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Your Support Team Drives More Revenue Than You Think: Conversational Commerce Metrics

Your chat might be closing more sales than your checkout page. Here’s how to measure it.

0 min read . By Tina Donati

TL;DR:

Support chats can now be directly tied to revenue. Brands are measuring conversations by conversion rate, average order value (AOV), and GMV influenced.
AI resolution rate is only valuable if the answers are accurate and helpful. A high resolution rate doesn’t matter if it leads to poor recommendations — the best AI both deflects volume and drives confident purchases.
Chat conversion rates often outperform traditional channels. Brands like Arc’teryx saw a 75% lift in conversions (from 4% to 7%) when AI handled high-intent product questions.
Shoppers who chat often spend more. Conversations lead to higher AOVs by helping customers understand products, explore upgrades, and discover add-ons — not just through upselling, but smarter guidance.

Conversational commerce finally has a scoreboard.

For years, CX leaders knew support conversations mattered, they just couldn’t prove how much. Conversations lived in that gray area of ecommerce where shoppers got answers, agents did their best, and everyone agreed the channel was “important”…

But tying those interactions back to actual revenue? Nearly impossible.

Fast forward to today, and everything has changed.

Real-time conversations — whether handled by a human agent or powered by AI — now leave a measurable footprint across the entire customer journey. You can see how many conversations directly influenced a purchase.

In other words, conversational commerce is finally something CX teams can measure, optimize, and scale with confidence.

Why measuring conversational commerce matters now

If you want to prove the value of your CX strategy to your CFO, your marketing team, or your CEO, you need data, not anecdotes.

Leadership isn’t swayed by “We think conversations help shoppers.” They want to see the receipts. They want to know exactly how interactions influence revenue, which conversations drive conversion, and where AI meaningfully reduces workload without sacrificing quality.

That’s why conversational commerce metrics matter now more than ever. This gives CX leaders a way to:

Quantify the revenue influence of conversations
Understand where AI improves efficiency — and where humans add the most value
Make informed decisions on staffing, automation, and channel investment
Turn CX into a profit center instead of a cost center

These metrics let you track impact with clarity and confidence.

And once you can measure it, you can build a stronger case for deeper investment in conversational tools and strategy.

The 4 metric categories that define conversational commerce success

So, what exactly should CX teams be measuring?

While conversational commerce touches every part of the customer journey, the most meaningful insights fall into four core categories:

Automation performance
Conversion & revenue impact
Engagement quality
Discounting behavior

Let’s dive into each.

Automation performance metrics

If you want to understand how well your conversational commerce strategy is working, automation performance is the first place to look. These metrics reveal how effectively AI is resolving shopper needs, reducing ticket volume, and stepping into revenue-driving conversations at scale.

The two most foundational metrics?

1. Resolution rate: Are AI-led conversations actually helpful?

Resolution rate measures how many conversations your AI handles from start to finish without needing a human to take over. On paper, high resolution rates sound like a guaranteed win. It suggests your AI is handling product questions, sizing concerns, shade matching, order guidance, and more — all without adding to your team’s workload.

But a high resolution rate doesn’t automatically mean your AI is performing well.

Yes, the ticket was “resolved,” but was the customer actually helped? Was the answer accurate? Did the shopper leave satisfied or frustrated?

This is where quality assurance becomes essential. Your AI should be resolving tickets accurately and helpfully, not simply checking boxes.

At its best, a strong resolution rate signals that your AI is:

Confidently answering product questions
Guiding shoppers to the right SKU, variant, shade, size, or style
Reducing cart abandonment caused by confusion
Helping pre-sale shoppers convert faster

When resolution rate quality goes up, so does revenue influence.

You can see this clearly with beauty brands, where accuracy matters enormously. bareMinerals, for example, used to receive a flood of shade-matching questions. Everything from “Which concealer matches my undertone?” to “This foundation shade was discontinued; what’s the closest match?”

Before AI, these questions required well-trained agents and often created inconsistencies depending on who answered.

Once they introduced Shopping Assistant, resolution rate suddenly became more meaningful. AI wasn’t just closing tickets; it was giving smarter, more confident recommendations than many agents could deliver at scale, especially after hours.

BareMinerals' AI Agent recommends a customer a foundation that matches their skin tone

That accuracy paid off.

AI-influenced purchases at bareMinerals had zero returns in the first 30 days because customers were finally getting the right shade the first time.

That’s the difference between “resolved” and resolved well.

2. Zero-touch tickets: How many tickets never reach a human?

The zero-touch ticket rate measures something slightly different: the percentage of conversations AI manages entirely on its own, without ever being escalated to an agent.

This metric is a direct lens into:

Workload reduction
Team efficiency
Cost savings
AI’s ability to own high-volume question types

More importantly, deflection widens the funnel for more revenue-driven conversations.

When AI deflects more inbound questions, your support team can focus on conversations that truly require human expertise, including returns exceptions, escalations, VIP shoppers, and emotionally sensitive interactions.

Brands with strong deflection rates typically see:

Shorter wait times
Higher CSAT
Lower support costs
More AI-influenced revenue

Conversion and revenue impact metrics

If automation metrics tell you how well your AI is working, conversion and revenue metrics tell you how well it’s selling.

This category is where conversational commerce really proves its value because it shows the direct financial impact of every human- or AI-led interaction.

1. Chat Conversion Rate (CVR): How often do conversations turn into purchases?

Chat conversion rate measures the percentage of conversations that end in a purchase, and it’s one of the clearest indicators of whether your conversational strategy is influencing shopper decisions.

A strong CVR tells you that conversations are:

Building confidence
Removing hesitation
Guiding shoppers toward the right product

You see this clearly with brands selling technical or performance-driven products.

Outdoor apparel shoppers, for example, don’t just need “a jacket” — they need to know which jacket will hold up in specific temperatures, conditions, or terrains. A well-trained AI can step into that moment and convert uncertainty into action.

Arc’teryx saw this firsthand.

Arc'teryx uses Shopping Assistant to enable purchases directly from chat

Once Shopping Assistant started handling their high-intent pre-purchase questions, their chat conversion rate jumped dramatically — from 4% to 7%. A 75% lift.

That’s what happens when shoppers finally get the expert guidance they’ve been searching for.

2. GMV influenced: The revenue ripple effect of conversations

Not every shopper buys the moment they finish a chat. Some take a few hours. Some need a day or two. Some want to compare specs or read reviews before committing.

GMV influenced captures this “tail effect” by tracking revenue within 1–3 days of a conversation.

It’s especially powerful for:

High-consideration purchases (like outdoor gear, home furniture, equipment)
Products with many options, specs, or configurations
Shoppers who need reassurance before buying

In Arc’teryx’s case, shoppers often take time to confirm they’re choosing the right technical gear.

Yet even with that natural pause in behavior, Shopping Assistant still influenced 3.7% of all revenue, not by forcing instant decisions, but by providing the clarity people needed to make the right one.

3. AOV from conversational commerce: Do conversations lead to bigger carts?

This metric looks at the average order value of shoppers who engage in a conversation versus those who don’t.

