Practise a buyer conversation

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Start as the buyer

From the Merchandising Agent interview, choose Try as a buyer. Describe a customer’s situation in your own words. A rough goal is enough to begin: “I run a restaurant and need more weekday lunch customers.” Your Merchandising Agent can ask questions, explain choices or limitations, and build a proposal when there is enough information. The working brief keeps the objective, confirmed facts, assumptions, and open questions together. Expand a confirmed fact to see the buyer’s words behind it. When a commercial recommendation is useful, the agent can create or revise a proposal through Proposal Builder. Continuing the conversation does not automatically create another proposal. Open the proposal to inspect the offer and its history. Make practice revisions in the buyer conversation so the proposal stays connected to its working brief. The standalone proposal controls are read-only during practice. Practice proposals cannot be released as live offers. No media is booked and no buyer is contacted.

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Coach a reply

Choose Coach this reply beneath a completed response. Write the instruction you want the assistant to use in future situations. For example: “Ask whether the customer wants walk-ins or delivery before recommending an approach.” Choose Test this lesson to replay the buyer message that prompted the selected reply in a private conversation with that lesson. Your original conversation remains available. The replay includes earlier dialogue and the selected buyer message, without copying answers the buyer supplied later. You can compare the original reply and continue talking in the new conversation. The earlier dialogue, selected buyer message, and saved selling instructions are retained for the test, together with your candidate lesson. The current catalogue, materials, availability, and policy are read again when the agent responds, so changes to your offering can also affect the result. A lesson guides selling behaviour; it does not change configured commercial facts or override your business rules. If you coach another reply in a practice branch, the new test uses your new lesson with the original saved selling instructions. Include any earlier lesson guidance you want to keep; lessons do not accumulate automatically. Testing a lesson does not change your live selling instructions. Closing the coaching dialog keeps your draft in the current browser session. Failed tests retain the original operation for retry; a saved branch can be reopened if its response was interrupted.

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Try another customer

Choose Try a fresh customer to begin an empty conversation with the same lesson. Supply a different business or goal and see whether the assistant asks an appropriate question. The previous conversation and its comparison remain in your conversation history.

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Apply a tested lesson

After the assistant has completed a response with the lesson, choose Use in future conversations. Review the lesson and the selling-instruction text before and after the change. Apply to future conversations creates and activates a new Playbook version. If someone changed the live Playbook after you started practice, start a new practice conversation using the current instructions before applying your lesson. The attempted application does not overwrite those newer instructions. Use the existing Playbook controls to manage or restore active instruction versions.

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What remains private

Only the person who started a practice conversation can reopen it. Practice conversations cannot be shared or given buyer-agent participants. Coaching controls do not grant access to private conversations with real buyers. Attachments and seller administration actions are unavailable inside practice. Return to your usual seller conversation to teach new facts or change setup. People with access to your seller account’s proposals can also view practice proposals and their saved working briefs. This does not give them access to your practice conversation or coaching controls. A useful practice conversation helps you judge your assistant’s behaviour. It does not certify future answers, delivery, payments, or advertiser access. Lessons can contain up to 2,000 characters. Coaching is available on the most recent 200 completed replies, and replay requires fewer than 400 earlier text messages. A working brief can retain 24 confirmed facts, 12 assumptions, and 12 open questions; each entry can contain up to 2,000 characters.

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Use the shared conversation API

The same practice mode is available through ask_murph and POST /api/v2/murph/chat (including its streaming variant). Existing requests continue normally when they omit the optional practice fields. Start a new conversation with your buyer message and sellerPractice: true. Continue using the returned conversationUid; the server retains practice mode even when later requests omit the flag. An existing ordinary conversation cannot be converted into practice. Responses include sellerPractice, which carries the working brief, exact proposal reference when present, candidate lesson, comparison source, and coachable reply IDs. sellerPracticeReplyId identifies the completed reply. Instruction text is returned separately only for an explicit lesson review. Publisher controls use sellerPracticeAction with the existing conversation ID:

• read returns the saved context.
• test_lesson takes replyId, lesson, and a new UUID branchUid.
• fresh_customer takes a new UUID branchUid and carries the current lesson.
• review_lesson returns the instruction text before and after application and its expectedVersion.
• apply_lesson requires that reviewed expectedVersion and confirmed: true.

Retain a branch UUID when retrying the same test or fresh-customer request. Use a different UUID for a different exercise. All actions recheck your seller access and conversation ownership. Publisher action text is not added to buyer dialogue. Practice cannot be combined with an immediate Library write or a separate agent-validation launch.