An AI chatbot for online shops: advise, recommend, sort out orders

Good recommendations start with a question. Someone typing "present for my nephew, he's 10 and into gadgets" doesn't need a homepage full of bestsellers. They need a handful of suggestions that actually fit.

The bot searches the catalogue for what's being described and shows suitable products as cards. Because it knows stock levels, it can tell people what's available right now. If the customer asks a follow-up, say whether the kit needs extra parts, it answers from your product data and descriptions.

There's one limit worth knowing about. The bot recommends from what's in your catalogue and your texts. Thin product descriptions mean thin recommendations. The analytics show which questions it struggled with, which tells you where a better product text would pay off.

"Where's my order?" is one of the most common questions in almost any shop. In Shopware shops, the bot asks for the order number and looks up the status directly. The customer gets an answer immediately, and your team never sees the email. That lookup is Shopware-only for now. Everything else in this section works in any shop.

Questions about delivery times, shipping costs, destinations and returns are answered from your shipping and returns pages. How long do I have to send it back? Where do I get the returns label? If it's on your website, it's in the chat.

Special cases stay with you. A damaged parcel, a goodwill request, an order that's been stuck for days. The bot hands those over to your team in live chat, and you see the whole conversation including the order number. That's how Wilesco runs it, too.