If the conversational AOV is higher, it means your AI or agents are educating customers in ways that naturally expand the cart.

Examples of AOV-lifting conversations include:

Recommending complementary gear, tools, or accessories
Suggesting upgraded options based on needs
Helping shoppers understand the difference between product tiers
Explaining why a specific product is worth the investment

When conversations are done well, AOV increases not because shoppers are being upsold, but because they’re being guided.

4. ROI of AI-powered conversations: The metric your leadership cares most about

ROI compares the revenue generated by conversational AI to the cost of the tool itself — in short, this is the number that turns heads in boardrooms.

Strong ROI shows that your AI:

Does the work of multiple agents
Drives new revenue, not just ticket deflection
Provides accurate answers consistently, at any time
Delivers a high-quality experience without expanding headcount

When ROI looks like that, AI stops being a “tool” and starts being an undeniable growth lever.

Engagement metrics that indicate purchase intent

Not every metric in conversational commerce is a final outcome. Some are early signals that show whether shoppers are interested, paying attention, and moving closer to a purchase.

These engagement metrics are especially valuable because they reveal why conversations convert, not just whether they do. When engagement goes up, conversion usually follows.

1. Click-Through Rate (CTR): Are shoppers acting on the products your AI recommends?

CTR measures the percentage of shoppers who click the product links shared during a conversation. It’s one of the cleanest leading indicators of buyer intent because it reflects a moment where curiosity turns into action.

If CTR is high, it’s a sign that:

Your recommendations are relevant
The conversation is persuasive
The shopper trusts the guidance they’re getting
The AI is surfacing the right product at the right time

In other words, CTR tells you which conversations are influencing shopping behavior.

And the connection between CTR and revenue is often tighter than teams expect.

Just look at what happened with Caitlyn Minimalist. When they began comparing the results of human-led conversations versus AI-assisted ones over a 90-day period, CTR became one of the clearest predictors of success. Their Shopping Assistant consistently drove meaningful engagement with its recommendations — an 18% click-through rate on the products it suggested.

That level of engagement translated directly into better outcomes:

AI-driven conversations converted at 20%, compared to just 8% for human agents
Many of those clicks led to multi-item purchases
Overall, the brand experienced a 50% lift in sales from AI-assisted chats compared to human-only ones

When shoppers click, they’re moving deeper into the buying cycle. Strong CTR makes it easier to forecast conversion and understand how well your conversational flows are guiding shoppers toward the right products.

AI Agent recommends a customer with jewelry safe for sensitive skin

Discounting behavior metrics

Discounting can be one of the fastest ways to nudge a shopper toward checkout, but it’s also one of the fastest ways to erode margins.

That’s why discount-related metrics matter so much in conversational commerce.

They show not just whether AI is using discounts, but how effectively those discounts are driving conversions.

1. Discounts offered: Are incentives being used strategically or too often?

This metric tracks how many discount codes or promotional offers your AI is sharing during conversations.

Ideally, discounts should be purposeful — timed to moments when a shopper hesitates or needs an extra nudge — not rolled out as a one-size-fits-all script. When you monitor “discounts offered,” you can ensure that incentives are being used as conversion tools, not crutches.

This visibility becomes particularly important at high-intent touchpoints, such as exit intent or cart recovery interactions, where a small incentive can meaningfully increase conversion if used correctly.

2. Discounts applied: Are those discounts actually influencing the purchase?

Offering a discount is one thing. Seeing whether customers use it is another.

A high “discounts applied” rate suggests:

The offer was compelling
The timing was right
The shopper truly needed that incentive to convert

A low usage rate tells a different story: Your team (or your AI) is discounting unnecessarily.

This metric alone often surprises brands. More often than not, CX teams discover they can discount less without hurting conversion, or that a non-discount incentive (like a relevant product recommendation) performs just as well.

Understanding this relationship helps teams tighten their promotional strategy, protect margins, and use discounts only where they actually drive incremental revenue.

How CX teams use these metrics to make better decisions

Once you know which metrics matter, the next step is building a system that brings them together in one place.

Think of your conversational commerce scorecard as a decision-making engine — something that helps you understand performance at a glance, spot bottlenecks, optimize AI, and guide shoppers more effectively.

In Gorgias, you can customize your analytics dashboard to watch the metrics that matter most to your brand. This becomes the single source of truth for understanding how conversations influence revenue.

Here’s what a powerful dashboard unlocks:

1. You learn where AI performs best (and where humans outperform)

Some parts of the customer journey are perfect for AI: repetitive questions, product education, sizing guidance, shade matching, order status checks.

Others still benefit from human support, like emotional conversations, complex troubleshooting, multi-item styling, or high-value VIP concerns.

Metrics like resolution rate, zero-touch ticket rate, and chat conversion rate show you exactly which is which.

When you track these consistently, you can:

Identify conversation types AI should fully own
Spot where AI needs more training
Allocate human agents to higher-value conversations
Decide when humans should step in to drive stronger outcomes

For example, if AI handles 80% of sizing questions successfully but struggles with multi-item styling advice, that tells you where to invest in improving AI, and where human expertise should remain the default.

2. You uncover what shoppers actually need to convert

Metrics like CTR, CVR, and conversational AOV reveal the inner workings of shopper decision-making. They show which recommendations resonate, which don’t, and which messaging actually moves someone to purchase.

With these insights, CX teams can:

Refine product recommendations
Improve conversation flows that stall out
Adjust the tone or structure of AI messaging
Draft stronger scripts for human agents
Identify recurring questions that indicate missing PDP information

For instance, if shoppers repeatedly ask clarifying questions about a product’s material or fit, that’s a signal for merchandising or product teams.

If recommendations with social proof get high engagement, marketing can integrate that insight into on-site messaging.

Conversations reveal what customers really care about — often before analytics do.

3. You prove that conversations directly drive revenue

This is the moment when the scorecard stops being a CX tool and becomes a business tool.

A clear set of metrics shows how conversations tie to:

GMV influenced
AOV lift
Revenue generated by AI
ROI of conversational commerce tools

When a CX leader walks into a meeting and says, “Our AI Assistant influenced 5% of last month’s revenue” or “Conversational shoppers have a 20% higher AOV,” the perception of CX changes instantly.

You’re no longer a support cost. You’re a revenue channel.

And once you have numbers like ROI or revenue influence in hand, it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to argue against further investment in CX automation.

4. You identify where shoppers are dropping off or hesitating

A scorecard doesn’t just show what’s working, it surfaces what’s not.

Metrics make friction obvious:

Metric Signal	What It Means
Low CTR	Recommendations may be irrelevant or poorly timed.
Low CVR	Conversations aren’t persuasive enough to drive a purchase.
High deflection but low revenue	AI is resolving tickets, but not effectively selling.
High discount usage	Shoppers rely on incentives to convert.
Low discount usage	You may be offering discounts unnecessarily and losing margin.

Once you identify these patterns, you can run targeted experiments:

Test new scripts or flows
Adjust product recommendations
Add social proof or benefit framing
Reassess discounting strategies
Rework messaging on key PDPs

Compounded over time, these moments create major lifts in conversion and revenue.

