Conversational search
A search where keywords flow into conversations
Shoppers no longer limit themselves to short, rigid keywords. They ask questions, provide context, and refine their intent as they go, the same way they'd talk to an assistant in a physical store. Empathy Platform's conversational search brings that kind of conversation into your commerce store search experience.
AI Mode is Empathy Platform's conversational search experience. It allows shoppers to express their search intent in natural language, the way they'd talk to an in-store shopper assistant, and refine it across multiple turns without restarting or rephrasing from scratch.
AI Mode combines conversational reasoning with Empathy Platform's core search intelligence to:
- Understand longer, more natural queries.
- Maintain context across a multi-turn conversation.
- Translate dialogue into search-ready intent.
- Return relevant products with explanations, not just a product listing.
AI Mode is a distinct search type, alongside keyword, semantic, and AI-assisted search, built specifically to handle complex, evolving intent end to end, going beyond what a single query can capture.
design tip
Every conversational turn aligns with your catalog, so ranking rules, business logic, and merchandising strategies remain fully in effect as long as the LLM prompts the exact query configured for your ranking rules and business strategy.
AI Mode capabilities
AI Mode supports ongoing, multi-turn conversations. Shoppers can refine, correct, or expand their intent naturally, and the system keeps context throughout the interaction instead of forcing a restart.
Multi-turn conversational chat
Shoppers chat with your catalog and explore the products through dialogue. They describe what they want, in their own words, as if they were speaking to an in-store shopping assistant.
AI Mode keeps track of earlier turns in the conversation, supporting ongoing, multi-turn conversations. Shoppers can refine, correct, or expand their intent as they go naturally, without restarting or rephrasing the search in every turn. AI Mode keeps context, understand how their intent evolves, and translate it into results that align with the store's catalog throughout the interaction.
Chat history
Shoppers can activate chat history to pick up a conversation where they left off, with context intact so there's no re-explaining and no starting from scratch.
Follow-up questions
As AI Mode keeps track of earlier turns in the conversation, follow-up questions build on what came before so the conversation never ends.
Content search
AI Mode can answer store-related questions that go beyond the product catalog, such as delivery policies or opening hours. You only need to feed your store's AI Mode with the documents you want so it can answer from the knowledge you've added, ensuring it gives accurate answers, and nothing is ever made up.
AI behavior shaped to your brand
Retailers shape tone, priorities, and exclusions through the Playboard's Instance Management Console, so AI Mode represents the store deliberately, the way a trained in-store assistant would.
They can adjust results, apply boosts, and shape what shoppers see in AI Mode. AI doesn't need to act like a black box and you should always be in control of your own search.
Privacy and governance
AI Mode runs on Empathy's private, in-house AI infrastructure rather than third-party AI services, supporting data governance, operational resilience, and a reduced environmental footprint.
Conversational data isn't shared with or used to train external models. Conversation history stays under shopper's control, and every conversational interaction resolves into a structured, inspectable search query, so search behavior remains governable rather than opaque.
Learn more about Empathy's own AI infrastructure for AI Mode in the Architectural shift behind conversational search blog post.
Built for real intent
Shoppers rarely arrive at a search bar knowing the exact terms for what they want. AI Mode lets intent emerge and sharpen across a conversation, reducing dead ends and keeping the experience alive even when a single query would return no results. Catalog-grounded responses give shoppers the context they need to compare options and convert with confidence.
Every conversational turn resolves into a structured search query, so merchandising teams keep full control over ranking rules, promotions, and business logic. AI Mode works across all categories and all supported languages, delivering a consistent experience regardless of catalog size or industry.
Learn how to get the most of conversational search in Discover the AI Mode