Guide to using customer agent on SMS

Introduction

What is Customer Agent on SMS?

• A 24/7 AI assistant that responds to inbound SMS messages to answer questions, recommend products, and resolve common issues

• Supports revenue-driving and service use cases (product recommendations, WISMO, FAQs)

Why use Customer Agent on SMS?

• Drive incremental revenue from SMS replies

• Resolve repetitive support questions automatically

• Reduce ticket volume while improving response speed

• Provide 24/7 assistance

Before you get started

Requirements

• Active SMS plan

• Shopify recommended for full functionality (order tracking, recommendations) 

• note: SHAFT brands cannot activate Customer Agent on SMS

What messages does it handle?

Customer Agent will respond to inbound messages unless they:

• Match compliance keywords (STOP, HELP, etc)

• Trigger subscribe/unsubscribe logic (keywords, unsubscribe intent)

• Trigger an SMS keyword automation

What happens if the Agent can’t resolve the issue?

• Follows handoff settings

• If you've chosen to escalate to a helpdesk, the agent receiving the ticket will receive a transcript of the customer agent conversation

• If you've chosen not to escalate to helpdesk, you will configure a closeout message to be sent when the agent cannot resolve the customer's need

Built-in Guardrails to control SMS costs

• Messages that are spam or noise will be ignored. For example, auto-response messages like "I'm driving with focus turned on" will not trigger a customer agent conversation. 

• Customer agent attempts to limit responses to a single SMS segment when possible

• When customer agent cannot resolve the customer's issue, it escalates instead of sending excessive messages

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Best practices for driving revenue with Customer Agent on SMS

1. Proactively invite replies in your campaigns and flows

Customer Agent only works if customers reply.

Encourage replies in:

• Abandoned cart messages (e.g., sizing, returns, styling questions)

• Welcome series (e.g., shade match, personalization inputs)

Include:

• Clear invitation (“Reply with questions”)

• Context-specific prompts based on funnel friction

Save an agent conversation starter in Settings > Marketing. You can add this prompt to flows and campaigns with one click. 

2. Control which profiles can interact with customer agent

You have 3 choices:

• you can let all profiles interact with customer agent
• you can make customer agent exclusive to specific segments, or exclude certain segments
  • good for: operating customer agent as a VIP-only feature (ex. personal concierge)
• you can require certain keywords to initiate customer agent conversations, or exclude certain keywords
  • good for: guiding customer agent queries (ex. "reply style me for a personalized recommendation)
  • good for: ensuring certain queries go straight to your help desk 

3. Plan SMS + Agent usage together

Customer Agent consumes:

• AI conversations (priced per conversation)

• SMS segments (standard SMS billing applies)

Best practices:

• Ensure SMS plan limit exceeds expected Agent usage

• Consider enabling Flex or AutoUpgrade to avoid throttling

4. Measure performance and identifying engaged customers

• Monitor SMS performance by going to the Performance page and filtering 'Key Metrics' by channel

• note: SMS revenue attribution follows the account’s SMS attribution model settings 

• Identify and re-target profiles who interacted with customer agent by creating a segment

  • build a segment using "What someone has done" 

  • choose from: Resolved Customer Agent Conversation, Escalated Customer Agent Conversation, Started Customer Agent Conversation

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