5. You create a feedback loop across marketing, merchandising, and product

One of the biggest hidden values of conversational data is how it strengthens cross-functional decision-making.

A clear analytics dashboard gives teams visibility into:

Unclear or missing product information (from repeated questions)
Merchandising opportunities (from your most popular products)
Landing page or PDP improvements (from drop-off points)
Messaging that resonates with real customers (from AI messages)

Suddenly, CX isn’t just answering questions — it’s informing strategy across the business.

CX drives revenue when you measure what matters

With the right metrics in place, CX leaders can finally quantify the impact of every interaction, and use that data to shape smarter, more profitable customer journeys.

If you're ready to measure — and scale — the impact of your conversations, tools like Gorgias AI Agent and Shopping Assistant give CX teams the visibility, accuracy, and performance needed to turn every interaction into revenue.

Want to see it in action? Book a demo and discover what conversational commerce can do for your bottom line.

By Tina Donati

AI in CX Webinar Recap: Turning AI Implementation into Team Alignment

0 min read . By Gabrielle Policella

min read.

By Gabrielle Policella

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Featured articles

How Food & Beverage Brands Can Level Up Self-Service Before BFCM

Before the BFCM rush begins, we’re serving food & beverage CX teams seven easy self-serve upgrades to keep support tickets off their plate.

By Alexa Hertel

0 min read . By Alexa Hertel

TL;DR:

Most food & beverage support tickets during BFCM are predictable. Subscription cancellations, WISMO, and product questions make up the bulk—so prep answers ahead of time.
Proactive CX site updates can drastically cut down repetitive tickets. Add ingredient lists, cooking instructions, and clear refund policies to product pages and FAQs.
FAQ pages should go deep, not just broad. Answer hyper-specific questions like “Will this break my fast?” to help customers self-serve without hesitation.‍
Transparency about stock reduces confusion and cart abandonment. Show inventory levels, set up waitlists, and clearly state cancellation windows.

In 2024, Shopify merchants drove $11.5 billion in sales over Black Friday Cyber Monday. Now, BFCM is quickly approaching, with some brands and major retailers already hosting sales.

If you’re feeling late to prepare for the season or want to maximize the number of sales you’ll make, we’ll cover how food and beverage CX teams can serve up better self-serve resources for this year’s BFCM.

Learn how to answer and deflect customers’ top questions before they’re escalated to your support team.

💡 Your guide to everything peak season → The Gorgias BFCM Hub

Handling BFCM as a food & beverage brand

During busy seasons like BFCM and beyond, staying on top of routine customer asks can be an extreme challenge.

“Every founder thinks BFCM is the highest peak feeling of nervousness,” says Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder of supplement brand Obvi.

“It’s a tough week. So anything that makes our team’s life easier instantly means we can focus more on things that need the time,” he continues.

Anticipating contact reasons and preparing methods (like automated responses, macros, and enabling an AI Agent) is something that can help. Below, find the top contact reasons for food and beverage companies in 2025.

Top contact reasons in the food & beverage industry

According to Gorgias proprietary data, the top reason customers reach out to brands in the food and beverage industry is to cancel a subscription (13%) followed by order status questions (9.1%).

Contact Reason	% of Tickets
🍽️ Subscription cancellation	13%
🚚 Order status (WISMO)	9.1%
❌ Order cancellation	6.5%
🥫 Product details	5.7%
🧃 Product availability	4.1%
⭐ Positive feedback	3.9%

7 ways to improve your self-serve resources before BFCM

Add informative blurbs on product pages
Craft additional help center and FAQ articles
Automate responses with AI or Macros
Get specific about product availability
Provide order cancellation and refund policies upfront
Add how-to information
Build resources to help with buying decisions

1) Add informative blurbs on product pages

Because product detail queries represent 5.7% of contact reasons for the food and beverage industry, the more information you provide on your product pages, the better.

Include things like calorie content, nutritional information, and all ingredients.

For example, ready-to-heat meal company The Dinner Ladies includes a dropdown menu on each product page for further reading. Categories include serving instructions, a full ingredient list, allergens, nutritional information, and even a handy “size guide” that shows how many people the meal serves.

The Dinner Ladies product page showing parmesan biscuits with tapenade and mascarpone. — The Dinner Ladies includes a drop down menu full of key information on its product pages. *The Dinner Ladies*

2) Craft additional Help Center and FAQ articles

FAQ pages make up the information hub of your website. They exist to provide customers with a way to get their questions answered without reaching out to you.

This includes information like how food should be stored, how long its shelf life is, delivery range, and serving instructions. FAQs can even direct customers toward finding out where their order is and what its status is.

Graphic listing benefits of FAQ pages including saving time and improving SEO.

In the context of BFCM, FAQs are all about deflecting repetitive questions away from your team and assisting shoppers in finding what they need faster.

That’s the strategy for German supplement brand mybacs.

“Our focus is to improve automations to make it easier for customers to self-handle their requests. This goes hand in hand with making our FAQs more comprehensive to give customers all the information they need,” says Alexander Grassmann, its Co-Founder & COO.

As you contemplate what to add to your FAQ page, remember that more information is usually better. That’s the approach Everyday Dose takes, answering even hyper-specific questions like, “Will it break my fast?” or “Do I have to use milk?”

Everyday Dose FAQ page showing product, payments, and subscription question categories. — Everyday Dose has an extensive FAQ page that guides shoppers through top questions and answers. *Everyday Dose*

While the FAQs you choose to add will be specific to your products, peruse the top-notch food and bev FAQ pages below.

Time for some FAQ inspo:

3) Automate responses with AI or macros

AI Agents and AI-powered Shopping Assistants are easy to set up and are extremely effective in handling customer interactions––especially during BFCM.

“I told our team we were going to onboard Gorgias AI Agent for BFCM, so a good portion of tickets would be handled automatically,” says Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi. “There was a huge sigh of relief knowing that customers were going to be taken care of.”

And, they’re getting smarter. AI Agent’s CSAT is just 0.6 points shy of human agents’ average CSAT score.

Obvi homepage promoting Black Friday sale with 50% off and chat support window open. — *Obvi*

Here are the specific responses and use cases we recommend automating:

WISMO (where is my order) inquiries
Product related questions
Returns
Order issues
Cancellations
Discounts, including BFCM related
Customer feedback
Account management
Collaboration requests
Rerouting complex queries

Get your checklist here: How to prep for peak season: BFCM automation checklist

4) Get specific about product availability

With high price reductions often comes faster-than-usual sell out times. By offering transparency around item quantities, you can avoid frustrated or upset customers.

For example, you could show how many items are left under a certain threshold (e.g. “Only 10 items left”), or, like Rebel Cheese does, mention whether items have sold out in the past.

Rebel Cheese product page for Thanksgiving Cheeseboard Classics featuring six vegan cheeses on wood board. — Rebel Cheese warns shoppers that its Thanksgiving cheese board has sold out 3x already. *Rebel Cheese*

You could also set up presales, give people the option to add themselves to a waitlist, and provide early access to VIP shoppers.

5) Provide order cancellation and refund policies upfront

Give shoppers a heads up whether they’ll be able to cancel an order once placed, and what your refund policies are.

