Understanding Skills
You will learn
Learn when custom skills are useful, how they work with tool permissions, and how to review and publish skills in your account.
What skills are
A custom skill gives Customer Agent instructions for a specific workflow, including policy checks, tool use, and handoff behavior. Skills are optional: Customer Agent can handle common requests with your content and tools set to Always allow.
Go to Customer Agent > Skills to see your skills and their status. Live skills are available to Customer Agent in live conversations. Draft skills are not live.
Custom skills and defaults you previously customized remain available. Untouched default skills and the default skill template library have been removed. You can create custom skills from scratch or ask Composer to configure a workflow.
Recommended setup
First connect your integrations and review tool access. Then explain any policy-specific behavior to Composer. It can adjust permissions, create custom skills, and update guidance. For example, a refund workflow may need eligibility checks and a tool set to Only in skills. Review the changes and test common requests, edge cases, and handoffs.
Configure custom behavior with Composer.
How custom skills fit into a conversation
When a shopper sends a message, Customer Agent runs through a few steps:
- Receives the message from the shopper across web chat, SMS, email, or WhatsApp.
- Adds context — pulls in the shopper’s profile, brand summary, and any active Guidance.
- Selects relevant tools or reads the instructions of a matching available custom skill.
- Responds using your content, guidance, permitted tools, and any applicable custom skill instructions.
- Hands off if needed — Customer Agent follows your escalation rules and can offer or start a handoff to a human when it can’t resolve the request.
Common tasks Customer Agent can handle
These tasks depend on your integrations, content, and tool permissions. They do not each require a default skill. Use custom skills when you need specific instructions beyond the common experience.
Task | What it does | Prerequisites | Example shopper question |
Product Recommendations | Suggests products from the connected catalog based on the shopper’s request, preferences, and available history. | A connected Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento 2 store, an available product recommendation tool, and your content | "What do you recommend for sensitive skin?" |
Order tracking & management | Looks up order status, shipping info, and tracking links. For changes or cancellations, checks order details and policies and helps shoppers connect with your team. It doesn’t edit orders directly. | An order lookup tool for your store, plus your order policies | "Where is my order?" or "Can I change the address on my order?" |
Coupon & discount retrieval | Retrieves existing discount codes the shopper is eligible for. Does not generate new codes. | A customer coupon lookup tool and your promotion content | "Do I have any active discounts?" |
Returns & exchanges | Checks return eligibility and links shoppers to your returns portal to start a return or exchange. | Your return policies, order lookup, and the relevant returns setup | "I want to return this jacket." |
Subscription editing | Looks up subscription details and links shoppers to Customer Hub or your subscription portal to pause, skip, cancel, or update them. | A subscription lookup tool connected to your provider | "Skip my next delivery." |
Loyalty | Shows loyalty points and rewards in web chat, and links shoppers to view rewards and redemption options. | A loyalty lookup tool connected to your provider | "How many points do I have?" |
Prerequisites
Start with Customer Agent > Connectors. Connect the required systems and review tool permissions. Always allow permits direct use, Only in skills requires a skill that includes the tool, and Blocked prevents use. Before publishing a custom skill, also check its instructions and tool configuration.
- Product and order lookups need a suitable store integration or connector and an available lookup tool.
- Returns and exchanges need your return policies and the tools or portal appropriate to your returns provider.
- Subscription and loyalty questions need tools connected to the relevant provider, such as Recharge or Skio for subscriptions, or Yotpo or Smile.io for loyalty.
- General questions about your brand and policies use your content. Add accurate content even when a skill also uses tools to look up shopper-specific information.
For returns, subscriptions, or loyalty connected through Customer Hub, you need paid or trial Customer Hub access and the corresponding app enabled in Customer Hub.
Customer-specific coupon retrieval through Customer Hub requires paid or trial Customer Hub access. Adding promotion details to your content does not create customer-specific coupon codes.
Check the status in Customer Agent > Skills. Open a draft skill, finish its instructions and tool setup, test the behavior, and publish it when ready. Use publish and unpublish to control whether a skill is available in live conversations.
How shoppers interact across channels
Different channels present Customer Agent responses differently:
- Web chat — Rich product cards, order cards, inline buttons (e.g., “Track shipment,” “View order”).
- SMS & WhatsApp — Deep links to product pages, tracking pages, and the customer hub.
- Email — Plain text plus links; no interactive components.
Sign-in and handoff behavior also differ by channel. In web chat, shoppers need to sign in before Customer Agent can retrieve their orders, subscriptions, or personal coupons. General policy questions can be answered without sign-in. SMS and WhatsApp use the shopper’s phone number, and email uses their email address, to identify the shopper.
Product recommendations for WooCommerce and Magento 2
Customer Agent supports product recommendations for WooCommerce and Magento 2 stores as well as Shopify. With the relevant tools allowed, it uses your connected product catalog to suggest products rather than relying only on descriptions in your knowledge content. Shoppers can ask for products that match a preference or budget, such as “Recommend a pink water bottle” or “Show me something under $100.”
Before testing, connect your WooCommerce or Magento 2 integration, confirm that your product catalog is syncing, and review the product recommendation tool permissions in Customer Agent > Connectors. A default recommendation skill is not required. If you choose Only in skills, include the tool in a custom skill and publish that skill before using it in live conversations.
In web chat, recommendations can include product cards with images, prices, and links to product pages. WooCommerce and Magento 2 cards do not currently have an Add to cart button; shoppers follow the product link to continue shopping on your store. Other channels show responses and links according to the channel’s supported format.
Test requests that match products in your catalog, including preferences and price limits. Check that products, prices, images, availability, and links match your store. If results are missing or outdated, check catalog sync and tool permissions. For a custom skill, also review its tool configuration. Adding product descriptions to content alone does not connect a live catalog.
Capability-specific notes
Keep these distinctions in mind when testing your setup:
- Coupon & discount retrieval retrieves existing coupons associated with the shopper’s profile and uses your content to answer general promotion questions. It does not generate new codes.
- Subscription lookups with Skio return active subscriptions only; paused or canceled subscriptions are unavailable through that provider.
- The standard order-tracking experience retrieves order details and helps shoppers reach order management or your team. It does not edit orders directly. Direct order changes require a suitable additional tool, appropriate permissions, and any workflow-specific instructions.
Customizing skills
Open a skill in Customer Agent > Skills to review its instructions and tools. You can also use Composer to customize skills. For a live skill, select Edit draft to make changes. Review and test the draft, then select Publish changes to apply it to live conversations.
If you need different behavior than what an existing skill provides today, you have a few paths:
- Unpublish a skill to stop Customer Agent using it in live conversations. In Customer Agent > Skills, open the skill’s row action menu and select Unpublish. Confirm the change. The skill returns to Draft and can be published again later.
- Duplicate a skill when you need a variation while keeping the original. Review the copy’s instructions, tools, and intended use before publishing it.
- Create a custom skill from scratch or describe the workflow you want in Composer.
- Use Guidance for global behavior changes — tone, communication style, escalation triggers
Next steps
- Create a custom skill when a workflow needs specific instructions or tool access should be restricted to that workflow
- Set up Guidance to control behavior across conversations
- Add accurate content for brand and policy questions
- Monitor performance in Customer Agent > Analytics
Additional resources
Go deeper: create a skill and understand how tools fit in.