setup. Most brands have hundreds of pages indexed before adding anything manually. You can add documents, webpages, and snippets directly in Customer Agent.
Guidance
Guidance shapes how Customer Agent communicates and decides what to escalate. It includes brand summary, tone of voice, communication style rules, and escalation rules. Guidance applies across conversations.
Setup checklist
A typical Customer Agent setup looks like this:
- Complete initial setup. In Klaviyo, open Customer Agent. If prompted, click Get started or Continue setup to complete the initial setup.
- Connect your integrations and review tool permissions in Customer Agent > Connectors. Choose which tools Customer Agent can use directly, only through skills, or not at all.
- Review your content and guidance. In Customer Agent > Knowledge, check imported storefront content, fill policy gaps, and add webpages or documents if nothing was imported. In Customer Agent > Guidance, set your tone and review escalation rules. Enable the rules you want to use, then click Save.
- Add custom behavior when needed. Explain your workflow and policies to Composer so it can adjust permissions, create custom skills, or update guidance. Review its proposed changes and publish any custom skills you want to use in live conversations.
- Configure handoff. Open Customer Agent > Launch and select a channel you plan to use. Choose where conversations go when a human is needed, or enter a custom message to send when Customer Agent cannot help. Click Save and repeat for each channel. See Managing Customer Agent settings.
- Test your agent. Open Customer Agent > Playground, or use the Preview panel if Playground is not shown. Try common questions, policy edge cases, and sensitive actions. Check responses, tool use, and handoffs, then refine the configuration.
- Launch. Open Customer Agent > Launch and select a channel: web chat, email, SMS, or WhatsApp. Complete its setup and save any changes, then click Launch. Repeat for each channel you want to turn on.
Security and privacy
A few things worth knowing about how Customer Agent handles data:
- Customer data is never used to train large language models.
- Personally identifiable information (PII) can be included in shopper messages and profile information that Customer Agent uses to respond.
- All data is encrypted in transit.
- Conversations are stored against the Klaviyo profile of the shopper, when one exists.
Next steps
Each building block has its own deeper guide:
- Add and manage content for Customer Agent’s knowledge base
- Understanding skills for workflows that need custom instructions
- Understanding Customer Agent Guidance to control how Customer Agent communicates
- How to test your Customer Agent before going live
Review tools and permissions in Understanding Tools.
Configure and test custom behavior with Composer.
- How to launch your Customer Agent to turn it on for your shoppers
Additional resources
The setup path from here: give your agent knowledge, understand skills, test it, then go live.
- How to add and manage content
In this guide, you'll learn how to structure your knowledge sources so your Customer Agent can find and deliver the best answers to your customers. Well-structured content leads to more resolved inquiries, fewer escalations to your team, and happier shoppers.
- Understanding Skills
What Customer Agent skills are, which skills are available, and how to manage them. Skills are pre-built AI capabilities that let Customer Agent handle specific types of customer questions — from order tracking to returns to product recommendations — without human intervention. Enabling the right skills for your business reduces support volume, improves resolution rates, and gives customers faster answers across webchat, SMS, and email.
- How to test your Customer Agent
Learn how to strengthen your Customer Agent’s ability to resolve shopper inquiries by testing its responses and adding knowledge for any gaps you discover.
- How to launch your Customer Agent
You will learn how to launch your Customer Agent successfully across every channel you want the Customer Agent active on. Correctly launching the agent allows you to automate responses to common customer questions, reducing support volume and boosting conversion by providing instant answers to your shoppers 24/7.