For example, cookware brand Misen follows its order confirmation email with a “change or cancel within one hour” email that provides a handy link to do so.

Misen order confirmation email with link to change or cancel within one hour of checkout. — Cookware brand Misen follows up its order confirmation email with the option to edit within one hour. *Misen*

Your refund policies and order cancellations should live within an FAQ and in the footer of your website.

6) Add how-to information

Include how-to information on your website within your FAQs, on your blog, or as a standalone webpage. That might be sharing how to use a product, how to cook with it, or how to prepare it. This can prevent customers from asking questions like, “how do you use this?” or “how do I cook this?” or “what can I use this with?” etc.

For example, Purity Coffee created a full brewing guide with illustrations:

Purity Coffee brewing guide showing home drip and commercial batch brewer illustrations. — Purity Coffee has an extensive brewing guide on its website. *Purity Coffee*

Similarly, for its unique preseasoned carbon steel pan, Misen lists out care instructions:

Butter melting in a seasoned carbon steel pan on a gas stove. — *Misen*

And for those who want to understand the level of prep and cooking time involved, The Dinner Ladies feature cooking instructions on each product page.

The Dinner Ladies product page featuring duck sausage rolls with cherry and plum dipping sauce. — The Dinner Ladies feature a how to cook section on product pages. *The Dinner Ladies*

7) Build resources to help with buying decisions

Interactive quizzes, buying guides, and gift guides can help ensure shoppers choose the right items for them––without contacting you first.

For example, Trade Coffee Co created a quiz to help first timers find their perfect coffee match:

Trade Coffee Co offers an interactive quiz to lead shoppers to their perfect coffee match. *Trade Coffee Co*

Set your team up for BFCM success with Gorgias

The more information you can share with customers upfront, the better. That will leave your team time to tackle the heady stuff.

If you’re looking for an AI-assist this season, check out Gorgias’s suite of products like AI Agent and Shopping Assistant.

min read.

What is Conversational AI? The Ecommerce Guide

Learn about the different types of conversational AI and its benefits for ecommerce.

By Gorgias Team

0 min read . By Gorgias Team

min read.

How to Make Your Help Center LLM-Friendly

Your Help Center doesn’t need a rebuild. It just needs a smarter structure so AI can find what customers ask about most.

By Holly Stanley

0 min read . By Holly Stanley

TL;DR:

You don’t need to rebuild your Help Center to make it work with AI—you just need to structure it smarter.
AI Agent reads your content in three layers: Help Center, Guidance, and Actions, following an “if / when / then” logic to find and share accurate answers.
Most AI escalations happen because Help Docs are vague or incomplete. Start by improving your top 10 ticket topics—like order status, returns, and refunds.
Make your articles scannable, define clear conditions, link next steps, and keep your tone consistent. These small tweaks help AI Agent resolve more tickets on its own—and free up your team to focus on what matters most.

As holiday season support volumes spike and teams lean on AI to keep up, one frustration keeps surfacing, our Help Center has the answers—so why can’t AI find them?

The truth is, AI can’t help customers if it can’t understand your Help Center. Most large language models (LLMs), including Gorgias AI Agent, don’t ignore your existing docs, they just struggle to find clear, structured answers inside them.

The good news is you don’t need to rebuild your Help Center or overhaul your content. You simply need to format it in a way that’s easy for both people and AI to read.

We’ll break down how AI Agent reads your Help Center, finds answers, and why small formatting changes can help it respond faster and more accurately, so your team spends less time on escalations.

How AI Agent uses your Help Center content

Before you start rewriting your Help Center, it helps to understand how AI Agent actually reads and uses it.

Think of it like a three-step process that mirrors how a trained support rep thinks through a ticket.

1. Read Help Center docs

Your Help Center is AI Agent’s brain. AI Agent uses your Help Center to pull facts, policies, and instructions it needs to respond to customers accurately. If your articles are clearly structured and easy to scan, AI Agent can find what it needs fast. If not, it hesitates or escalates.

2. Follow Guidance instructions

Think of Guidance as AI Agent’s decision layer. What should AI Agent do when someone asks for a refund? What about when they ask for a discount? Guidance helps AI Agent provide accurate answers or hand over to a human by following an “if/when/then” framework.

3. Respond and perform

Finally, AI Agent uses a combination of your help docs and Guidance to respond to customers, and if enabled, perform an Action on their behalf—whether that’s changing a shipping address or canceling an order altogether.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Email thread between AI Agent and customer about skipping a subscription. — AI Agent skipped a customer’s subscription after getting their confirmation.

This structure removes guesswork for both your AI and your customers. The clearer your docs are about when something applies and what happens next, the more accurate and human your automated responses will feel.

A Help Center written for both people and AI Agent:

Saves your team time
Reduces escalations
Helps every customer get the right answer the first time

What causes AI Agent to escalate tickets, and how to fix it

Our data shows that most AI escalations happen for a simple reason––your Help Center doesn’t clearly answer the question your customer is asking.

That’s not a failure of AI. It’s a content issue. When articles are vague, outdated, or missing key details, AI Agent can’t confidently respond, so it passes the ticket to a human.

Here are the top 10 topics that trigger escalations most often:

Rank	Ticket Topic	% of Escalations
1	Order status	12.4%
2	Return request	7.9%
3	Order cancellation	6.1%
4	Product - quality issues	5.9%
5	Missing item	4.6%
6	Subscription cancellation	4.4%
7	Order refund	4.1%
8	Product details	3.5%
9	Return status	3.3%
10	Order delivered but not received	3.1%

Each of these topics needs a dedicated, clearly structured Help Doc that uses keywords customers are likely to search and spells out specific conditions.

Here’s how to strengthen each one:

Order status: Include expected delivery timelines, tracking link FAQs, and a clear section for “what to do if tracking isn’t updating.”
Return request: Spell out eligibility requirements, time limits, and how to print or request a return label.
Order cancellation: Define cut-off times for canceling and link to your “returns” doc for shipped orders.
Product quality issues: Explain what qualifies as a defect, how to submit photos, and whether replacements or refunds apply.
Missing item: Clarify how to report missing items and what verification steps your team takes before reshipping.
Subscription cancellation: Add “if/then” logic for different cases: if paused vs. canceled, if prepaid vs. monthly.
Order refund: Outline refund timelines, where customers can see status updates, and any exceptions (e.g., partial refunds).
Product details: Cover sizing, materials, compatibility, or FAQs that drive most product-related questions.
Return status: State how long returns take to process and where to check progress once a label is scanned.
Order delivered but not received: Provide step-by-step guidance for checking with neighbors, filing claims, or requesting replacements.

Start by improving these 10 articles first. Together, they account for nearly half of all AI Agent escalations. The clearer your Help Center is on these topics, the fewer tickets your team will ever see, and the faster your AI will resolve the rest.

How to format your Help Center docs for LLMs

Once you know how AI Agent reads your content, the next step is formatting your help docs so it can easily understand and use them.

The goal isn’t to rewrite everything, it’s to make your articles more structured, scannable, and logic-friendly.

Here’s how.

