

TL;DR:
Most shoppers arrive with questions. Is this the right size? Will this match my skin tone? What’s the difference between these models? The faster you can guide them, the faster they decide.
As CX teams take on a bigger role in driving revenue, these moments of hesitation are now some of the most important parts of the buying journey.
That’s why more brands are leaning on conversational AI to support these high-intent questions and remove the friction that slows shoppers down. The impact speaks for itself. Brands can expect higher AOV, stronger chat conversion rates, and smoother paths to purchase, all without adding extra work to your team.
Below, we’re sharing real use cases from 11 ecommerce brands across beauty, apparel, home, body care, and more, along with the exact results they saw after introducing guided shopping experiences.
When you’re shopping for shoes similar to an old but discontinued favorite, every detail counts, down to the color of the bottom of the shoe. But legacy brands with large catalogs can be overwhelming to browse.
For shoppers, it’s a double-edged sword: they want to feel confident that they checked your entire collection, but they also don’t want to spend time looking for it.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant accelerates the process, turning hazy details into clear, friendly guidance.
It describes shoe details, from colorways to logo placement, compares products side by side, and recommends the best option based on the shopper’s preferences and conditions.
The result is shoppers who feel satisfied and more connected with your brand.

Results:
Big events call for great outfits, but putting one together online isn’t always easy. With thousands of options to scroll through, shoppers often want a bit of styling direction.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shoppers get to chat with a virtual stylist who recommends full outfits based on the occasion, suggests accessories to complete the look, and removes the guesswork of pairing pieces together.
The result is a fun, confidence-building shopping experience that feels like getting advice from a stylist who actually understands their plans.

Results:
Shade matching is hard enough in-store, but doing it online can feel impossible. Plus, when a longtime favorite gets discontinued, shoppers are left guessing which new shade will come closest. That uncertainty often leads to hesitation, abandoned carts, or ordering multiple shades “just in case.”
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shoppers find their perfect match without any of the guesswork. The assistant asks a few quick questions, recommends the closest shade or formula, and offers smart alternatives when a product is unavailable.
The experience feels like chatting with a knowledgeable beauty advisor — someone who makes the decision easy and leaves shoppers feeling confident in what they’re buying.
Katia Komar, Sr. Manager of Ecommerce and Customer Service Operations at bareMinerals UK says, “What impressed me the most is the AI’s ability to upsell with a conversational tone that feels genuinely helpful and doesn't sound too pushy or transactional. It sounds remarkably human, identifying correct follow-up questions to determine the correct product recommendation, resulting in improved AOV. It’s exactly how I train our human agents and BPO partners.”

Results:
When shoppers are buying gifts, especially for someone else, they often know who they’re shopping for but not what to buy. A vague product name or a half-remembered scent can quickly make the experience feel overwhelming without someone to guide them.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Thoughtful guidance goes a long way. By asking clarifying questions and recognizing likely mix-ups, Shopping Assistant helps shoppers figure out what the recipient was probably referring to, then recommends the right product along with complementary gift options that make the choice feel intentional.
It brings the reassurance of an in-store associate to the online experience, helping shoppers move forward with confidence.

Results:
Finding the right bra size online is notoriously tricky. Shoppers often second-guess their band or cup size, and even small uncertainties can lead to returns — or abandoning the purchase altogether.
Many customers just want someone to walk them through what a proper fit should actually feel like.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Searching for products is no longer a time-consuming process. Shopping Assistant detects a shopper’s search terms and sends relevant products in chat. Like an in-store associate, it uses context to deliver what shoppers are looking for, so they can skip the search and head right to checkout.

Results:
For shoppers buying personalized jewelry, the details directly affect the final result. That’s why customization questions come up constantly, and why uncertainty can quickly stall the path to purchase.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant asks about the shopper’s style preferences and customization needs, then recommends the right product and options so they can feel confident the final piece is exactly their style. The experience feels quick, helpful, and designed to guide shoppers toward a high investment purchase.

Results:
Decorating a home is personal, and shoppers often want reassurance that a new piece will blend with what they already own. Questions about color palettes, textures, and proportions come up constantly. And without guidance, it’s easy for shoppers to feel unsure about hitting “add to cart.”
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Giving shoppers personalized styling support helps them visualize how pieces will work in their home.
Shoppers receive styling suggestions based on their existing space as well as recommendations on pieces that complement their color palette.
It even guides them toward a 60-minute virtual styling consultation when they need deeper help. The experience feels thoughtful and high-touch, which is why shoppers often spend more once they feel confident in their choices.

Results:
When shoppers discover a new drink mix, they’re bound to have questions before committing. How strong will it taste? How much should they use? Will it work with their preferred drink or routine? Uncertainty at this stage can stall the purchase or lead to disappointment later.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Clear, friendly guidance in chat helps shoppers understand exactly how to use the product. Shopping Assistant answers questions about serving size, flavor strength, and pairing options, and suggests the best way to prepare the mix based on the shopper’s preferences.

Results:
Shopping for health supplements can feel confusing fast. Customers often have questions about which formulas fit their age, health goals, or daily routine. Without clear guidance, most will hesitate or pick the wrong product.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant detects hesitation when shoppers linger on a search results page. It proactively asks a few clarifying questions, narrows down product options, and points shoppers to the best product or bundle for their needs.
The entire experience feels supportive and gives shoppers confidence they’ve picked the right option.

Results:
Shopping for kids’ furniture comes with a lot of “Is this the right one?” moments. Parents want something safe, sturdy, and sized correctly for their child’s age. With so many options, it’s easy to feel unsure about what will actually work in their space.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant guides parents toward the best fit right away. It asks about their child’s age, room layout, and safety considerations, then recommends the most appropriate bed or furniture setup. The experience feels like chatting with a knowledgeable salesperson who understands what families actually need as kids grow.

Results:
Even something as simple as choosing a toothbrush can feel complicated when multiple models come with different speeds, materials, and features. Shoppers want to understand what matters so they can pick the one that fits their routine and budget.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Choosing between toothbrush models shouldn’t feel like decoding tech specs. When shoppers can see the key differences in plain language, including what’s unique, how each model works, and who it’s best for, they can make a decision with ease.
Suddenly, the whole process feels simple instead of overwhelming.

Results:
Across all 11 brands, one theme is clear. When shoppers get the guidance they need at the right moment, they convert more confidently and often spend more.
Here’s what stands out:
What this means for you:
Look closely at your most common pre-purchase questions. Anywhere shoppers hesitate from fit, shade, technical specs, styling, bundles is a place where Shopping Assistant can step in, boost confidence, and unlock more sales.
If you notice the same patterns in your own store, such as shoppers hesitating over sizing, shade matching, product comparisons, or technical details, guided shopping can make an immediate impact. These moments are often your biggest opportunities to increase revenue and improve the buying experience.
Many of the brands in this post started by identifying their most common pre-purchase questions and letting AI handle them at scale. You can do the same.
If you want to boost conversions, lift AOV, and create a smoother path to purchase, now is a great time to explore guided shopping for your team.
Book a demo or activate Shopping Assistant to get started.
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TL;DR:
Rising customer expectations, shoppers willing to pay a premium for convenience, and a growing lack of trust in social media channels to make purchase decisions are making it more challenging to turn a profit.
In this emerging era, AI’s role is becoming not only more pronounced, but a necessity for brands who want to stay ahead. Tools like Gorgias Shopping Assistant can help drive measurable revenue while reducing support costs.
For example, a brand that specializes in premium outdoor apparel implemented Shopping Assistant and saw a 2.25% uplift in GMV and 29% uplift in average order volume (AOV).
But how, among competing priorities and expenses, do you convince leadership to implement it? We’ll show you.
Shoppers want on-demand help in real time that’s personalized across devices.
Shopping Assistant recalls a shopper’s browsing history, like what they have clicked, viewed, and added to their cart. This allows it to make more relevant suggestions that feel personal to each customer.
The AI ecommerce tools market was valued at $7.25 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $21.55 billion by 2030.
Your competitors are using conversational AI to support, sell, and retain. Shopping Assistant satisfies that need, providing upsells and recommendations rooted in real shopper behavior.
Conversational AI has real revenue implications, impacting customer retention, average order value (AOV), conversion rates, and gross market value (GMV).
For example, a leading nutrition brand saw a GMV uplift of over 1%, an increase in AOV of over 16%, and a chat conversion rate of over 15% after implementing Shopping Assistant.
Overall, Shopping Assistant drives higher engagement and more revenue per visitor, sometimes surpassing 50% and 20%, respectively.

