Upload Documents to Teach Your Shopify AI Voice Agent

You can now upload documents to Shopdigits so its AI voice agent can answer callers from them. Add a PDF, Word, or text file, such as a care guide, warranty terms, or a product manual, and the agent searches it during calls when a question goes beyond your product catalog, store policies, and FAQ. This post covers what to upload, the file limits, how the agent uses your documents on a call, and how to set it up.

What's new: documents in Store knowledge

Until now, the Shopdigits AI voice agent answered from three places: your synced Shopify products, your orders, and the Store policies & FAQ field on the Voice Agent & SMS page, where you write answers or sync the policies published on your store. That covers most calls. It doesn't cover the material that lives in files: the 12-page assembly guide, the warranty terms your manufacturer sent, the fabric care sheet, the wholesale price agreement.

The new Documents section closes that gap. Upload the files you'd otherwise hand a new employee, and the agent can look things up in them while it's on the phone with a customer.

What should you upload?

Upload the documents your team opens when a customer asks a question nobody remembers the answer to. For a Shopify store, that usually means:

• Product manuals and assembly guides. “How do I reset it?” and “What size wrench do I need?”
• Care and cleaning instructions. “Can I put the cover in the dryer?”
• Warranty and guarantee terms. What's covered, for how long, and how to make a claim.
• Sizing and fit guides. Measurements and conversion charts, including tables in Word files.
• Ingredient, material, and safety sheets. Allergens, materials, and certifications.
• Event, class, or rental rules and waivers. If your store sells bookings, the terms that go with them.
• Wholesale or bulk ordering terms. Minimums, lead times, and who to contact.

Leave out anything you wouldn't read aloud to a stranger, such as supplier costs, internal notes, or customer lists. Anything in an uploaded document is something the agent may say to a caller.

Supported files and limits

A few things trip up uploads:

• Scanned PDFs. The agent reads text, not images. If you can't select the words in a PDF, Shopdigits rejects it with a message saying so. Export the original document as a PDF instead of scanning a printout.
• Password-protected PDFs. Remove the password and upload again. PDFs that only restrict printing usually upload fine.
• Old Word files. Save .doc files as .docx first.
• Very long files. If a document is over 200,000 characters, split it into smaller files, such as one per product line.

How does the AI use your documents on a call?

Documents aren't pasted into the agent's instructions. They sit behind a search, which is why they can be far larger than the FAQ field:

1. Shopdigits extracts the text. When you upload a file, it pulls out the text, keeping tables in Word documents next to their headings, and stores only that text. The original file isn't kept.
2. It splits the text into sections. Short lines that end in a colon or are written in capitals are treated as headings, and each section is searchable on its own.
3. A caller asks something new. If the answer isn't already in the agent's call context, it searches your store: your live products, your policies and FAQ, and your documents.
4. It answers from what it finds. Each result is labeled with the document it came from, and the agent answers from that passage. If the search comes back empty, it rephrases and tries again.
5. It doesn't guess. If nothing in your store covers the question, the agent tells the caller someone from the store will follow up with the details. It can also offer to transfer the call to your number.

Documents vs the Store policies & FAQ field

Keep your top ten questions in the FAQ field, where the agent has them from the first second of the call. Put everything else in documents. And don't upload price lists: product prices and availability already sync from Shopify, and a stale price sheet would only compete with the live catalog.

How to upload a document

1. In the Shopdigits app in Shopify, open the Voice Agent & SMS page.
2. Scroll to Documents, below Store knowledge, and click Upload document.
3. Choose a PDF, .docx, .txt, or .md file. When it's processed, Shopdigits shows the file name and how many characters of text it found. A file with the same name as an earlier upload replaces it.
4. Call your store's number from another phone, let it ring through to the AI, and ask a question only that document answers.
5. Read the call transcript in your Shopdigits inbox to check what the agent said.

To update a document later, upload the new version with the same file name. To take one away from the agent, click Remove next to it.

How to get better answers from your documents

• Use clear headings. The agent searches by section, so a heading like “Warranty claims:” or “WASHING INSTRUCTIONS” keeps the right paragraph together.
• Use your customers' words. Search matches words, so if customers say “stroller” and your manual says “pram”, add a line that uses both.
• One topic per file. “Warranty.pdf” and “Care guide.pdf” are easier to keep current than one combined handbook.
• Remove what's out of date. The agent treats every document as current. Delete last year's terms when the new ones go up.
• Read the first week of transcripts. Wherever the agent said someone would follow up, there's a question your documents don't answer yet.

Documents are one part of what the agent knows. For the full picture of a call, including caller ID matching, order lookups with verification, and what the agent won't do, see AI receptionist for Shopify: how it works and what it saves. Document uploads come with the AI voice agent on Medium Shop at $49 a month and Enterprise at $99 a month, each with a 14-day free trial. Install Shopdigits on Shopify or compare plans.