March was a busy month at Alhena. We've added a brand new Returns Management agent, expanded platform reach with full BigCommerce support, brought ElevenLabs voices into the mix, launched a new AI Visibility dashboard, and cleaned up a lot of the platform under the hood. Here's the full rundown:
A significant new launch
We've launched a dedicated Return Management Agent, a purpose-built agent for handling returns with its own custom prompts and handoff guidelines. It registers automatically across all bot profiles, so you don't need to configure anything to get it running.
For BigCommerce and Shopify Stores
BigCommerce stores can connect with full parity: REST API client, product scraping, stock checking, order management, product finder, and dashboard connectivity all ship together.
For Shopify merchants, we've broken out every individual tool into its own toggle on the dashboard. Cancel order, gift card lookup, return eligibility, create return, create exchange, discount lookup, list promotions: each one is now independently controllable. You have precise control over what your AI assistant can and can't do. As a safety guardrail, those toggles are disabled if the required OAuth scopes haven't been granted, with a clear re-authorization prompt and a list of what's missing.
One more Shopify improvement worth noting: nested metaobject references (think FAQ groups, ingredient lists, and product specs stored as linked objects) now resolve up to 3 levels deep. Previously these were silently dropped. They're not anymore.
ElevenLabs voices and a cleaner voice experience
We've added ElevenLabs as a TTS provider, bringing eight new voice options alongside existing Cartesia voices: Eryn, Joseph, Justin, Katherine, Liz, Nathanial-C, John Fernandes, and Katie X. Voice selection now has real depth.
We also fixed two quality issues that were affecting voice conversations: out-of-order transcripts are now resolved, assistant voice messages no longer incorrectly merge, and voice audio stops properly when a user opens a new chat session.
A new home for AI engine optimization
AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude) are increasingly where shoppers go first. The new AI Visibility tab in the dashboard gives you a full picture of where you stand: content catalog, gap analysis, search volume, prompt opportunities, and a detail page with specific optimization steps. It includes pagination, filtering, and sorting so you can work through your opportunities systematically.
You can now also configure which AI engines are used for visibility analysis. Pick from OpenAI, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude depending on where your audience is. Prompt limits are now enforced per billing tier (25 for Essentials, 75 for Growth, 150 for Scale), with a clear upgrade prompt when you hit your ceiling.
Smarter defaults, more capable models
- Suggested questions on by default - The SuggestedQuestionAgent is now active for all bot profiles out of the box, not just newly created ones.
- Chat Completions as default - We've switched from the OpenAI Responses API to Chat Completions as the default API mode for broader compatibility and reliability.
- Gemini 3 thinking levels - You can now control the reasoning depth of Gemini 3 at low, medium, or high via the
reasoning_effortparameter.
A cleaner, more capable platform
- Rich text editor migration - All editors have been migrated from the deprecated Draft.js library to Lexical, with full feature parity: markdown, headings, code blocks, links, lists, and raw mode.
- Pro plan now has 3 tiers - The Pro plan splits into Essentials, Growth, and Scale, each with differentiated feature limits to better match where customers actually are.
- Employee access console redesign - Internal employee access management has been revamped with granular feature permissions, new presets, and a cleaner UI.
- Tools dashboard cleanup Deprecated tools (lead generation, conversation markdown, OSS manager, related question prompt) have been removed. The sidebar is refreshed and developer API settings are now in the manage admins section.
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