Shopping Assistant engages, personalizes, recommends, and converts. It provides proactive recommendations, smart upsells, dynamic discounts, and is highly personalized, all helping to guide shoppers to checkout.
After implementing Shopping Assistant, leading ecommerce brands saw real results:
Industry |
Primary Use Case |
GMV Uplift (%) |
AOV Uplift (%) |
Chat CVR (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Home & interior decor 🖼️ |
Help shoppers coordinate furniture with existing pieces and color schemes. |
+1.17 |
+97.15 |
10.30 |
Outdoor apparel 🎿 |
In-depth explanations of technical features and confidence when purchasing premium, performance-driven products. |
+2.25 |
+29.41 |
6.88 |
Nutrition 🍎 |
Personalized guidance on supplement selection based on age, goals, and optimal timing. |
+1.09 |
+16.40 |
15.15 |
Health & wellness 💊 |
Comparing similar products and understanding functional differences to choose the best option. |
+1.08 |
+11.27 |
8.55 |
Home furnishings 🛋️ |
Help choose furniture sizes and styles appropriate for children and safety needs. |
+12.26 |
+10.19 |
1.12 |
Stuffed toys 🧸 |
Clear care instructions and support finding replacements after accidental product damage. |
+4.43 |
+9.87 |
3.62 |
Face & body care 💆♀️ |
Assistance finding the correct shade online, especially when previously purchased products are no longer available. |
+6.55 |
+1.02 |
5.29 |
Shopping Assistant drives uplift in chat conversion rate and makes successful upsell recommendations.
“It’s been awesome to see Shopping Assistant guide customers through our technical product range without any human input. It’s a much smoother journey for the shopper,” says Nathan Larner, Customer Experience Advisor for Arc’teryx.
For Arc’teryx, that smoother customer journey translated into sales. The brand saw a 75% increase in conversion rate (from 4% to 7%) and 3.7% of overall revenue influenced by Shopping Assistant.

Because it follows shoppers’ live journey during each session on your website, Shopping Assistant catches shoppers in the moment. It answers questions or concerns that might normally halt a purchase, gets strategic with discounting (based on rules you set), and upsells.
The overall ROI can be significant. For example, bareMinerals saw an 8.83x return on investment.
"The real-time Shopify integration was essential as we needed to ensure that product recommendations were relevant and displayed accurate inventory,” says Katia Komar, Sr. Manager of Ecommerce and Customer Service Operations, UK at bareMinerals.
“Avoiding customer frustration from out-of-stock recommendations was non-negotiable, especially in beauty, where shade availability is crucial to customer trust and satisfaction. This approach has led to increased CSAT on AI converted tickets."

Shopping Assistant can impact CSAT scores, response times, resolution rates, AOV, and GMV.
For Caitlyn Minimalist, those metrics were an 11.3% uplift in AOV, an 18% click through rate for product recommendations, and a 50% sales lift versus human-only chats.
"Shopping Assistant has become an intuitive extension of our team, offering product guidance that feels personal and intentional,” says Anthony Ponce, its Head of Customer Experience.

Support agents have limited time to assist customers as it is, so taking advantage of sales opportunities can be difficult. Shopping Assistant takes over that role, removing obstacles for purchase or clearing up the right choice among a stacked product catalog.
With a product that’s not yet mainstream in the US, TUSHY leverages Shopping Assistant for product education and clarification.
"Shopping Assistant has been a game-changer for our team, especially with the launch of our latest bidet models,” says Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY.
“Expanding our product catalog has given customers more choices than ever, which can overwhelm first-time buyers. Now, they’re increasingly looking to us for guidance on finding the right fit for their home and personal hygiene needs.”
The bidet brand saw 13x return on investment after implementation, a 15% increase in chat conversion rate, and a 2x higher conversion rate for AI conversations versus human ones.

Customer support metrics include:
Revenue metrics to track include:
Shopping Assistant connects to your ecommerce platform (like Shopify), and streamlines information between your helpdesk and order data. It’s also trained on your catalog and support history.
Allow your agents to focus on support and sell more by tackling questions that are getting in the way of sales.
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TL;DR:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Let’s dive into each.
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?
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:
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.

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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.

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.
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:
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.
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:
When conversations are done well, AOV increases not because shoppers are being upsold, but because they’re being guided.
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:
When ROI looks like that, AI stops being a “tool” and starts being an undeniable growth lever.
Related: The hidden power and ROI of automated customer support
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.
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:
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:
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.

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.
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.
Offering a discount is one thing. Seeing whether customers use it is another.
A high “discounts applied” rate suggests:
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Compounded over time, these moments create major lifts in conversion and revenue.
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:
Suddenly, CX isn’t just answering questions — it’s informing strategy across the business.
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.
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When Rhoback introduced an AI Agent to its customer experience team, it did more than automate routine tickets. Implementation revealed an opportunity to improve documentation, collaborate cross-functionally, and establish a clear brand tone of voice.
Samantha Gagliardi, Associate Director of Customer Experience at Rhoback, explains the entire process in the first episode of our AI in CX webinar series.
With any new tool, the pre-implementation phase can take some time. Creating proper documentation, training internal teams, and integrating with your tech stack are all important steps that happen before you go live.
But sometimes it’s okay just to launch a tool and optimize as you go.
Rhoback launched its AI agent two weeks before BFCM to automate routine tickets during the busy season.
Why it worked:
Before turning on Rhoback’s AI Agent, Samantha’s team reviewed every FAQ, policy, and help article that human agents are trained on. This helped establish clear CX expectations that they could program into an AI Agent.
Samantha also reviewed the most frequently asked questions and the ideal responses to each. Which ones needed an empathetic human touch and which ones required fast, accurate information?
“AI tells you immediately when your data isn’t clean. If a product detail page says one thing and the help center says another, it shows up right away.”
Rhoback’s pre-implementation audit checklist:
Read more: How to Optimize Your Help Center for AI Agent
It’s often said that you should train your AI Agent like a brand-new employee.
Samantha took it one step further and recommended treating AI like a toddler, with clear, patient, repetitive instructions.
“The AI does not have a sense of good and bad. It’s going to say whatever you train it, so you need to break it down like you’re talking to a three-year-old that doesn’t know any different. Your directions should be so detailed that there is no room for error.”
Practical tips:
Read more: How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework
For Rhoback, an on-brand Tone of Voice was a non-negotiable. Samantha built a character study that shaped Rhoback’s AI Agent’s custom brand voice.
“I built out the character of Rhoback, how it talks, what age it feels like, what its personality is. If it does not sound like us, it is not worth implementing.”
Key questions to shape your AI Agent’s tone of voice:
Once Samantha started testing the AI Agent, it quickly revealed misalignment between Rhoback’s teams. With such an extensive product catalog, AI showed that product details did not always match the Help Center or CX documentation.
This made a case for stronger collaboration amongst the CX, Product, and Ecommerce teams to work towards their shared goal of prioritizing the customer.
“It opened up conversations we were not having before. We all want the customer to be happy, from the moment they click on an ad to the moment they purchase to the moment they receive their order. AI Agent allowed us to see the areas we need to improve upon.”
Tips to improve internal alignment:
Despite the benefits of AI for CX, there’s still trepidation. Agents are concerned that AI would replace them, while customers worry they won’t be able to reach a human. Both are valid concerns, but clearly communicating internally and externally can mitigate skepticism.
At Rhoback, Samantha built internal trust by looping in key stakeholders throughout the testing process. “I showed my team that it is not replacing them. It’s meant to be a support that helps them be even more successful with what they’re already doing," Samantha explains.
On the customer side, Samantha trained their AI Agent to tell customers in the first message that it is an AI customer service assistant that will try to help them or pass them along to a human if it can’t.
How Rhoback built AI confidence:
Read more: How CX Leaders are Actually Using AI: 6 Must-Know Lessons
Here is Rhoback’s approach distilled into a simple framework you can apply.
Watch the full conversation with Samantha to learn how AI can act as a catalyst for better internal alignment.
📌 Join us for episode 2 of AI in CX: Building a Conversational Commerce Strategy that Converts with Cornbread Hemp on December 16.
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TL;DR:
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
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.
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% |
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.

