Customize Shopping Muse: Conversational Guidelines

Customize Shopping Muse to shape your AI shopping assistant's personality and boundaries. Define how the agent represents your brand: how it speaks, what it emphasizes, and what it avoids, so that every shopper interaction feels intentional, consistent, and unmistakably on brand.  

Conversational guidelines are instructions you provide Shopping Muse that influence how the assistant communicates, not what products it recommends. They help ensure that:

• The agent reflects your brand’s voice and values
• Conversations stay aligned with your brand boundaries
• Shoppers experience a consistent tone across touchpoints

These guidelines shape how the agent responds, phrases explanations, and handles sensitive moments during a conversation, without scripting responses or enforcing rigid rules.  

Customizable guidelines

Brand name

Tell Shopping Muse who it represents. This helps the agent speak as part of your brand and stay aligned with your positioning and competitive context.

→ This value is set during onboarding and can be edited later.

Tone of voice

Direct how your agent sounds in conversation. You can describe your preferred style in plain English, for example:

• Formal and professional
• Friendly and conversational
• Empathetic and reassuring
• Energetic and playful

The agent uses this guidance to shape wording, emotional posture, and overall conversational style, while still prioritizing clarity and accuracy.

Topics to avoid

Tell your agent what subjects and behaviors to steer away from. Use this to:

• Avoid sensitive or off‑brand topics
• Prevent certain comparisons or statements
• Keep conversations focused on what matters to your brand

There’s no need to specify obvious restrictions. The agent is already prevented from engaging in areas such as competitor brands, political content, harmful or discriminatory topics, illegal activities, and sensitive ideological subjects. If a shopper brings up one of these topics, the agent will politely redirect the conversation to relevant shopping guidance instead of engaging directly.

Values to emphasize

Highlight principles your brand stands for and wants reflected in conversations. For example:

• Sustainability
• Craftsmanship
• Inclusivity
• Innovation

The agent uses these values only when relevant and natural, not in every response.  

How to write effective conversational guidelines

Use these principles to get the best results.

• Write guidelines in English
  Always define guidelines in English, even if your site or shoppers use other languages.
  Shopping Muse applies the intent of your guidelines consistently across supported languages.
• Influence behavior, don’t enforce vocabulary
  Guidelines work best when they describe intent and direction, not strict rules. Think in terms of how you want the agent to behave, not exact phrases it must or must not use.
• This is not a sales or recommendations control tool
  Conversational guidelines shape how conversations sound, not what the agent sells. Don't use it to force specific products or influence the recommendation logic.
• Keep each guideline focused
  Each field should focus on one main idea. This helps the agent apply your guidance accurately and consistently.
• Restrict the agent to a specific language
  To set a default language for the agent, add a clear instruction at the top of the Tone of voice field, such as “You must always reply in {language}.” The agent will use this language by default and maintain it throughout the conversation. However, if a shopper explicitly requests a language change, the agent will comply to ensure the conversation continues smoothly.