1. Use structured, scannable sections

Both humans and large language models read hierarchically. If your article runs together in one long block of text, key answers get buried.

Break articles into clear sections and subheadings (H2s, H3s) for each scenario or condition. Use short paragraphs, bullets, and numbered lists to keep things readable.

Example:

How to Track Your Order

Step 1: Find your tracking number in your confirmation email.
Step 2: Click the tracking link to see your delivery status.
Step 3: If tracking hasn’t updated in 3 days, contact support.

A structured layout helps both AI and shoppers find the right step faster, without confusion or escalation.

2. Write for “if/when/then” logic

AI Agent learns best when your Help Docs clearly define what happens under specific conditions. Think of it like writing directions for a flowchart.

Example:

“If your order hasn’t arrived within 10 days, contact support for a replacement.”
“If your order has shipped, you can find the tracking link in your order confirmation email.”

This logic helps AI know what to do and how to explain the answer clearly to the customer.

3. Clarify similar terms and synonyms

Customers don’t always use the same words you do, and neither do LLMs. If your docs treat “cancel,” “stop,” and “pause” as interchangeable, AI Agent might return the wrong answer.

Define each term clearly in your Help Center and add small keyword variations (“cancel subscription,” “end plan,” “pause delivery”) so the AI can recognize related requests.

4. Link to next steps

AI Agent follows links just like a human agent. If your doc ends abruptly, it can’t guide the customer any further.

Always finish articles with an explicit next step, like linking to:

A form
Another article
A support action page

Example: “If your return meets our policy, request your return label here.”

That extra step keeps the conversation moving and prevents unnecessary escalations.

5. Keep tone consistent

AI tools prioritize structure and wording when learning from your Help Center—not emotional tone.

Phrases like “Don’t worry!” or “We’ve got you!” add noise without clarity.

Instead, use simple, action-driven sentences that tell the customer exactly what to do:

“Click here to request a refund.”
“Fill out the warranty form to get a replacement.”

A consistent tone keeps your Help Center professional, helps AI deliver reliable responses, and creates a smoother experience for customers.

LLM-friendly Help Centers in action

You don’t need hundreds of articles or complex workflows to make your Help Center AI-ready. But you do need clarity, structure, and consistency. These Gorgias customers show how it’s done.

Little Words Project: Simple formatting that boosts instant answers

Little Words Project keeps things refreshingly straightforward. Their Help Center uses short paragraphs, descriptive headers, and tightly scoped articles that focus on a single intent, like returns, shipping, or product care.

That makes it easy for AI Agent to scan the page, pull out the right facts, and return accurate answers on the first try.

Their tone stays friendly and on-brand, but the structure is what shines. Every article flows from question → answer → next step. It’s a minimalist approach, and it works. Both for customers and the AI reading alongside them.

Little Words Project Help Center homepage showing six main categories: Orders, Customization, Charms, Shipping, Warranty, and Returns & Exchanges. — Little Words Project's Help Center uses short paragraphs and tightly scoped articles to boost instant answers.

Dr. Bronner’s: Making tools work for the team

Customer education is at the heart of Dr. Bronner’s mission. Their customers often ask detailed questions about product ingredients, packaging, and certifications. With Gorgias, Emily and her team were able to build a robust Help Center that helped to proactively give this information.

The Help Center doesn't just provide information. The integration of interactive Flows, Order Management, and a Contact Form automation allowed Dr. Bronner’s to handle routine inquiries—such as order statuses—quickly and efficiently. These kinds of interactive elements are all possible out-of-the-box, no IT support needed.

Dr. Bronner's Help Center webpage showing detailed articles, interactive flows, and order management automation for efficient customer support. — The robust, proactively educational Help Center, integrated with interactive flows and order management via Gorgias, streamlines detailed and routine customer inquiries.

Ekster: Building efficiency through automation and clarity

Ekster website and a Gorgias chat widget. A customer asks "How do I attach my AirTag?" and the Support Bot instantly replies with a link to the relevant "User Manual" article. — Gorgias AI Agent instantly recommends a relevant "User Manual" article to a customer asking, "How do I attach my AirTag?", demonstrating how structured Help Center content enables quick, instant issue resolution.

When Ekster switched to Gorgias, the team wanted to make their Help Center work smarter. By writing clear, structured articles for common questions like order tracking, returns, and product details, they gave both customers and AI Agent the information needed to resolve issues instantly.

"Our previous Help Center solution was the worst. I hated it. Then I saw Gorgias’s Help Center features, and how the Article Recommendations could answer shoppers’ questions instantly, and I loved it. I thought: this is just what we need." —Shauna Cleary, Head of Ecommerce at Ekster

The results followed fast. With well-organized Help Center content and automation built around it, Ekster was able to scale support without expanding the team.

“With all the automations we’ve set up in Gorgias, and because our team in Buenos Aires has ramped up, we didn’t have to rehire any extra agents.” —Shauna Cleary, Head of Ecommerce at Ekster

Learn more: How Ekster used automation to cover the workload of 4 agents

Rowan: Clean structure that keeps customers (and AI) on track

Rowan’s Help Center is a great example of how clear structure can do the heavy lifting. Their FAQs are grouped into simple categories like piercing, shipping, returns, and aftercare, so readers and AI Agent can jump straight to the right topic without digging.

For LLMs, that kind of consistency reduces guesswork. For customers, it creates a smooth, reassuring self-service experience.

Rowan's Help Center homepage, structured with six clear categories including Piercing Aftercare (19 articles), Returns & Exchanges, and Appointment Information. — Rowan’s Help Center uses a clean, categorized structure (Aftercare, Returns, Shipping) that lets customers and AI Agents jump straight to the right topic.

TUSHY: Balancing brand voice with automation

TUSHY proves you can maintain personality and structure. Their Help Center articles use clear headings, direct language, and brand-consistent tone. It makes it easy for AI Agent to give accurate, on-brand responses.

TUSHY bidet customer help center webpage showing categories: Toilet Fit, My Order, How to Use Your TUSHY, Attachments, Non-Electric and Electric Seats. — Explore articles covering Toilet Fit, My Order, How to Use Your TUSHY, and various Bidet Attachments, all structured for easy retrieval and use.

“Too often, a great interaction is diminished when a customer feels reduced to just another transaction. With AI, we let the tech handle the selling, unabashedly, if needed, so our future customers can ask anything, even the questions they might be too shy to bring up with a human. In the end, everybody wins!" —Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Senior Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY

Quick checklist to audit your Help Center for AI

Ready to put your Help Center to the test? Use this five-point checklist to make sure your content is easy for both customers and AI to navigate.

1. Are your articles scannable with clear headings?

Break up long text blocks and use descriptive headers (H2s, H3s) so readers and AI Agent can instantly find the right section.

2. Do you define conditions with “if/when/then” phrasing?

Spell out what happens in each scenario. This logic helps AI Agent decide the right next step without second-guessing.

3. Do you cover your top escalation topics?

Make sure your Help Center includes complete, structured articles for high-volume issues like order status, returns, and refunds.

4. Does each article end with a clear next step or link?

Close every piece with a call to action, like a form, related article, or support link, so neither AI nor customers hit a dead end.