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.

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?”

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:
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.

Here are the specific responses and use cases we recommend automating:
Get your checklist here: How to prep for peak season: BFCM automation checklist
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.

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

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

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

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.

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:

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.
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TL;DR:
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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:

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:
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:
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.
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.
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
A structured layout helps both AI and shoppers find the right step faster, without confusion or escalation.
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:
This logic helps AI know what to do and how to explain the answer clearly to the customer.
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.
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:
Example: “If your return meets our policy, request your return label here.”
That extra step keeps the conversation moving and prevents unnecessary escalations.
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:
A consistent tone keeps your Help Center professional, helps AI deliver reliable responses, and creates a smoother experience for customers.
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 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.

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.


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’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.

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.

“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
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.
Break up long text blocks and use descriptive headers (H2s, H3s) so readers and AI Agent can instantly find the right section.
Spell out what happens in each scenario. This logic helps AI Agent decide the right next step without second-guessing.
Make sure your Help Center includes complete, structured articles for high-volume issues like order status, returns, and refunds.
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.
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.
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.
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TL;DR:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Let’s dive into each.
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?
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:
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.

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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.

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.
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:
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.
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:
When conversations are done well, AOV increases not because shoppers are being upsold, but because they’re being guided.
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:
When ROI looks like that, AI stops being a “tool” and starts being an undeniable growth lever.
Related: The hidden power and ROI of automated customer support
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.
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:
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:
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.

