Changelog

We've been busy building, so instead of a full write-up, this one is a long list of small improvements you've been asking for. We call these sand updates. Not a big rock or a pebble, but pour in enough and it fills the gaps. More is on the way.

Voice AI improvements

• At launch, voice AI sounded robotic. That's fixed, and it now sounds the way you'd expect. If you tested it early, try it again!

• Voice AI is out of beta

• It stays in the caller's language

• It reads the recording notice in its own voice

Conversation merge

The new conversation merge is now available for everyone.

• Merge a chat, WhatsApp, call or social conversation into the customer's email ticket. Replies go out by email.

• New messages on the old channel land in the same thread after a merge

• When the same customer has an open email ticket and starts a chat or DM, a "Possible duplicate" banner shows on the ticket. Merge in one click or dismiss it.

• Search by name or message text when picking a ticket to merge into. The customer's other email tickets are suggested.

• See which ticket is kept before you merge. Messages stay in time order.

• Undo a merge from either ticket or from Cmd+K

Coming next: merging and linking contacts, and suggested matches for duplicate customer profiles.

Audit logs

• New audit log shows who changed what and when. Find it in Settings → Audit log (admins only).

• Covers settings, inboxes, guidance, automations and every action the AI agent takes

• Filter by agent and export to CSV

Choose who gets auto-assigned

Choose which agents get conversations auto-assigned in each inbox. Others keep access without being assigned.

Set it in Settings → Inboxes → your inbox → Collaborators → Auto-assign to.

Reorder the conversation sidebar

Drag the conversation sidebar icons into the order you want

AI agent

• Guidance drafts: the live AI keeps the old version until you click Save and publish. Playground results match what the AI does after publishing.

• The AI finds and verifies orders when the customer writes from a different email or types their email in the message

• Loop Subscriptions: the AI can pause a subscription and change how often it ships (off by default). If it can't find the subscription, it asks which email it's under before handing over.

• Rivo: the AI can add or remove points, redeem one-time rewards like discounts, and cancel memberships (all off by default)

• Raise the AI's refund limits yourself, up to 250 refunds and 10,000 a day in your shop's currency

• The AI can change items on orders that are on hold

• Less "Ugh" slang in AI replies

• AI agent → Overview shows resolution, handover and automation rates plus time saved, with 30-day charts and a per-inbox breakdown (paid plans)

• Changing a guidance adds a marker to the Overview charts, so you can see the effect

• Performance card for each guidance, an Improve mode and suggested opportunities on the Overview

• AI replies waiting for approval use the customer's latest message and the current order, in the right language

• Custom actions accept {{variables}} in the URL path

• The custom actions log marks failed calls, including ones that only worked on a retry

MCP

• Approve, reject or edit AI replies waiting for approval

• Edit or dismiss guidance proposals

• Send private replies to comments, add files and mention teammates in notes

• Read and change every inbox setting

• Upload images to help articles and file feature requests

• Test chat, DM and comment guidance in the playground, and see how each guidance performs after a change. Guide: https://docs.commslayer.com/articles/1790768405-build-and-improve-ai-agent-guidance-with-an-ai-assistant

Channels and integrations

• Loop Subscriptions works across several Shopify stores, and phone-only contacts show their subscriptions in the sidebar

• New Intercom importer for conversations, saved replies, contacts and tags (Settings → Import)

• WhatsApp voice notes play in the conversation, and incoming WhatsApp messages arrive faster

• Automation rules can target Facebook comments and ad comments, for example to close them automatically

• Phone inboxes catch automated verification calls, like a WhatsApp registration code

• Gorgias imports bring over photos and files on messages

Inbox and conversations

• Search finds conversations by attachment file name

• Agents idle for 15 minutes go offline automatically, so calls and chats stop routing to them

• Emailed conversation transcripts show the name and email address for each message

• Auto-translate is more reliable with excluded languages

Customer portal

• Shoppers see the tracking number next to each fulfilled order

• Drag articles into the order you want inside a category

• Turning off the hero, search, breadcrumbs or navigation hides them on your live help center

Reports

• New first contact resolution (FCR) widget for custom dashboards

• Contact reasons report is more complete. Chats without a reason get one, and unreviewed AI suggestions, opt-outs and playground conversations are left out.

• Pending counts in reports and the workload tile are more reliable

• The social comments chart uses your timezone

• Agent drill-downs, the daily report, auto-label counts, CSAT and agent filters and the Conversation Traffic export are more reliable

• Tooltips explain who gets credit for a resolved ticket

Settings

• Search in Settings to find any setting and jump straight to it

• Usage & billing shows up to 12 past billing cycles with conversations, AI replies, drafts and voice minutes

Smaller improvements

• Long drafts stay put when you switch conversations

• Bounced replies are marked as bounced with the reason, and a blocked address unblocks once the customer emails in again

• Resolve pending and snoozed tickets in one click, also from Cmd+K

• Addresses pasted from the sidebar keep their format

• Gmail signatures with images are more reliable

• The Klaviyo and Shopify syncs are more reliable

• Smoother calling for ported numbers and same-country calls

• Easier proof uploads when porting a number

Questions or need a hand setting any of this up? Reach out in chat.

