Klaviyo launches Custom Skills for Customer Agent AI tool

Klaviyo has launched Custom Skills for Customer Agent, allowing brands to add their own logic to the company's customer service AI tool.

Customer Agent already handles tasks such as order tracking, returns and product recommendations. With Custom Skills, brands can build functions from scratch in plain language, modify existing skills and connect the agent to other systems across their operations.

The launch reflects a broader push by software providers to make AI-based customer service tools more adaptable to the different ways retailers and consumer brands manage interactions. Klaviyo is targeting cases where standard workflows do not fit, such as booking appointments, handling warranty claims or guiding customers through gifting decisions.

The feature also extends the tool beyond digital support queries by connecting customer conversations with physical-world systems, including store locators, reservation services and appointment scheduling, alongside more established eCommerce support tasks.

Service focus

Klaviyo's Service business focuses on AI tools for customer experience, with Customer Agent as part of that effort. Built on the company's CRM platform, the software can draw on customer information already held in the system, including purchase history, browsing behaviour and loyalty status.

That architecture is central to Klaviyo's case for the product. Many AI service tools are tied to standalone systems or legacy helpdesk products, where records of the customer relationship sit separately from marketing data or transaction history.

Customer Agent writes conversations and resolutions back into the same customer profile used for marketing activity. In practice, this is meant to give brands a single view of service and marketing interactions rather than splitting those functions across separate platforms.

Klaviyo presented the release as a way for brands to reflect their own business rules more closely in automated service. A luxury label may approach returns differently from a mass retailer, while a subscription business may run loyalty mechanics unlike those of a one-off purchase model.

Examples included a reservation concierge that learns preferences across sessions and suggests venues based on evolving customer behaviour, and a personalised gifting adviser that helps shoppers choose items for someone else without changing their own customer profile.

Customer view

Klaviyo included comments from apparel brand Naked Wardrobe, which has previously used the company's software.

"We've trusted Klaviyo for years, so when Customer Agent launched, we moved immediately," said James Thorngren, Marketing Director, Naked Wardrobe. "Now, with Customer Agent, AI is out there styling our customer, answering questions, selling the right piece, at two in the morning when our team is asleep."

The update comes as brands experiment with AI agents not only as support tools but also as a direct interface for shopping and service. That shift is increasing pressure on vendors to show that automated systems can do more than deliver scripted responses and can operate within each business's rules, data and processes.

For Klaviyo, the product also supports its push to deepen its role with consumer-facing brands beyond email and marketing automation. The company says more than 193,000 paying customers use its platform, and it highlighted integrations with other software systems as part of the Custom Skills launch.

AI strategy

Andrew Bialecki, Klaviyo's co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer, said the location of AI within a company's software stack will matter as automated systems become more central to customer interactions.

"At the core, this is about where AI lives," said Andrew Bialecki, co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer, Klaviyo. "As AI becomes a primary interface for customer interactions, this architectural difference becomes more important. When brands can provide immediate context, resolve requests, and confidently guide the next step for customers, they will have an advantage. Klaviyo's autonomous approach, building agents where the data already lives, positions Custom Skills not just as a feature, but as part of a longer-term structural advantage in how brands deliver customer experiences."

Custom Skills is available in managed beta.