Out of the box, Helpie’s assistant is competent but anonymous. The persona settings are where it becomes yours — a name, a tone of voice, an opening line, and your own house rules for how it handles the odd stuff. None of it changes what the assistant knows (that’s the knowledge base); it changes how the assistant sounds and behaves.
Everything on this page lives under Helpie > Settings > AI, in the Assistant persona and Escalation voice sections.
One thing worth knowing before you customise: the assistant always speaks in the first person as part of your business — “we”, “our”, “us” — using your site name and tagline. It never refers to your business in the third person, and it never pretends to be a human. It’s openly an AI assistant that’s openly on your team.
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Assistant Name
The name the assistant introduces itself with. The default is “Helpie”; you can rename it to anything up to 40 characters, or leave the field blank for an unnamed assistant that simply says it’s your site’s assistant.
A name shows up in the auto-composed greeting and in how the assistant refers to itself. If your brand has a mascot or a distinct character, this is where they get a job.
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Voice
The Voice dropdown sets the tone the assistant writes in. Five options:
- Calm — measured and reassuring
- Friendly — warm and approachable (the default)
- Chatty — casual and upbeat
- Professional — polished and precise
- Playful — light humour and personality
The facts in an answer don’t change — the delivery does. The same shipping question, two ways:
> Professional: “Standard shipping within Australia takes 3–5 business days. Express options are available at checkout — details here: [link]”
> Chatty: “Good news — standard shipping’s 3–5 business days here in Australia, and there’s an express option at checkout if you’re in a hurry! Here’s the full rundown: [link]”
Pick the one that sounds like your emails already sound. If your customers would be startled to receive a playful reply from you, they’ll be startled to get one from your assistant too.
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Opening Greeting
The first message a visitor sees when they open the chat. It’s static text — no AI call, no cost, instant — so it’s also the one message you have word-for-word control over.
Leave it blank and Helpie auto-composes one from your assistant name and site name: “Hi! I’m Helpie, Your Store’s assistant — ask me anything and I’ll find it fast, or I can pass your question to the team.” Write your own to match your voice:
> Before (auto): “Hi! I’m Helpie, Wool & Co’s assistant — ask me anything and I’ll find it fast, or I can pass your question to the team.”
> After (yours): “G’day! Sizing questions, shipping times, care instructions — fire away. Anything I can’t answer goes straight to the humans.”
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Behaviour & Boundaries
This is your house-rules field: owner-authored guidance the assistant follows in its own voice. It’s for personality and things to deflect — not facts. Facts belong in your content (and route rules), so there’s only ever one place to update them when they change.
Good uses:
> “If asked for passwords, logins, or security details, refuse with light humour — you’d lose your job.”
> “If someone asks about wholesale, don’t quote prices — warmly point them to the wholesale enquiry page instead.”
Not-so-good uses: “Our shipping is $9.95 flat rate.” That’s a fact — put it on your shipping page, where the assistant will find it, cite it, and where you’ll actually remember to update it when it changes.
The built-in safety rules (declining legal, medical, and financial advice and routing to a human) always apply underneath whatever you write here — your boundaries add to them, they can’t remove them. See Connecting the AI for how those refusals work.
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Escalation Voice: Who’s the Human?
When the assistant can’t help and routes to a person, who is that person? The Escalation voice section lets it say so warmly. After several off-topic questions in a row, the assistant shifts from “let me open a ticket” to a more human “you might just want to email them directly” tone, using these details:
- Their name — first name is plenty. Leave blank and the assistant uses generic “our team” framing.
- Their role — how the assistant introduces them. “Sarah, the owner” reads better than just “Sarah” when handing someone over.
- Their pronouns — she/her, he/him, or they/them, so the assistant writes “send her an email” naturally rather than dodging the sentence.
The difference in feel:
> Without: “I’ll pass this to our team — fill in the form below and someone will get back to you.”
> With: “This one’s beyond me, honestly — Sarah, the owner, is the person you want. Pop your details in below and she’ll get back to you.”
Small thing, big warmth. Escalation is the moment a visitor is most frustrated; a named human on the other end helps.
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Common Questions
Do persona changes cost anything or require re-indexing?
No. They take effect on the next message — no re-index, and the settings themselves are free to change. (The answers the assistant generates still cost the usual per-message amount; see Connecting the AI.)
Can I test a new voice before customers see it?
Yes — the AI Tester (Helpie > Settings > AI Tester) uses your live persona settings, so you can rewrite, test, and tweak privately even while the public widget is on.
Will the assistant ever claim to be a real person?
No. It represents your business directly and speaks as part of the team, but it’s instructed never to pretend to be human, regardless of voice or boundaries settings.