LiyaSupport
AI & Knowledge Base

Tone & persona

Configure how Liya's AI writes — from formal to conversational — to match your brand voice.

5 min read Updated July 2026

By default, Liya writes in a professional, empathetic, and concise tone. You can customise every aspect of how the AI expresses itself — from formality level to specific word choices to channel-specific variations.

Tone presets

Go to Settings → AI → Tone and choose a starting preset:

PresetBest forExample opening
ProfessionalB2B SaaS, enterprise, financial servicesThank you for reaching out. I'd be happy to help with this.
ConversationalConsumer apps, e-commerce, startupsHey! Sorry to hear you're running into this — let's sort it out.
EmpatheticHealthcare, education, high-emotion contextsI completely understand how frustrating this must be. Let me help right away.
ConciseHigh-volume teams, simple enquiriesHappy to help. Here's what to do: [steps]
FormalLegal, compliance, regulated industriesThank you for your correspondence. Please find below our response to your enquiry.

Custom tone instructions

Presets are a starting point. For precise brand alignment, write custom tone instructions in plain English. Liya follows these instructions on every draft.

Navigate to Settings → AI → Tone → Custom instructions and enter your guidelines:

text
You are the support agent for Acme Corp, a B2B SaaS platform.

Tone guidelines:
- Professional but warm — avoid overly formal or stiff language
- Empathetic first — acknowledge the customer's frustration before jumping to solutions
- Concise — most replies should be 3–5 sentences; use bullet points for multi-step instructions
- First-person plural ("we", "our team") — represent the company, not just yourself
- Never use: "Unfortunately", "I'm sorry you feel that way", "per my last email"

Brand voice:
- We're experts, but never condescending
- We use plain English — no jargon unless the customer used it first
- We own mistakes — don't deflect
The most effective tone instructions are specific and include examples of what to avoid. Generic instructions like "be helpful and friendly" have minimal impact because the model already defaults to this. Focus on what's distinctive about your brand voice.

Channel-specific tone

You can set different tone instructions per channel. Email replies are typically more formal and detailed than live chat or widget conversations.

Go to Settings → Channels → [channel] → AI tone override and enter channel-specific instructions. These merge with (and can override) your global tone settings.

ChannelTypical tone adjustment
EmailMore formal, complete sentences, sign-off included
Live chatShorter replies, more casual, contractions OK
Web widgetConcise, action-oriented, quick bullet points
SlackInformal, emoji acceptable, very short replies

Language and localisation

Liya detects the language of the incoming message and automatically replies in the same language. Currently supported: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese.

Your knowledge base content is used regardless of language — Liya translates the retrieved articles into the customer's language as part of the generation step. For highest accuracy, your knowledge base content should be in your primary language (usually English).

If you want to disable auto-language detection and always reply in a specific language, go to Settings → AI → Language → Lock to [language].

Agent name and persona

By default, AI-drafted replies are attributed to the assigned agent (they appear to come from a human). You can optionally configure a distinct AI persona for channels where you want to be transparent that the initial reply is AI-generated:

  • Go to Settings → AI → Persona
  • Set a persona name (e.g. "Liya" or "Acme Assistant")
  • Upload a persona avatar
  • Enable "AI persona on first reply" — the first draft uses the AI persona; follow-up replies switch to the assigned agent

Testing tone changes

After updating tone settings, use the Tone preview tool in Settings → AI → Tone → Test. Paste a sample customer message and Liya will show you a draft using the current tone settings, letting you verify the output before it goes live.