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.
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.
Offering a discount is one thing. Seeing whether customers use it is another.
A high “discounts applied” rate suggests:
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
Compounded over time, these moments create major lifts in conversion and revenue.
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:
Suddenly, CX isn’t just answering questions — it’s informing strategy across the business.
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.
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TL;DR:
Your AI chatbot just told a customer their order ships in two days when you actually need five. That's an AI hallucination, or false information delivered with complete confidence.
These fake-but-convincing responses can wreck customer trust and create headaches for your support team. Understanding what triggers these AI mistakes and how to stop them matters for any brand using AI in customer service.
This guide covers everything support teams need to know about AI hallucinations, from spotting them to building systems that keep your AI honest and helpful.
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AI hallucinations are false or made-up responses from AI models that sound completely believable. This means the AI creates information that isn't based on real data but presents it like it's a fact.
The term “hallucination” comes from psychology, but AI hallucinations work differently than human ones. When an AI hallucinates, it's not seeing things that aren't there. Instead, it's filling gaps in its knowledge with creative guesswork.
Large language models (LLMs) power most modern chatbots. These models predict what word comes next based on patterns they learned during training. Sometimes they predict wrong and create entirely made-up information.
The real problem isn't that AI makes mistakes — it's how confidently it delivers wrong answers. Your AI won't say “I think” or “maybe.” It states false information with authority, making errors hard to catch.
For your ecommerce brand, this could mean your chatbot invents return policies or confirms products are in stock when they're not. These confident lies break customer trust and force your human agents to clean up the mess.
AI hallucinations are baked into how current models function, caused by training data limitations, missing context, and statistical prediction errors that lead AI to invent convincing but false answers. Knowing why they happen helps you prevent them in your customer support.
Insufficient training data creates the biggest problems. When you ask AI about topics it hasn't learned, it tries to fill knowledge gaps with educated guesses. These guesses often sound reasonable but are completely wrong.
Overfitting happens when AI memorizes training examples instead of learning patterns. The model becomes an expert at repeating what it's seen before but terrible at handling new situations.
Ambiguous prompts confuse AI models. When customers ask vague questions that could mean several things, AI picks one interpretation and runs with it.
Outdated information causes problems because most AI models have knowledge cutoffs. They don't know about new promotions, products, or policy changes after their training ended. Your AI might confidently share old shipping times or discontinued product details.
Pattern misapplication occurs when AI applies learned patterns to wrong situations. The model recognizes linguistic patterns and uses them inappropriately, creating responses that sound right but make no sense in context.
AI hallucinations create real problems for support teams. When chatbots hallucinate, human agents spend time fixing the damage instead of helping customers with genuine needs.
Here are common ways AI hallucinates in ecommerce support:
Each hallucination creates a cascade of problems. Customers get frustrated when promises don't match reality. Your support team wastes time explaining why the AI was wrong. Your brand reputation takes a hit when customers can't trust your automated responses.
The worst part? These hallucinations often sound more helpful than honest answers. An AI that says “I don't know” seems less useful than one that confidently provides detailed (but wrong) information.
You can't eliminate AI hallucinations completely, but you can reduce them. The key is moving from pure text generation to grounded, controlled responses based on your real data.
Instead of letting AI create any response it wants, give it specific options to choose from. For common questions about returns or shipping, create approved response categories. This prevents AI from inventing policies on the spot.
Decision trees work well for this approach. When customers ask about returns, your AI follows a predetermined path: check order date, verify product type, provide appropriate response. No creativity required.
You can also set response templates for frequent questions. Templates include placeholders for customer names or order numbers while keeping core information consistent and accurate.
Related: How to write Guidance with the “when, if, then” framework
Generic AI training creates generic problems. Train your AI specifically on your business data — past support tickets, verified Help Center articles, and current product information.
Your training data should include:
Quality matters more than quantity. It’s better to train on 1,000 accurate examples than 10,000 low-quality ones.
Templates give AI structure while allowing personalization. Instead of generating responses from scratch, AI fills in blanks within approved frameworks.
A shipping template might look like:
Templates ensure consistency across all AI responses. Customers get the same quality information whether they chat at 2 pm or 2 am. Your brand voice stays consistent even when AI handles the conversation.
Set explicit boundaries for your AI through system prompts and instructions. Create lists of topics that always need human agents, like product safety complaints or legal threats.
Specify which information sources AI can use. Point it toward your Help Center and product database while blocking access to general internet information that might be outdated or irrelevant.
You can also create escalation triggers. When AI encounters certain keywords or question types, it automatically passes the conversation to a human agent instead of guessing.
AI isn't a set-it-and-forget-it tool. Regular testing catches problems before customers do.
Set up quality checks on AI responses. Review a sample of conversations weekly to spot inaccuracies or areas for improvement. Look for patterns in escalated tickets — they often reveal gaps in AI training.
A/B testing helps optimize AI performance. Try different prompt configurations to see which produces more accurate responses. Monitor customer satisfaction scores for AI-handled tickets compared to human-handled ones.
Customer feedback provides valuable insights. When customers report AI errors, use those examples to improve training data and refine response templates.
Build safety nets into your AI system. Set confidence thresholds so the AI only responds when it's confident in its answer. Uncertain responses get escalated to human agents automatically.
Create clear escalation paths for complex issues. AI should recognize when questions go beyond its capabilities and smoothly transfer customers to appropriate team members.
Human oversight doesn't mean micromanaging every AI response. Instead, focus on monitoring patterns and intervening when AI consistently struggles with specific questions.
This strategy delivers the biggest impact for ecommerce brands. Grounding means forcing AI to base responses on verified, real-time data from your tech stack.
When customers ask about order status, grounded AI checks live Shopify data instead of guessing. When they ask about policies, it pulls exact text from your Help Center instead of paraphrasing from memory.
Grounding transforms AI from a creative writer into a reliable assistant. It can only share information that exists in your approved systems, dramatically reducing hallucination risk.
Integration with your ecommerce platform ensures AI always has current information about inventory, shipping, and customer orders. No more promising products you don't have or delivery dates you can't meet.
The brands winning with AI have put in the hours to train it. They've built systems that combine AI efficiency with human oversight, creating customer experiences that feel both fast and trustworthy.
Gorgias AI Agent demonstrates this approach in action. It grounds responses in your Shopify data and Help Center content, ensuring every automated interaction reflects your actual business information. Customizable guardrails let you set boundaries while maintaining the speed customers expect.
Ready to see how accurate AI can transform your support operations? Book a demo and discover how to automate customer service without sacrificing quality or control.
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When Rhoback introduced an AI Agent to its customer experience team, it did more than automate routine tickets. Implementation revealed an opportunity to improve documentation, collaborate cross-functionally, and establish a clear brand tone of voice.
Samantha Gagliardi, Associate Director of Customer Experience at Rhoback, explains the entire process in the first episode of our AI in CX webinar series.
With any new tool, the pre-implementation phase can take some time. Creating proper documentation, training internal teams, and integrating with your tech stack are all important steps that happen before you go live.
But sometimes it’s okay just to launch a tool and optimize as you go.
Rhoback launched its AI agent two weeks before BFCM to automate routine tickets during the busy season.
Why it worked:
Before turning on Rhoback’s AI Agent, Samantha’s team reviewed every FAQ, policy, and help article that human agents are trained on. This helped establish clear CX expectations that they could program into an AI Agent.
Samantha also reviewed the most frequently asked questions and the ideal responses to each. Which ones needed an empathetic human touch and which ones required fast, accurate information?
“AI tells you immediately when your data isn’t clean. If a product detail page says one thing and the help center says another, it shows up right away.”
Rhoback’s pre-implementation audit checklist:
Read more: How to Optimize Your Help Center for AI Agent
It’s often said that you should train your AI Agent like a brand-new employee.
Samantha took it one step further and recommended treating AI like a toddler, with clear, patient, repetitive instructions.
“The AI does not have a sense of good and bad. It’s going to say whatever you train it, so you need to break it down like you’re talking to a three-year-old that doesn’t know any different. Your directions should be so detailed that there is no room for error.”
Practical tips:
Read more: How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework
For Rhoback, an on-brand Tone of Voice was a non-negotiable. Samantha built a character study that shaped Rhoback’s AI Agent’s custom brand voice.
“I built out the character of Rhoback, how it talks, what age it feels like, what its personality is. If it does not sound like us, it is not worth implementing.”
Key questions to shape your AI Agent’s tone of voice:
Once Samantha started testing the AI Agent, it quickly revealed misalignment between Rhoback’s teams. With such an extensive product catalog, AI showed that product details did not always match the Help Center or CX documentation.
This made a case for stronger collaboration amongst the CX, Product, and Ecommerce teams to work towards their shared goal of prioritizing the customer.
“It opened up conversations we were not having before. We all want the customer to be happy, from the moment they click on an ad to the moment they purchase to the moment they receive their order. AI Agent allowed us to see the areas we need to improve upon.”
Tips to improve internal alignment:
Despite the benefits of AI for CX, there’s still trepidation. Agents are concerned that AI would replace them, while customers worry they won’t be able to reach a human. Both are valid concerns, but clearly communicating internally and externally can mitigate skepticism.
At Rhoback, Samantha built internal trust by looping in key stakeholders throughout the testing process. “I showed my team that it is not replacing them. It’s meant to be a support that helps them be even more successful with what they’re already doing," Samantha explains.
On the customer side, Samantha trained their AI Agent to tell customers in the first message that it is an AI customer service assistant that will try to help them or pass them along to a human if it can’t.
How Rhoback built AI confidence:
Read more: How CX Leaders are Actually Using AI: 6 Must-Know Lessons
Here is Rhoback’s approach distilled into a simple framework you can apply.
Watch the full conversation with Samantha to learn how AI can act as a catalyst for better internal alignment.
📌 Join us for episode 2 of AI in CX: Building a Conversational Commerce Strategy that Converts with Cornbread Hemp on December 16.
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TL;DR:
AI has moved from experimental technology to essential infrastructure for ecommerce brands. The smartest CX leaders are using it to handle repetitive support tickets, personalize shopping experiences, and predict customer needs before they arise.
This guide breaks down the AI use cases that actually move the needle for ecommerce teams. You'll learn which applications deliver immediate ROI, how to implement them without disrupting operations, and how to measure success.
Different AI technologies handle different parts of your ecommerce business. Understanding what each type does helps you pick the right tool for each job.
Generative AI creates new content from existing information — whether that's product descriptions, email responses, or marketing copy. It writes in a natural tone that matches your brand voice instead of sounding robotic.
Where it’s used: AI agents in chat, automated content creation for product pages, and personalized email campaigns
LLMs are the engines behind conversational AI. They understand context, handle complex customer questions, and generate human-like responses at scale.
Where it’s used: Customer support chatbots, content generation tools, automated response systems
Predictive analytics uses your historical data to forecast future outcomes. It tells you which customers are likely to churn, what products will be in demand next month, and when to reorder inventory.
Where it’s used: Customer lifetime value forecasts, at-risk customers detection, and seasonal inventory planning
Machine learning algorithms spot patterns in your data that humans would miss. These systems learn and improve over time, making smarter recommendations and decisions with each interaction.
Where it’s used: Product recommendations, dynamic pricing, fraud detection, and customer segmentation
Computer vision teaches machines to understand images and videos. It analyzes visual content to identify products, detect quality issues, and recognize patterns.
Where it’s used: Automated product tagging, quality control checks, counterfeit detection, and visual inventory management
Visual search lets customers upload photos to find similar products in your catalog. Instead of describing what they want, they show you.
Where it’s used: Reverse image search, style matching, and "shop the look" features
AI delivers real improvements you can measure across revenue, costs, and customer satisfaction. Here's what happens when you implement AI the right way.
AI analyzes how customers browse, what they've bought before, and their preferences to create personalized experiences at scale. Product recommendations become spot-on. Marketing messages hit the right tone. Prices adjust based on what customers are willing to pay.
You get higher conversion rates, bigger average order values, and more repeat purchases. Personalization that would take your team hours happens instantly.
AI handles the repetitive tasks that eat up your team's time. Support tickets get answered immediately. Product descriptions write themselves. Inventory levels adjust based on predicted demand.
This cuts operational costs while freeing your team to focus on strategic work. Instead of answering "where's my order" hundreds of times, your agents handle complex issues that actually need human judgment.
AI analyzes massive amounts of data in seconds that would take your team days or weeks to process manually. It connects patterns across millions of customer interactions, inventory movements, and sales transactions instantly.
Instead of digging through spreadsheets, you get clear answers about what's working, what's not, and what to do next. Your team moves faster and makes more informed decisions across marketing, inventory, and customer experience.
These AI applications deliver immediate impact for ecommerce brands. Each use case solves a specific problem while driving measurable results.
AI agents handle customer conversations across chat, email, and social channels. They answer product questions, process returns, and guide shoppers to the right items. Unlike basic chatbots, modern AI assistants understand context and keep conversations flowing naturally.
Key capabilities your AI assistant should have:
The best AI assistants learn from every conversation, getting better at helping customers over time.
Recommendation engines analyze customer behavior to suggest products they actually want. AI considers browsing history, past purchases, what similar customers bought, and store inventory to deliver suggestions.
Effective recommendations show up throughout the shopping experience:
AI predicts future demand by analyzing historical sales, seasonal trends, market conditions, and external factors. This prevents stockouts during busy periods and reduces excess inventory when sales slow down.
Your demand forecasting should consider:
Generative AI writes product descriptions, creates marketing copy, and translates content for international markets. This scales your content production without sacrificing quality or losing your brand voice.
AI content generation handles:
AI-powered search understands natural language queries and shopping intent. Instead of just matching keywords, it figures out what customers actually want. Visual search lets customers find products by uploading photos.
Modern search AI includes:
Dynamic pricing AI adjusts your prices based on demand, competition, inventory levels, and customer segments. This maximizes revenue while keeping you competitive in the market.
Your pricing optimization should monitor:
AI identifies fraudulent transactions before they go through. Machine learning models analyze transaction patterns, user behavior, and device information to flag suspicious activity.
Fraud detection systems watch for:
Successful AI implementation needs strategy, not just technology. Follow this approach to avoid common mistakes and deliver results you can measure.
Start with clear business goals. What specific problem will AI solve for you? How will you know if it's working? Set baseline measurements before you implement anything so you can track real improvement.
Track these essential metrics:
Document your current performance for each metric. This becomes your starting point for measuring AI impact.
Pick one high-impact use case for your pilot program. Run it alongside your existing processes to compare performance. This controlled approach proves ROI before you roll out AI everywhere.
Follow these pilot best practices:
Measuring AI ROI means tracking both quick wins and long-term value. Focus on metrics that directly connect to business outcomes.
Monitor three core categories to understand your AI impact.
Conversion improvements:
Efficiency gains:
Revenue impact:
Calculate ROI by comparing these metrics before and after AI implementation. Include both direct revenue gains and cost savings in your calculations.
Use this checklist to launch your first AI use case successfully.
Assessment:
Planning:
Implementation:
Optimization:
Your next step is simple. Pick one use case that addresses your biggest pain point. Measure the impact. Then expand from there.
Book a demo to see how Gorgias helps ecommerce brands implement AI that drives real results.
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TL;DR:
While most ecommerce brands debate whether to implement AI support, customers already rate AI assistance nearly as highly as human support. The future isn't coming. It's being built in real-time by brands paying attention.
As a conversational commerce platform processing millions of support tickets across thousands of brands, we see what's working before it becomes common knowledge. Three major shifts are converging faster than most founders realize, and this article breaks down what's already happening rather than what might happen someday.
By the end of 2026, we predict that the performance gap between ecommerce brands won't be determined by who adopted AI first. It will be determined by who built the content foundation that makes AI actually work.
Right now, we're watching this split happen in real time. AI can only be as good as the knowledge base it draws from. When we analyze why AI escalates tickets to human agents, the pattern is unmistakable.
The five topics triggering the most AI escalations are:
These aren’t complicated questions — they're routine questions every ecommerce brand faces daily. Yet some brands automate these at 60%+ rates while others plateau at 20%. The difference isn't better AI. It's better documentation.
Take SuitShop, a formalwear brand that reached 30% automation with a lean CX team. Their Director of Customer Experience, Katy Eriks, treats AI like a team member who needs coaching, not a plug-and-play tool.
When Katy first turned on AI in August 2023, the results were underwhelming. So she paused during their slow season and rebuilt their Help Center from the ground up. "I went back to the tickets I had to answer myself, checked what people were searching in the Help Center, and filled in the gaps," she explained.
