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The Customer AI Assistant is a chat window embedded in your online store. Customers describe what they are looking for in their own words and receive matching products, answers, and follow-up suggestions without browsing category pages.
This article describes the chat the way your customers experience it and explains which parts you control in Synerise and which on your website. To learn how to define the assistant's persona, product catalog, and tools, see Configuring Customer AI Assistant in the Synerise platform. To put the chat on your website, see Implementing the Customer AI Assistant on your website.
How it works
Three pieces work together:
- The assistant configuration in AI Hub - the brand, persona, tone of voice, AI Search index, filters, and tools. This decides what the assistant says and which products it shows. See Configuring Customer AI Assistant in the Synerise platform.
- The Synerise tracking code on your website - identifies the visitor, so the assistant knows the profile it is talking to and every conversation is saved as events on that profile. See Getting started with the Web SDK.
- The chat component - a small JavaScript component (the Synerise AI Assistant SDK) that renders the chat window on your page and talks to Synerise on the customer's behalf. You add it either with a Dynamic Content campaign or with a few lines of code. There is nothing to host: the files are served by Synerise.
A typical exchange looks like this:
- The customer clicks the launcher (a button or icon in your store's design) and the chat opens with a greeting and a few suggested questions.
- The customer types a question, for example "I need a light rain jacket for hiking, under 300 PLN".
- The assistant searches your catalog, applies your filters and tools, and answers. The text appears progressively, followed by product cards.
- The customer clicks a product and lands on its page, or taps a suggested follow-up such as "Show cheaper options".
- Each step is recorded as an event on the customer's profile, so you can analyze it in Synerise. See Measuring the Customer AI Assistant.
What customers see
The chat window
The window has three parts:
- Header - the assistant's name and a close button. You set the name; by default it reads AI Assistant.
- Conversation - the assistant's messages on the left with an avatar, the customer's messages on the right.
- Message input - a text field with a send button. Enter sends the message, Shift+Enter starts a new line. The field grows up to three lines and then scrolls.
The chat fills the element on your page that you give it, so you decide whether it is a floating window in the corner, a side panel, or a full-screen view on mobile.
Greeting and suggested questions
When the chat is initialized on the page, it starts a conversation and shows the assistant's greeting together with quick prompts. The prompts come from the Suggestions you define in the Assistant section of the configuration (up to 10). Clicking a prompt sends it as a message.
Answers
Answers are written in the persona and tone of voice you configured. They can contain formatting - paragraphs, lists, tables, and links - and, when streaming is enabled, appear word by word while the assistant is still writing. A typing indicator is shown while the customer waits.
Product cards
When the assistant recommends items, they appear as product cards below the text. Each card shows the product image, name, a short description, and additional lines such as the price. The product name is a link that opens the product page in a new tab. Clicks on cards are recorded as assistant.click events with the product ID, so you can measure which recommendations customers follow.
Buttons and follow-up suggestions
Below an answer, the assistant can add tap-to-act elements:
- Buttons - short pills such as "Under 200 PLN" or "Only in stock". Tapping one sends a prepared message.
- Suggestions - cards with a title and a description that propose the next step, for example "Compare these two".
- Links - buttons that open a page in your store.
Buttons and suggestions belong to the latest answer. Once the customer sends another message, they disappear, so the conversation never shows stale choices. Links stay clickable.
Rating an answer
If response feedback is enabled in the assistant configuration, every answer gets a small toolbar with thumbs up and thumbs down. The toolbar is always visible under the latest answer and appears on hover for earlier ones. After a thumbs down, the customer can add a short comment (up to 230 characters). A rating can be given once per answer and cannot be changed later.
When something goes wrong
- If the connection fails, the chat shows Connection error and a Try Again button. The customer's message stays in the conversation, so nothing has to be retyped.
- If the assistant declines a request (for example, a question outside its job or a prompt blocked by guardrails), it answers with a polite message in its own voice and the conversation continues.
- If a saved conversation is no longer available (it expired or belongs to another profile), the chat shows a message and a Start new conversation button.
Continuing a conversation
The assistant keeps the context within a conversation, so customers can refine their request ("cheaper", "in blue", "what about this one?") without repeating themselves. Your website can also let customers return to earlier conversations from up to two weeks back. The chat itself does not show a history list; your website decides where and how to offer it. See Conversation context and history.
Where the chat can run
The chat works on desktop and mobile browsers and inside mobile app web views. Every event records the channel (WEB_DESKTOP, MOBILEWEB, or MOBILE_APP), so you can compare them in analytics.
Requirements
- A tracking code implemented on the pages where the chat should appear.
- An assistant created and saved in AI Hub > AI Assistant, as described in Configuring Customer AI Assistant in the Synerise platform.
- A place on the page for the chat window and a launcher that opens it.
- To create the assistant and Dynamic Content campaigns, AI Hub permissions and Experience Hub permissions.
Business benefits
- Customers find products by describing a need instead of navigating categories and filters.
- Answers are personalized: the assistant knows the profile it is talking to and the product the customer is looking at.
- You keep control over the catalog the assistant shows through the AI Search index, IQL filters, and recommendation campaigns.
- The look, texts, and placement of the chat match your store's design.
- Every conversation is measurable in Synerise analytics, from the first message to the click on a product.