Have a great weekend!

-Karri / cofounder

AI voice agent is now in public beta.

It picks up the phone and talks to your customers with the same knowledge and guidance it already uses on chat and email. It can run any action you've switched on. If someone on your team is online, it can hand the call over to them.

You'll find it in Settings → Inboxes → your voice inbox → Configuration → Voice settings. Switch on "AI voice agent" and pick a language and a voice. Then call your own number to hear it. If you don't have a voice inbox yet, start here.

Pricing

Pay as you go: $0.20 for every connected minute plus the cost of the call itself. Numbers start at $5 a month. You need to be on a current plan with pay-as-you-go billing and have a spending limit set on the number, otherwise it won't pick up. If you're on a legacy or Free plan, you'll need to move to one of our current plans first to enable usage billing.

Good to know

• It only handles incoming calls (for now, there's quite a bit of compliance work with robocalls).

• It answers every call while it's on, including during business hours.

We are actively looking for more feedback, so please give it a try and let us know where to improve! There should be no reason to use any other voice provider, so keep hammering us with any objections.

Also new

• There's a new setting that stops the AI sending a handover message on email, so your customer gets one reply instead of two. An admin can switch it on in AI agent settings.

• You can now draft a change to your AI agent's guidance and test it against past tickets before you publish it (instead of creating a copy of the old guidance). Also works via MCP!

• The AI agent can skip a customer's next Loop order instead of passing it to your team. Enable in AI actions.

If you like what we're shipping, an appstore review helps us a ton against G*rgias. Takes 30 secs: https://apps.shopify.com/commslayer#modal-show=WriteReviewModal

Office dog Manu is hungry for reviews ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Cheers, Karri / cofounder

Hey, Karri here!

A huge wall of feature improvements this week. Some are pretty important, so please read all the way to the bottom!

AI agent

Refunds for the exact order line item

Until now, AI refunds were a percentage of the order. If a customer reported one cracked mug, the AI could only refund a share of the whole order, which rarely matched what the mug cost. Most of you kept refunds with a human, fair enough.

Now the AI refunds specific items, like 2 of 3 mugs, for exactly what the customer paid, discounts and tax included. It's refund only, no restock and no shipping refund.

Turn it on in AI agent → Actions → Refund order and try it in the playground first, it runs against the real order and your real limits without moving any money.

Important: your refund limits still matter. With the defaults (50% of what's left on the order, $50 per refund), the AI hands pricier items to your team instead of refunding fewer. Edit the limits if you want to let the AI agent operate more freely. Yolo?

Ask a human before running

Any AI action can now wait for human approval. Enable it per action under AI agent → Actions, handy if you want a human checking item refunds before letting it operate freely.

Chat verification by email

When a live chat customer doesn't have their order number, the AI now emails them a one-time code instead of handing the chat to your team.

Other AI agent updates

• General rules setting now lives under the Guidance tab

MCP + API

Reply drafts from your ChatGPT/Claude

Connect ChatGPT or Claude to Commslayer over MCP and ask it to draft replies on your conversations. The drafts land in the reply box, and your agent edits and sends them like any other reply.

These don't use your AI drafts allowance. If you have our auto AI drafts on, turn them off so they don't overwrite yours.

More MCP + API updates

• Rivo loyalty: look up, adjust points, redeem a reward, cancel a membership

• Who approved each AI action, when, and what happened

If you run loyalty or referrals on Rivo, connect it and every conversation gets a Loyalty section in the sidebar with points, VIP tier, referral link and unused codes. Your team can adjust points, redeem a reward or cancel a membership right there.

The AI agent answers points, tier and reward code questions with zero setup. Switch on Redeem Rivo reward (off by default) and it can also spend a member's points on a subscription reward, it always asks the customer first. More Rivo AI actions coming soon.

Connect it in Settings → Integrations → Rivo, included in all plans. Details on the Rivo integration page.

Helpdesk

Phone

Bunch of phone updates, mostly compliance:

• Call recording on/off per inbox, with a notice callers hear first (ours or your own)

• Separate auto-delete for recordings and transcripts, 30 days to 3 years

• Voice pricing now asks for your phone number's country. Some countries showed higher outbound rates than you'd actually pay, that's fixed

• Keypad during live calls, and Norway and other sold-out countries now "On request" (we order the number for you)

Attachments in canned responses

Canned responses can now include files, up to 20 files of 40 MB each. They get attached every time someone uses the response.

Other

• Import from Kustomer, and Richpanel imports now work over the API too

• Admins can export all of a contact's data across channels from the contact page

• Delete a message to remove sensitive info

• Report exports now follow your filters

• Meta: add DMs or comments to an already connected Page

• Loop: cancel a paused subscription without resuming it

Cheers,
Karri, co-founder

ps. If you like what we're shipping, an appstore review helps us a ton against G*rgias. Takes 30 secs: https://apps.shopify.com/commslayer#modal-show=WriteReviewModal

Office dog Manu is hungry for reviews ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