The brands achieving high automation rates share Katie's approach:
AI echoes whatever foundation you provide. Clear documentation becomes instant, accurate support. Vague policies become confused AI that defaults to human escalation.
Read more: Coach AI Agent in one hour a week: SuitShop’s guide
Two distinct groups will emerge next year. Brands that invest in documentation quality now will deliver consistently better experiences at lower costs. Those who try to deploy AI on top of messy operations will hit automation plateaus and rising support costs. Every brand will eventually have access to similar AI technology. The competitive advantage will belong to those who did the unexciting work first.
Something shifted in July 2025. Gorgias’s AI accuracy jumped significantly after the GPT-5 release. For the first time, CX teams stopped second-guessing every AI response. We watched brand confidence in AI-generated responses rise from 57% to 85% in just a few months.
What this means in practice is that AI now outperforms human agents:
For the first time, AI isn't just faster than humans. It's more consistent, more accurate, and even more empathetic at scale.
This isn't about replacing humans. It's about what becomes possible when you free your team from repetitive work. Customer expectations are being reset by whoever responds fastest and most completely, and the brands crossing this threshold first are creating a competitive moat.
At Gorgias, the most telling signal was AI CSAT on chat improved 40% faster than on email this year. In other words, customers are beginning to prefer AI for certain interactions because it's immediate and complete.
Within the next year, we expect the satisfaction gap to hit zero for transactional support. The question isn't whether AI can match humans. It's what you'll do with your human agents once it does.
The brands that have always known support should drive revenue will finally have the infrastructure to make it happen on a bigger scale. AI removes the constraint that's held this strategy back: human bandwidth.
Most ecommerce leaders already understand that support conversations are sales opportunities. Product questions, sizing concerns, and “just browsing” chats are all chances to recommend, upsell, and convert. The problem wasn't awareness but execution at volume.
We analyzed revenue impact across brands using AI-powered product recommendations in support conversations. The results speak for themselves:
It's clear that conversations that weave in product recommendations convert at higher rates and result in larger order values. It’s time to treat support conversations as active buying conversations.
If you're already training support teams on product knowledge and tracking revenue per conversation, keep doing exactly what you're doing. You've been ahead of the curve. Now AI gives you the infrastructure to scale those same practices without the cost increase.
If you've been treating support purely as a cost center, start measuring revenue influence now. Track which conversations lead to purchases, which agents naturally upsell, and where customers ask for product guidance.
We are now past the point where response time is a brand's key differentiator. It is now the use of conversational commerce or systems that share details and context across every touchpoint.
Today, a typical customer journey looks something like this: see product on Instagram, ask a question via DM, complete purchase on mobile, track order via email. At each step, customers expect you to remember everything from the last interaction.
The most successful ecommerce tech stacks treat the helpdesk as the foundation that connects everything else. When your support platform connects to your ecommerce platform, shipping providers, returns portal, and every customer communication channel, context flows automatically.
A modern integration approach looks like this. Your ecommerce platform (like Shopify) feeds order data into a helpdesk like Gorgias, which becomes the hub for all customer conversations across email, chat, SMS, and social DMs. From there, connections branch out to payment providers, shipping carriers, and marketing automation tools.
As Dr. Bronner’s Senior CX Manager noted, “While Salesforce needed heavy development, Gorgias connected to our entire stack with just a few clicks. Our team can now manage workflows without needing custom development — we save $100k/year by switching."
As new channels emerge, brands with flexible tech stacks will adapt quickly while those with static systems will need months of development work to support new touchpoints. The winners will be brands that invest in their tools before adding new channels, not after customer complaints force their hand.
Start auditing your current integrations now. Where does customer data get stuck? Which systems don’t connect to each other? These gaps are costing you more than you realize, and in the future, they'll be the key to scaling or staying stagnant.
Post-purchase support quality will be a stronger predictor of customer lifetime value than any email campaign. Brands that treat support as a retention investment rather than a cost center will outperform in repeat purchase rates.
Returns and exchanges are make-or-break moments for customer lifetime value. How you handle problems, delays, and disappointments determines whether customers come back or shop elsewhere next time. According to Narvar, 96% of customers say they won’t repurchase from a brand after a poor return experience.
What customers expect reflects this reality. They want proactive shipping updates without having to ask, one-click returns with instant label generation, and notifications about problems before they have to reach out. When something goes wrong, they expect you to tell them first, not make them track you down for answers.
The quality of your response when things go wrong matters more than getting everything right the first time. Exchange suggestions during the return flow can keep the sale alive, turning a potential loss into loyalty.
Brands that treat post-purchase as a retention strategy rather than a task to cross off will see much higher repeat purchase rates. Those still relying purely on email marketing for retention will wonder why their customer lifetime value plateaus.
Start measuring post-return CSAT scores and repeat purchase rates by support interaction quality. These metrics will tell you whether your post-purchase experience is building loyalty or quietly eroding it.
After absorbing these predictions about AI accuracy, content infrastructure, revenue-centric support, context, and post-purchase tactics, here's your roadmap for the next 24 months.
Now (in 90 days):
Next (in 6-12 months):
Watch (in 12-24 months):
The patterns we've shared, from AI crossing the accuracy threshold to documentation quality, are happening right now across thousands of brands. Over the next 24 months, teams will be separated by operational maturity.
Book a demo to see how leading brands are already there.
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TL;DR:
Your customers expect answers now, not in hours, not tomorrow, but the instant they ask. An AI chatbot handles order tracking, returns, and product questions around the clock without hiring more support agents.
For ecommerce brands buried in repetitive tickets while trying to keep service personal, AI chatbots turn support costs into actual revenue. Here's everything you need to know about choosing and implementing the right solution for your store.
An AI chatbot is conversational software that uses large language models (LLMs) to chat with customers. This means it can hold natural conversations with your shoppers, answer their questions, and help them resolve tasks without human intervention.
Unlike older chatbots that followed pre-set scripts, AI chatbots understand context and nuance. They can interpret what a customer really means, even when they don't use exact keywords. For example, if someone asks, "Can I get my money back?" the chatbot understands they're asking about returns, not requesting a literal cash withdrawal.
Modern AI chatbots use techniques like retrieval-augmented generation to pull information from verified sources — like your Help Center or product catalog — ensuring accurate answers. When they encounter issues beyond their capabilities, they know to escalate to human agents.
Related: What is conversational AI? The ecommerce guide
While these chat tools both facilitate conversations, they serve different purposes and have unique strengths.
Feature |
AI Chatbot |
Live Chat |
|---|---|---|
Availability |
24/7 automated |
Business hours |
Response time |
Instant |
Minutes to hours |
Handling capacity |
Unlimited concurrent |
Limited by staff |
Personalization |
Data-driven |
Human intuition |
Complex problem solving |
Limited, escalates |
Full capability |
Cost structure |
Per conversation/month |
Per agent seat |
Live chat excels at solving complex or sensitive issues that require human empathy and judgment. AI chatbots provide instant, 24/7 answers to common questions.
The most effective approach combines AI chatbots with seamless human handoff. The chatbot handles initial inquiries, and if it can't resolve the issue, it escalates the conversation — along with all context — to a live agent. Modern platforms blend these capabilities into unified helpdesk solutions.
When asks a question in your website’s chat tool, your AI chatbot follows a sophisticated process to deliver accurate answers in seconds:
This combination allows AI chatbots to handle routine inquiries while knowing when to bring in your support team for complex issues.
AI chatbots deliver measurable improvements to both customer experience and business outcomes. They transform your support operation from a cost center into a revenue driver.
Customers expect instant, personalized answers no matter the time — and AI chatbots do these at scale. Using your brand’s knowledge base, AI chatbots maintain your brand voice and guidelines while giving unique responses to customers. This means better customer education, engagement, and a higher likelihood of conversion.
AI interactions cost significantly less than human support. By automating repetitive tickets, you scale support without adding headcount — a crucial move during peak seasons. Tedious work is dramatically reduced, giving agents time to strategize, address complex tickets, and build deeper customer relationships.
An AI chatbot’s ability to detect customer intent means it knows when to upsell your products. Whether it is dealing with a new customer or a returning one, AI keeps conversations proactive by providing personalized recommendations,
Start by automating your highest-volume, repetitive inquiries. This delivers the fastest ROI and lets your team focus on conversations that actually need human expertise.
WISMO tickets likely dominate your inbox. Connect your chatbot to shipping carriers via API for real-time tracking, split shipment explanations, and delay notifications. Set up proactive shipping updates to prevent these tickets entirely. The bot escalates only when packages are missing.