5. Is your language simple, action-based, and consistent?

Use direct, predictable phrasing. Avoid filler like “Don’t worry!” and focus on steps customers can actually take.

By tweaking structure instead of your content, it’s easier to turn your Help Center into a self-service powerhouse for both customers and your AI Agent.

Make your Help Center work smarter

Your Help Center already holds the answers your customers need. Now it’s time to make sure AI can find them. A few small tweaks to structure and phrasing can turn your existing content into a powerful, AI-ready knowledge base.

If you’re not sure where to start, review your Help Center with your Gorgias rep or CX team. They can help you identify quick wins and show you how AI Agent pulls information from your articles.

Remember: AI Agent gets smarter with every structured doc you publish.

Ready to optimize your Help Center for faster, more accurate support? Book a demo today.

min read.

Create powerful self-service resources

Capture support-generated revenue

Automate repetitive tasks

Live chat vs. conversational AI—what’s the difference?

Live chat is a way for shoppers to get real-time support from a human agent. The best live chat apps also use automation to handle FAQs, route conversations, or collect details before handing things off to your team.

Conversational AI, on the other hand, goes a step further. Instead of assisting your agents, AI chatbots can carry out entire conversations on their own. They answer questions, recommend products, and resolve issues without human involvement.

Today’s top Shopify live chat tools bring these two worlds together. You get the flexibility of human-led support when it matters most, plus AI agents that scale your availability and keep response times low.

Best live chat apps for Shopify in 2025

Gorgias
Zendesk
tawk.to Live Chat
O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form
Chatra Live Chat
Re:amaze Live Chat
Tidio
LiveChat
Shopify Inbox
Formilla Live Chat
eDesk Live Chat
Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat
Moose: AI Chatbot & Live Chat

App	Pricing	Helpdesk Integration	Automation and AI	Handoffs to Humans	Ease of Setup	Language Localization
Gorgias	$10/mo (7-day trial)	✅ Native helpdesk	Rules, macros, AI Agent, Shopping Assistant	✅ Smooth routing to agents	Easy, no coding	✅
Zendesk Chat	$49/agent/mo (14-day trial)	✅ Zendesk Support Suite	Macros, triggers, chatbots in higher tiers	✅ Handoffs supported	Steeper learning curve	✅
Tawk.to	Free (branding removal extra)	❌	Basic auto-responses, no advanced AI	✅ Transfer supported	Easy, no coding	✅
O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form	Free plan + paid tiers (from $2.99/mo)	❌ No native helpdesk	Basic automation & preset welcome messages	✅ Via your linked messaging apps	Easy, one-click install & widget setup	✅
Chatra	$31/mo (free plan available)	❌	Typo correction, chatbots (not advanced AI)	✅ Manual transfer	Easy, no coding	✅
Re:amaze	$29/mo (14-day trial)	✅ Full helpdesk	Chatbots, rules, macros, workflows	✅ Integrated with helpdesk	Easy, no coding	✅
Tidio	$29/mo (free plan available)	❌	Automation flows, AI chatbot templates	✅ Transfers to agents	Easy, no coding	✅
LiveChat	$16/mo (14-day trial)	✅ via LiveChat + integrations; not Shopify-native helpdesk	Chatbots (via add-ons)	✅ Handoffs supported	Easy, no coding	✅
Shopify Inbox	Free	❌ Limited to Shopify Inbox/Ping	No advanced AI, basic chat only	✅ Manual transfer	Requires Ping app install	❌
Formilla	$17.49/mo (15-day trial)	❌	Basic automation rules, no advanced AI	✅ Manual transfer	Easy, app install	❌
eDesk Live Chat	$69/agent/mo (14-day trial)	✅ eDesk helpdesk	Limited automation, no advanced AI	✅ Manual transfer	Easy, app install	❌
Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat	Free (100 convos); Paid $39/mo	❌	AI chatbot trained on store data, integrations with Slack/WhatsApp	✅ Smooth transitions	Easy, no coding	✅
Moose (MooseDesk)	Free plan; Paid tiers available	✅ Unified helpdesk inbox	AI chatbot, FAQ builder, auto-translate	✅ Integrated handoffs	Easy (PWA, no coding)	✅

1. Gorgias

Gorgias is the best customer experience platform for ecommerce merchants. It provides you with all the features you need to create an incredible customer support experience, improve team performance, and increase sales.

One of Gorgias’s most noticeable features is its tight integration with ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Hence, Gorgias can pull relevant data like order tracking numbers, last order details, loyalty points, etc., from your Shopify dashboard right to your helpdesk.

Another exciting feature of Gorgias chat is Shopping Assistant, a conversational AI tool that helps support teams increase sales on their website. Using your Shopify catalog, AI can recommend, upsell, and offer tailored discounts at scale so every chat conversation is maximized.

Standout features:

Compatible with Shopify and Shopify Plus brands
Affordable pricing plans
Offers a conversational AI tool that supports and sells
Fantastic customer support team

Why it may not be for you:

No free plan

Pricing: Basic plans start at $10/mo. A 7-day free trial is available.

2. Zendesk

Developed by Zendesk, Zendesk Chat is a live chat app for Shopify stores. It allows you to communicate with customers over your Shopify storefront, mobile apps, and popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Line.

If you’re a Zendesk customer using the Team plan or above, you can use Zendesk Chat for free.

Standout features:

It’s a good choice if you're using Zendesk Support Suite
Supports all essential features of a typical live chat app
Gather customer feedback via chat ratings
Share files like screenshots, product guides, or GIFs with customers

Why it may not be for you:

Non-user-friendly interface and steep learning curve for beginners
Expensive pricing plans for Shopify store owners
A lot of technical errors when installing and using the app
Bad customer support team
Not suitable for ecommerce businesses

Pricing: Starting from $49 per agent per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

3. tawk.to Live Chat

Tawk.to Live Chat is an agent-centric chat application for Shopify stores. The best thing about this app is it’s 100% free—there’s no limit to the number of agents, chat volumes, or sites you can add widgets to.

Standout features:

Supports 27 languages
Easy to set up, free forever, and secure
Available on PC, macOS, iOS, and Android

Why it may not be for you:

Many features are not user-friendly
Need to pay a small fee to remove the “Powered by Tawk.to” branding
The customer support team isn’t always responsive

Pricing: Free

4. O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form

O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form makes it easy for shoppers to reach you through the channels they already use, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Instagram. Instead of building out a complex live chat system, it focuses on providing a simple, customizable widget that connects directly to your preferred messaging platforms.

Standout features:

Integrates with 20+ messaging channels
Customizable chat button and widget design
Contact form option for capturing customer details when agents aren’t available
Targeting rules to show/hide the widget on specific pages or devices

Why it may not be for you:

Doesn’t offer advanced automation or AI-powered chat
Lacks ticket management and deep helpdesk integrations

Pricing:

Free plan available. Paid plans start at $2.99/month

5. Chatra Live Chat

Chatra Live Chat claims to help you “sell more, answer questions, and alleviate concerns to help visitors place an order.” It also allows you to view a shopper's cart contents in real-time to identify the most valuable customers and provide tailored assistance.

