Personalization: tone, custom answers, and guidance

The Agent → Personalization tab is where you shape how the AI Agent talks to your users. Three areas, each with its own card on the page. Open your dashboard and go to Agent → Personalization.

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Guidance basics

This is the Agent’s default behavior — the rules it follows when it answers any question. Pick what fits your product’s voice. You can always come back and adjust — every change is staged as a draft until you publish.

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Custom responses

Custom responses are exact replies you write yourself. If a user’s question matches a custom response topic, the Agent uses your reply instead of generating one from your docs. Use this when you need full control over what the Agent says. Common cases:

• Pricing and billing — “Our plans start at X. Talk to sales for custom quotes” instead of letting the Agent make something up from a half-published pricing page.
• Legal-sensitive questions — refund eligibility, data residency, regulatory compliance. Word these exactly the way your legal team approves.
• Plan-specific gates — “That feature is on the Pro plan. Click here to upgrade.”
• Time-sensitive notices — “We’re in maintenance until Tuesday. Sorry for the disruption.”

Each custom response has a topic name, the trigger conditions, and the exact reply text. Click Add custom response to create one.

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Guidance templates

Guidance templates are pre-written fallbacks for broad categories of questions. They kick in when nothing in your knowledge base matches well — so instead of a generic “I don’t have that information” reply, the Agent gives users a useful next step. HelpAlive ships templates for six common categories: You can edit any template’s text or turn it off entirely. The templates use the same tokens as the welcome message — {displayName}, {plan}, etc. — so the fallback can still feel personal.

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How they fit together

The Agent decides which response to use, in this order:

1. A custom response for an exact topic? Use that.
2. A confident match in your knowledge base? Answer from your docs, using the tone and length set in Guidance basics.
3. No confident match? Fall back to the matching guidance template.

This means custom responses always win, your docs are the everyday answer, and templates make sure the user never gets stranded.

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Draft and publish

Like everything else in the Agent, changes are staged as drafts. Use Agent → Test to preview the Agent’s behavior with your draft tone, custom responses, and templates before you publish. See Publishing.

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Next steps