Your chatbot checks return eligibility, generates labels, and communicates refund timelines. Integrate with Loop or ReturnGO for self-service. It suggests exchanges over refunds to preserve revenue — swapping a wrong size instead of losing the sale. Complex cases like damaged goods get escalated with full context.
Turn your chatbot into a sales associate that recommends products based on browsing history, answers sizing questions, suggests gifts, and bundles complementary items. Instantly addressing purchase-blocking questions about materials or stock availability removes friction and increases conversions.
Related: Guide more shoppers to checkout with conversation-led AI
While powerful, AI chatbots have limitations you need to understand and plan for. Being aware of these risks helps you implement safeguards and set appropriate expectations:
Selecting the right AI chatbot requires evaluating platforms based on ecommerce-specific needs, not generic chatbot features. Focus on solutions built specifically for online retail.
Analyze your support ticket data to identify the most common customer questions. These become your priority intents that the chatbot must handle excellently. Differentiate between must-have intents like order tracking and returns versus nice-to-have intents like detailed product education.
Calculate potential deflection rates for each intent category to understand the business impact. Focus on intents that represent high volume and clear resolution paths.
Create a comprehensive list of your essential tools and platforms:
Look for platforms with deep, native integrations rather than basic API connections. Native integrations provide richer data access and more reliable performance.
Define clear boundaries for AI capabilities and establish escalation triggers:
Ensure the handoff process preserves conversation context so human agents can continue seamlessly where AI left off.
Your chatbot represents your brand in every interaction. The platform should allow you to train the AI on your specific brand guidelines, approved language, and desired tone of voice.
Test responses across different scenarios and customer types to ensure consistency. Look for platforms that provide ongoing monitoring tools to prevent tone drift over time.
Choose a platform with robust analytics and quality assurance capabilities:
Core performance metrics:
Business impact metrics:
Set realistic benchmarks based on your industry and business model. Use these metrics to identify improvement opportunities and demonstrate return on investment to stakeholders.
Ready to join thousands of ecommerce brands using AI to delight customers and drive revenue? Gorgias AI Agent integrates seamlessly with Shopify to deliver instant, accurate support that sounds just like your brand.
Book a demo to see how AI Agent can handle your specific use cases and start automating within days, not months.
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TL;DR:
If you lead a support team today, you’re probably evaluating AI tools with a different lens than you were a year ago. The question isn’t only “How fast is it?” It’s “What work will this actually take off my team’s plate?”
By 2026, Forrester predicts 30% of enterprises will build parallel AI functions, including hiring managers to train AI agents, ops teams to tune their performance, and specialists to step in when things go wrong.
That means choosing the right AI platform isn’t optional — it’s a step into the future of support work.
In this list, we cover what AI for customer support is, how it helps customer experience teams hit their goals, the top platforms to consider, how to evaluate and implement them, and the brands already seeing results.
Jump ahead:
AI for customer support is software that uses artificial intelligence to manage and automate customer interactions. It can respond to customers on channels like chat, email, and social messaging — even before a human agent needs to step in.
It works by using natural language processing (NLP) to understand intent and generate contextually relevant replies. Instead of following rigid scripts like traditional chatbots, AI produces responses in real time based on your policies, data, and brand voice.
Because of this, AI can handle a significant share of repetitive tickets while giving agents the space to focus on more complex and relationship-driving issues.
Read more: What is conversational AI? The ecommerce guide
By automating repetitive tasks, AI frees up human agents to focus on complex problems that require empathy and creative thinking.
Here's how AI improves your support metrics:
AI also helps you scale during peak seasons like Black Friday without hiring temporary staff. This efficiency translates into lower costs and a more strategic support operation.
Choosing the right AI platform depends on your industry, team size, and specific challenges. We evaluated solutions based on AI capabilities, ease of use, integrations, and business fit.
Pricing: $40/month
Gorgias is a conversational AI platform built specifically for ecommerce. Its deep integration with Shopify lets it automate up to 60% of support tickets with direct access to Shopify actions right in the platform.
The AI Agent can edit orders, issue refunds, and apply discount codes directly in your helpdesk. This means customers get instant help with common requests like order changes or returns. The platform also powers personalized product recommendations and proactive chat campaigns, turning your support team into a revenue driver.
Gorgias offers tiered pricing starting with a Starter plan for small brands and scaling to enterprise solutions.
Pricing: $55/month
Zendesk is an enterprise-grade platform with mature AI features. Its Answer Bot and intelligence tools help manage high volumes across multiple channels. Zendesk is known for scalability and extensive integrations.
The AI analyzes intent and sentiment to route tickets effectively and provide agents with helpful context. You can automate responses to common questions while ensuring complex issues reach the right specialists.
However, Zendesk's complexity and higher price point can overwhelm smaller teams. It's best for businesses that need its full suite of enterprise features.
Pricing: Free
Shopify Inbox is a free live chat tool built specifically for Shopify brands, making it an easy entry point for teams that want to experiment with AI support. The AI suggests replies based on customer messages, helping agents respond quickly without needing a full helpdesk.
Because it’s tied directly to Shopify, agents can see customer details, past orders, and cart activity right inside the chat. This gives small teams enough context to answer common questions fast and keep shoppers moving toward checkout.
That said, Shopify Inbox’s automation capabilities are limited. It’s best for smaller brands testing live chat or those who need a no-cost solution. This means teams that want deeper automation will likely outgrow it.
Pricing: $25/month
Help Scout focuses on simplicity and human-centric customer service. Its AI features, including Beacon and AI Assist, are straightforward and easy to implement. The AI suggests replies to agents and pulls relevant articles into conversations.
This platform is ideal for teams that want a clean interface and simple AI augmentation. While user-friendly, its AI capabilities aren't as advanced as platforms like Gorgias or Intercom.
Pricing: $0.99 per resolution with your current helpdesk
Intercom excels at conversational support, particularly for product-led and SaaS companies. Its AI chatbot, Fin, uses advanced language models to provide natural, human-like conversations within your app or website.
Intercom's AI can qualify leads, onboard new users, and resolve support questions by referencing your knowledge base. It's excellent for engaging users during their product experience.
The pricing model is usage-based, which can become expensive as you scale and add more advanced AI capabilities.
Pricing: $24.17/month
Tidio combines live chat and basic chatbot features, making it popular with small businesses. It features a visual flow builder for creating simple chatbots without coding.
Tidio offers a free plan with limited features, with paid plans unlocking more capabilities. While it's a great starting point for chat automation, it lacks sophisticated NLP and deep integrations needed for complex operations.
Pricing: $49/month
Freshdesk offers Freddy AI, which provides omnichannel support capabilities. It's a strong choice for businesses already using other Freshworks products. Freddy AI automates responses, suggests solutions to agents, and predicts customer needs.
The platform includes workflow automation and predictive contact scoring to help prioritize tickets. Freshdesk offers several pricing tiers, but the most powerful AI features are on higher-priced plans.
Pricing: $499/month
Ada is a pure-play conversational AI platform designed for enterprise automation. It offers a powerful, no-code bot builder for creating sophisticated automation flows for complex use cases.
Ada handles massive scale and integrates with existing helpdesks. Because it focuses solely on automation, it can achieve very high deflection rates. The downside is that you need a separate system for human agents and enterprise-level pricing.
Pricing: $35 per agent + $1500+ per integration + platform fees
Level AI specializes in quality assurance and agent performance. Instead of focusing on ticket deflection, it analyzes customer conversations to provide real-time coaching and feedback to agents.
The platform uses sentiment analysis, topic detection, and agent screen recording to identify coaching opportunities. It's excellent for large teams focused on improving agent quality and consistency. However, it's a specialized solution that requires a separate helpdesk.
Adopting AI requires a strategic approach, not just a technical one. Successful implementation starts with clear planning and phased rollout. Instead of automating everything at once, focus on early wins and expand from there.
Before starting, determine what you want to achieve. Are you trying to reduce response times, lower cost-per-ticket, or improve customer satisfaction scores? Set specific, measurable goals like "achieve 30% ticket deflection for order inquiries within 60 days."
Establish baseline metrics before implementing AI. This lets you accurately track progress and demonstrate return on investment.
Start with low-hanging fruit, or basic, repetitive customer inquiries. For most ecommerce brands, this means questions like "Where is my order?", "What is your return policy?", and basic product questions.
Prioritize channels where you receive the most inquiries, whether email, live chat, or social media. By tackling your most frequent questions first, you'll see the biggest impact on your team's workload.
Your AI is only as smart as the information you provide. A comprehensive and current knowledge base is critical for success. The AI uses these articles to learn your policies, product details, and brand voice.