Standout features:

Support a free forever plan
Provide useful live chat features like typo correction and group chats

Why it may not be for you:

Most advanced features aren’t available in the free plan
Lack of customization options

Pricing: Starting from $31 per month. A free plan is available.

6. Re:amaze Live Chat

Re:amaze is a helpdesk, live chat, ticketing, chatbot, and FAQ for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. It allows you to handle support tickets across channels, including emails, live chat, Facebook pages, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, SMS, VOIP, and WhatsApp.

Reamaze Live Chat aims to help you support customers faster by chatting with them in real-time. It offers many features that are similar to Gorgias’ and other live chat apps.

Standout features:

Multi-store support
Can send products to customers in chat
Flexible pricing, no contract

Why it may not be for you:

User interface is a bit outdated and not user-friendly
Macros and rules need improvement

Pricing: Starting from $29 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

7. Tidio

With approximately 900 reviews, Tidio Live Chat is currently the highest-rated live chat app on the Shopify App Store. Tidio merges live chat, bots, and marketing automation to provide you with a comprehensive live chat app.

Standout features:

Rich widget customization options
Many automation and bot templates
Multiple languages supported

Why it may not be for you:

Shallow integration with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms
Pricing plans are a bit high for Shopify merchants

Pricing: Starting from $29 a month. A free plan is available.

8. LiveChat

LiveChat is a messaging app that offers many unique features for its live chat service. It can integrate with most customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Zendesk and ecommerce platforms like Shopify.

Standout features:

Chat window loads instantly and is easy to use
Clean and well-designed user interface

Why it may not be for you:

Not optimized for Shopify since LiveChat is also a CRM

Pricing: Starting from $16 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

9. Shopify Inbox

Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s native live chat function that allows you to have real-time conversations with customers visiting your Shopify store. It’s an extension to the messaging capabilities already available within Shopify Ping.

Note that all your chats are managed in Shopify Ping. Shopify also asks your customers to provide a phone number or email address in order to start a chat with you. Their information will be added to your Customer list in Shopify or matched to an existing customer.

Standout features:

Clean and intuitive interface
Free forever

Why it may not be for you:

A bit complicated for beginners to install the app
To use Shopify Chat, you must use Shopify Ping on your desktop (shopifyping.com) or install it on an iOS, iPad, or Android device to receive and respond to messages.

Pricing: Free

10. Formilla Live Chat

Formilla Live Chat offers free live chat and premium services for your Shopify store. You can use this app to chat with your visitors live if they have any questions or need support from your store.

Standout features:

Easy and simple to use
Connects with customers quickly

Why it may not be for you:

Many features locked behind higher plans
Lack of rules and automation

Pricing: Starting from $17.49 per month. A 15-day free trial is available.

11. eDesk Live Chat

eDesk is a comprehensive customer helpdesk designed for ecommerce. It helps you create a positive experience for customers across your marketing channels: email, live chat, social media, and online store.

Standout features:

Clean and intuitive user interface
Good customer service team

Why it may not be for you:

Pricing plans are steep for Shopify merchants
Not optimized for ecommerce
Lack of essential live chat features

Pricing: Starting from $49 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

12. Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat

Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat lets you provide 24/7 support with an AI-powered chatbot that integrates directly into your Shopify store. The app automatically trains on your store’s data to answer FAQs, track orders, and even recommend products, while still allowing live chat when a human touch is needed.

Standout features:

AI trained on your store’s data
Multi-language support (English, German, French, Spanish, and more)
Integrations with WhatsApp, Messenger, Slack, and Google Drive

Why it may not be for you:

Advanced features only available on paid tiers
More complex than simple live chat apps

Pricing: Free plan available (includes up to 100 monthly conversations). Paid plans start at $39/month with higher limits.

13. Moose: AI Chatbot & Live Chat

Moose: AI Chatbot & Live Chat (MooseDesk) brings live chat, helpdesk, and omnichannel messaging into one unified tool built for Shopify. With AI-powered automation and support across chat, email, WhatsApp, and social, it's engineered to help you respond faster — without leaving your dashboard.

Standout features:

Trained on your store data (FAQs, products, etc.)
Central inbox for live chat, email, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and more
Multilingual support and built-in FAQ/self-service features

Why it may not be for you:

Because it’s a newer tool, some merchants report quirks or missing native mobile app (it's built as a Progressive Web App currently)
Push notification behavior and instant alerts can vary depending on device settings

Pricing: Free

How to roll out live chat without slowing down support

The benefits of live chat are real, but only if you roll it out with a plan. Too often, brands turn it on everywhere and suddenly face a flood of new tickets their team can’t keep up with. The result is often longer wait times and frustrated customers.

The key is to treat live chat as both a support and sales channel. That means leaning on automation to handle the quick, repetitive stuff, and reserving agent time for higher-value conversations.

Here’s how to strike the right balance:

Start with automation: Use chatbots to answer FAQs, collect order details, or qualify sales leads before passing them to a human.
Set smart routing rules: Direct pre-sales questions to your sales team, and post-purchase issues to support, so customers reach the right person faster.
Limit availability at first: Roll out chat during peak hours or on high-intent pages (like product or checkout) to control volume.
Layer in human support: Keep agents available for complex or high-stakes conversations where personal service matters most.

By combining humans with automation, you’ll give customers the instant responses they expect, without creating another backlog for your team.

Turn conversations into conversions with the right app

There’s no single Shopify live chat app that works for every store. Each brand has its own support needs, sales goals, and team workflows—which means the “best” tool depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

The smartest approach is to test a couple of the apps above and see which one fits your business best. The right live chat tool should do three things: improve customer satisfaction, make your team’s job easier, and contribute to your bottom line.

And if you’re looking for a solution built specifically for ecommerce? Book a demo with Gorgias as the best Shopify-native option.

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What is Ecommerce Automation? Everything You Need to Know

By Julien Marcialis

9 min read.

0 min read . By Julien Marcialis

TL;DR:

Ecommerce automation replaces manual processes and can improve productivity and growth.
Automation can streamline workflows, reduce costs, and increase customer satisfaction.
Eight ecommerce tasks that should be automated include aspects of customer service, sales scheduling, product rollouts, fraud prevention, inventory management, email marketing, accounting, and web development.
Automation should be used to enhance, not replace, customer relationships.

No matter how small or large your operation is, you probably have hundreds of small tasks that only take just a few minutes out of your day. On their own, these manual tasks don’t appear to be huge time-wasters. However, when they accumulate, they may end up wasting a full hour.

What falls into these time-wasters? Well, it can be anything from small tweaks to your ecommerce platform, to running email campaigns and sending follow-up messages to your customers. All of these tasks, when taken lightly, can become dangerous.

In fact, these small tasks can destroy your productivity and hinder the growth of your business. As Deloitte recommends, you have to avoid wasting time on insignificant tasks and focus all of your attention on fundamentally improving your operation.

That’s where automation comes into play. In this article, we’re going to talk about the following three things:

What automation means for ecommerce businesses
How you can benefit from automating tasks
Which tasks you need to automate

What is ecommerce automation?

