Build a Guided Shopping Agent

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

List the design elements to consider for a guided shopping agent.
Describe the roles of the standard actions linked to the Agentforce for Guided Shopping template.
Summarize the steps to build and test a guided shopping agent.

Design Your Guided Shopping AI Agent

To create an effective guided shopping AI agent, it’s important to define your AI agent’s scope by deciding what your AI agent can and can’t do, and what business problems ‌it can solve. Here are some design elements to consider as you develop your AI agent.

Goals: Define the goals and objectives for the guided shopping agent. What specific problems or needs is it addressing? How does it improve the customer experience?
Key performance indicators (KPIs): Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the guided shopping agent, such as customer satisfaction, response times, and conversion rates.
Customer needs and expectations: Know your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. What types of queries or tasks do they often complete?
User scenarios: Identify common user scenarios and use cases that the guided shopping agent can handle.
Scope: Define the scope of the guided shopping agent, including the types of queries and tasks it can handle. Set boundaries to avoid overreach.
Capabilities: Determine the capabilities required, such as handling product inquiries, processing orders, providing recommendations, or offering support.

Agentforce for Guided Shopping Setup

To build a guided shopping AI agent, you use Agent Builder and the Agentforce for Guided Shopping B2B & D2C template. The template guides you through the initial agent set up process. Using the template, you confirm the agent’s default topics, define agent settings, and select the agent’s language and tone.

Topics and Actions

AI Agents use topics and actions to define the range of jobs they can do. Here’s a quick review.

Topics: An AI agent topic is a category of actions related to a particular job to be done by AI agents. Topics contain actions, which are the tools available for the job, and instructions, which tell the agent how to make decisions. Together, topics define the range of capabilities your agent can handle. Salesforce provides a library of standard topics for common use cases, and you can create custom topics to meet your users’ specific business needs.
Actions: Actions are how AI agents get things done. Agents include a library of actions, which is a set of jobs an AI agent can do. For example, if a user asks an agent for help with writing an email, the agent launches an action that drafts and revises the email and grounds it in relevant Salesforce data.

Salesforce provides a library of standard topics for common use cases, and you can create custom topics to meet your users’ specific business needs.

Agentforce for Guided Shopping—B2B and D2C Template

The template adds a set of predefined topics to your guided shopping AI agent. Consider these topics as the basic capabilities for your new agent.

Commerce Global Instructions: Defines system-level instructions, including hard-coded values such as WebstoreId, to guide actions within the planner.
Commerce Product Search Assistant: Guides shoppers to products with suggested categories for broad search, suggested products, and category suggestions for zero results.
Commerce Order: Looks up order status and items from an order number or recent orders list; quickly replenishes items with reorder actions to clone past orders.
Commerce Effective Accounts: Switches your Effective Accounts from a list of your accounts.
Commerce User Verification: Verifies a user’s identity before granting access to sensitive resources such as product recommendations and order information.

Agent Setup Prework

As you work through the template, you define the setting for your AI agent. Before you open Agentforce Builder and start the template, it’s helpful to have your agent settings predefined. Agent settings determine how your agent behaves and presents itself in conversations. Agent settings include:

Setting Name	Setting Description
Name	The agent name.
API Name	The API Name. Automatically fills as you enter the shopper’s name.
Description	The goals you want to define for your agent. The template provides a standard guided shopping agent description that applies to companies across a wide range of industries.
Role	The agent’s role in the company and the tasks it can complete.
Company	Information about your company, including product information, and relevant business details.
Agent User	The user permissions linked to your agent. The agent user determines what your guided shopping agent can access and do. Make sure that the agent user has the required permissions for relevant features and objects.

Here’s an example of the AI agent role and company descriptions for a B2B company.

Role: You’re a digital agent that uses Salesforce Commerce Cloud data to provide product information to buyers. You identify a buyer’s assigned buyer group, find products, suggest alternative products, and recommend product sets. You help buyers complete cart checkout, and returns.
Company: Your company is a leading industrial tools supplier dedicated to providing tools and equipment that meet global standards and specifications. Your mission is to help buyers fill their technical equipment orders with confidence.

Build Your Guided Shopping AI Agent

In your Salesforce Service Cloud org, open Agentforce Builder and build a new agent.

At the top of the page, click and select Setup.
In the Quick Find box, search for and select Agents.
Click New Agent.
Select the Agentforce for Guided Shopping–B2B & D2C template as the agent type.
Click Next.
Confirm that Commerce Global Instructions, Commerce Product Search Assistant, Commerce Order, Commerce Effective Accounts, and Commerce User Verification topics are selected. These are preconfigured topics and actions for the Agentforce for Guided Shopping–B2B & D2C template. Click Next.
Define the Agentforce for Guided Shopping Settings.
- Enter the agent’s name. The API Name auto-populates to match the name.
- Leave the description as is.
- Enter the agent’s role.
- Enter a description of your company.
- Select the Agent User.
Select language and tone. Click Create.

The template creates a standard guided shopping AI agent. You can customize the agent with other standard topics and actions or your own custom topics and actions in Agentforce Builder. It’s important to pick the right topics so your AI agent can meet customer expectations. Agents that are configured correctly can answer relevant questions with helpful responses. This reduces customer frustration and improves overall satisfaction.

Add More Capabilities with Standard and Custom Topics and Actions

Using standard and custom topics, you can expand the capabilities of your AI agent.

Standard Topics: Preconfigured topics available in Agentforce Builder’s asset library. These topics cover a wide range of jobs and supporting actions. For example, add the Escalation topic so your agent can transfer a user to a service representative if requested.

Custom Topics: Topics and actions you create to support a specific business need. Consider using custom topics if the standard topics don’t provide your agent with the actions needed to help you meet your business goals. For example, create a topic that uses an automated workflow to create and process purchase orders.

To learn more about customizing AI agents, see Configure Your Agent.

Test and Activate Your Agentforce for Guided Shopping

Before launching an AI agent, test it to confirm that the agent understands a user’s request or instruction and launches the correct actions. Review whether the responses are helpful and accurate. If the agent responds with unexpected responses or breaks the guardrails you set, modify the topics and actions, and agent instructions, then retest the agent.

Test the AI agent’s actions.

At the top of the page, click and select Setup.
In the Quick Find box, search for and select Agents.
Select the agent.
On the Agent Details page, click Open in Builder.
To test the AI agent actions within the topics, in the Conversation Preview window, enter some text using natural language. Suggested prompt: I’m looking for {a product in your store’s catalog}.
Follow the prompts from Einstein as you fine-tune your request.
Review the actions taken to get the response.
To launch your Agentforce for Guided Shopping, click Activate.

After you activate your agent, the next steps are to connect it to a messaging channel and deploy it to your site.

Now you know how to build a B2B and D2C Commerce guided shopping AI agent using Agentforce Builder and the Agentforce for Guided Shopping–B2B and D2C template. You also know how to test and activate the agent. Next, learn how to connect your guided shopping agent to a channel and deploy it to your site.

Time Estimate

Topics

Looking for Help?

Commerce Cloud Resources