Ecommerce automation is when businesses implement tools to replace manual processes. For ecommerce specifically, this might mean sending an automatic response to common questions like "where is my order," automatically generating order updates (like shipping and delivery), offering additional product suggestions at checkout, or sending a welcome email to first time customers.

Benefits of ecommerce automation

Automation can help you streamline ecommerce tasks while still maintaining a human touch. It also helps teams keep track of inventory, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, lower first response time, and eliminate tedious or repetetive answers for your customer support team.

1. Streamline workflows

Everyone has a routine. Your employees do too. But insignificant tasks don’t need to be a part of it. Roughly 25% of employees simply want to “do their jobs.” Use automation to give your employees an opportunity to do their jobs and improve satisfaction rates.

2. Reduce costs

Without spending an hour or two easily-allocatable jobs, your employees can concentrate on working on their tasks and getting things done on time. That will eliminate the need for working overtime and, in turn, save your company a good amount of money.

3. Increase customer satisfaction

Your employees won’t be the only ones feeling more satisfied than ever. More than a third of consumers feel that response time is the most important aspect of customer service. By automating customer services (including adding customer self-service options), you’ll ensure high satisfaction rates among shoppers.

8 ecommerce tasks you need to automate

By now, you’ve hopefully realized just how useful automation can be. Regardless of the size and type of your online store, some processes need to be automated as soon as possible.

1. Customer service

The biggest difference between traditional and automated customer service is that the latter can work 24/7, gather real-time feedback, and provide answers instantly, usually through features in your helpdesk. All of this can improve your customers’ experience immensely.

For example, luxury shoe and garment care retailer Kirby Allison's support team was inundated with simple, repetitive questions like, “Where is my order?” or, “What kind of shoe polish do I need?” Plus, they were processing exchanges and returns manually. The time loss meant a slower response time, and limited business growth because the team had little time to tackle anything else.

Once they implemented Gorgias Automate, which resolves basic CX requests with AI and automation, they saw 23% more conversions, 46% more sales from support, and 30% of tickets deflected by automation.

“Now my support agents can focus on the most important tickets,” says Addison Debter, their Head of Customer Service. “And I can focus on developing the website, inventory management, and updating product information — growth aspects that would historically have been put on the back burner because of the heavy manual workload.”

2. Sales schedule

In the past, having a sale every few months was the standard. Now, most online stores have weekend sales almost every month. It’s no wonder why more than 60% of salespeople feel that selling is much harder today than it was just a couple of years ago.

Now you’re forced to have frequent sales as well -- just to compete with other stores. While having a sale may seem like a simple thing to an untrained eye, you need to look beneath the surface.

You’ll realize that the automation process has a lot of moving parts:

Having regular social media posts about it
Keeping shoppers engaged until the end of it
Making sure shoppers are hyped with a countdown
Teasing low prices and items going on sales

Tools like Shop Workflow Automation and Arigato Automation, as well as Shopify Flow - which will get a few more mentions in this piece - can help you here.

3. Product rollouts

Every time you're restocking or adding a new collection of products, you have to treat it like a new product launch. You have to see what platforms you need to target, what consumers to notify, at what time, and deal with many other aspects.

Even something simple like a product rollout requires much preparation. A lack of preparedness is the biggest problem an online store can encounter.

The promotion starts on your website. And you want people to know about new products right away, right? Then you can use a heatmap tool like Crazy Egg to get an idea of where to place ads on your site. It will help you see what’s working, what's not, and give you new ideas.

4. Fraud prevention

Although few people today fall for “Nigerian Prince” schemes, credit card fraud is still a big problem on the Internet. The ecommerce industry loses over $12 billion every year due to fraud. And there are many types of ecommerce fraud.

That’s why order management is a tricky task for so many employees.

If you want to eliminate human error out of the equation, you should try Shopify’s risk analysis tools. The tool verifies every order that comes to your dashboard through address verification, IP address check, and other business processes.

In the video below, you can hear Eric Bandholtz of Beardbrand and Brett Burns explain how they use Shopify Flow to filter out fraudulent orders:

5. Inventory management

Managing your inventory is not something many of your workers look forward to. Of course, if you don’t keep track of your stock, you won’t be able to know what items need to be restocked or to communicate effectively with your suppliers.

And the last thing you want is more supply management problems.

A lack of inventory management can also lead to lower sales and lost revenue. That’s why you need to oversee products coming in and out of your company. This may be time-consuming, but you can use an inventory management platform to make things easier.

You need a platform that will help you manage the supply chain more carefully, assess your stock, and keep your suppliers in tune at every moment.

6. Email marketing

When it comes to your ecommerce store, email is one of the most powerful tools you have. It can help you with cross-selling efforts, customer retention rates, and of course, your marketing strategy. Automating email marketing makes a lot of sense. You don’t want to spend hours writing and sending out emails to your shoppers.

But many businesses fail to realize this.

In fact, in the United States, less than 5% of companies with more than 20 workers apparently use any marketing automation at all. You can’t allow your company to not leverage marketing automation.

Businesses that have embraced ecommerce automation tools and improved their email strategies have managed to increase their conversion rates by up to 77%. So what should you look for in an email marketing automation tool?

Here are a few things to consider:

The ability to send welcome emails to new customers
Behavioral triggers that lower shopping cart abandonment rates
Post-purchase engagement emails with order notifications

Recommended reading: Ecommerce Email Automation Series for Online Stores

7. Accounting

When you were just starting your own online business, you probably didn’t think too much about accounting. It’s one of those aspects of a business that doesn’t require too much focus in the beginning, when you’re not making too much.

But as your business grows, that changes completely.

Hiring an accountant is a great idea unless you’re just starting and you don’t have enough money for it. If that’s the case with you, you need an alternative solution. Fortunately, studies have shown that you can actually automate 50% of accounting-related tasks.

There’s plenty of tools for you to choose from. And they can help you with everything from managing your funds to invoicing and keeping track of supplies.

Some of the most widely used accounting platforms include:

8. Web development

The look of your website accounts for 75% of your brand’s credibility with users. That means every aspect - from design and graphics to easy-of-use and navigation - needs to be running smoothly. And that also means that you need to have someone overlooking everything.

Working on a tight, calculated budget can make having a 24-hour on-deck team for these kinds of problems next to impossible. However, you can still have all of the minor problems under control with the use of automation.

Small theme changes, action-oriented visuals, and pop-up banners can all be handled without the developers’ involvement with a bit of help from Shopify Flow. You should only call in the big guns when you got a real problem on your hands.

Automate tasks, not relationships

A little automation can go a long way but try not to overdo it, especially when it comes to ecommerce automation. You can’t use automation as an excuse to ignore customer support completely. If you start completely relying on robots to communicate with your customers, you’ll start losing them.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind about automation:

There’s a ton of software out there for eliminating inconsequential tasks
Automation is there to help you think about the high-value aspects of your business
You have a number of repetitive tasks that require automation ASAP so start with those

If you want to give your brand a human feel, you need to treat your customers right. And you can’t treat them right without the right tools. Sign up for Gorgias today and get a 7-day free trial.

Automation and Self-Service

Ecommerce Growth