Set up clear guardrails and escalation rules. Define which topics the AI shouldn't handle — like angry customers or complex technical issues — and create seamless handoff processes to human agents. Getting your AI brand voice right ensures consistent, on-brand interactions across all automated responses.
Today’s leading brands are fully leveraging AI to help deliver high-quality support. Take a look at how AI helps these four brands win:
What they use AI for: Automating 25–30% of repetitive tickets across email and chat on Gorgias after switching from Zendesk.
Results: Faster responses (1-minute email first response time), reduced seasonal hiring, and 10% YoY savings in operational costs.
What they use AI for: Automatically reviewing 100% of tickets daily with Auto QA to surface tone, adherence, and macro-usage issues.
Results: 15 minutes of weekly QA versus over 1 hour, and faster coaching cycles that improve agent performance and customer experience.
What they use AI for: Automating routine support questions to improve efficiency and reduce reliance on Salesforce.
Results: Automated 45% of inquiries in two months, saved $100k per year, and improved CSAT by 11%.
What they use AI for: Automating high-volume, repetitive questions to offset a leaner support team and manage peak-season spikes.
Results: Automated 27% of customer support tickets and kept service levels high despite losing almost half of their support team.
The strongest platforms aren’t just chatbots. They’re systems that make your agents’ jobs easier, automate the repetitive work they’re tired of, and help you bring in more revenue.
If you’re still hesitant, you’re not alone. Most CX leaders worry about where to start. The safest path is to focus on the problems that slow your team down today, roll out AI in phases, and refine as you go.
When you do that, AI stops being a risky bet and becomes one of the most dependable parts of your operation.
Book a demo to see how the right platform can make that shift a whole lot easier.
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TL;DR:
Customer experience shapes how shoppers perceive your brand at every touchpoint. From the moment they discover your store through ads or social media to their post-purchase support interactions, each moment contributes to their overall impression.
For ecommerce brands, this means coordinating everything from your website design to your shipping notifications to your return process. The brands that excel at CX turn one-time buyers into loyal customers who spend more and recommend your products to others.
Customer experience is the overall perception a shopper has of your brand based on every interaction they have with you. This means everything from seeing your Instagram account to unboxing their order and getting help from your support team shapes how they feel about your business.
CX includes three types of responses from your customers. Cognitive responses are what they think about your brand. Emotional responses are how your brand makes them feel. Behavioral responses are the actions they take, like making a purchase or leaving a review.
Your customer experience spans multiple touchpoints and stages:
Each touchpoint either builds trust or creates friction. When you nail the experience across all these moments, customers come back for more.
Category |
Customer Service |
Customer Experience |
|---|---|---|
Core Function |
Reacts to problems |
Shapes the full journey |
Scope |
Support interactions only |
Every touchpoint with the brand |
Primary Goal |
Fix issues after they happen |
Prevent issues and create positive moments |
Channels |
Email, chat, phone |
Marketing, website, product, shipping, returns, support |
Ownership |
Support team |
Entire company |
Metrics |
Response time and resolution rate |
Retention, lifetime value, referral rates |
Business Impact |
Improves satisfaction during issues |
Drives long-term loyalty and revenue |
Relationship |
One piece of the experience |
The full system customers move through |
Customer service is reactive support when problems arise. Customer experience is proactive engagement across your customer's entire journey with your brand.
Think of customer service as one piece of a much larger puzzle. Customer service focuses on solving problems after they happen, while customer experience shapes the entire journey that a customer goes through — from their welcome email, all the way to their conversation with an agent after purchase.
Customer experience becomes your advantage when products and prices look similar across brands. A better experience makes shoppers choose you, come back again, and recommend you to others.
These are the main benefits of investing in customer experience as an ecommerce business.
A strong first experience builds confidence. When shoppers understand your product, know what to expect, and can get quick answers, buying feels easy instead of risky. Clear details remove second thoughts. Helpful support fills in any gaps. A checkout that “just works” keeps people moving forward rather than leaving you for a competitor.
When customers can find answers on their own, your team spends less time on repetitive questions. Good CX practices like communicating before issues pop up help your team avoid a wave of preventable tickets. And when your product info is accurate and helpful? You’ll notice fewer returns and disappointed reviews. All of this reduces workload and saves money as you grow.
Related: The hidden power and ROI of automated customer support
People love to talk about brands that make their lives easier, and that starts with the customer experience. A well-thought-out customer experience becomes strong enough to inspire positive word-of-mouth reviews, viral social shares, and a better reputation.
A great customer experience is the one shoppers barely notice because nothing gets in their way. The path from browsing to buying feels simple, and customers never have to wonder what to do next. When the experience feels this easy, it builds trust — and trust becomes the reason they come back.
Here are the core components that lead to that kind of experience.
As AI becomes essential to customer experience, accuracy is the new standard customers judge you by. Speed matters, but it's worthless if the answer is wrong. Shoppers want one-touch resolutions, not back-and-forth conversations or unnecessary escalations.
Related: AI Agent keeps getting smarter (here’s the data to prove it)
Speed still matters because most shoppers want to get in, get what they need, and get out. When they have a question about items already in their cart, a quick answer can be the difference between a completed order and an abandoned one. Slow support creates doubt, while fast responses and reliable shipping options keep momentum going and help customers finish their purchase with confidence.
Read more: Why faster isn’t always better: The pitfalls of fast-only customer support
A 2024 survey found that about 80% of consumers expect personalized interactions from the brands they shop with personalization expectations. When recommendations feel relevant, customers feel understood and are more likely to come back.
All your customers want is honesty. Showing accurate inventory, reliable shipping estimates, and clear return policies all build trust from the very start. Make your expectations clear, and you're less likely to face returns, complaints, and frustrated customers.
The best customer experiences feel intuitive. Give shoppers a clear path to the details they need, whether they’re checking sizing or reviewing return policies. Nothing should feel tucked away. Visible support options and intuitive navigation help customers move toward checkout without second-guessing the process.
You need both numbers and stories to understand your customer experience performance. Quantitative metrics show you what's happening. Qualitative feedback explains why it's happening.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) measures immediate happiness with specific interactions. Ask customers to rate their experience after support conversations or purchases. This gives you real-time feedback on individual touchpoints.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures overall loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend your brand. Scores range from zero to 10. Promoters (9-10) drive growth through referrals. Detractors (0-6) may damage your reputation through negative word-of-mouth.
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much work customers put in to get help. Lower effort scores predict higher loyalty. Customers remember when you make things easy for them.
Average handle time (AHT) and first contact resolution (FCR) measure your support team's efficiency. While not direct customer experience metrics, they impact how customers perceive your responsiveness and competence.
Churn rate shows the percentage of customers who stop buying from you. High churn often signals experience problems that need attention. Track churn by customer segments to identify patterns.
Customer lifetime value (CLV) predicts total revenue from each customer relationship. Improving experience is one of the most effective ways to increase CLV. Happy customers buy more often and spend more over time.
A customer experience strategy is the plan for how your brand treats customers from the moment they discover you to the moment they buy again. The easiest way to think about it is in layers.
This is the top layer and the part customers notice first. Clear product pages, helpful support, fast shipping updates, and easy returns all belong here. These touchpoints affect how customers feel about buying from you. A strong strategy starts with deciding what “a great experience” looks like at each of these moments.
Quick Tip: Start small. Pick one or two touchpoints that cause the most friction, like a product page or the returns process, and improve them first. Early wins give you the confidence to keep expanding your CX foundation without getting overwhelmed.
To deliver an unforgettable experience, you need to know what customers actually want. This layer focuses on gathering real feedback from reviews, surveys, and customer conversations. You don’t need a complex process for this — just a consistent way to spot patterns and record what customers love and don’t love.
Read more: How to use CX data to improve marketing, messaging & conversions
Once you understand your customers, map out their relationship with your brand from first click to repeat purchase. It can be a simple outline that shows the main steps customers take and where friction typically occurs. This layer helps you prioritize the improvements that will have the greatest impact.
It’s time to get in the weeds: decide who owns which part of the customer journey. Who will handle product info? Respond to support tickets? Oversee shipping and logistics? Clear ownership ensures a consistent experience even as the business grows.
Here are some guiding questions to help decide who should own what:
This is the foundation layer that supports your entire CX function. You need tools that bring customer data together, help your team communicate with shoppers, automate repeat questions, and show how you’re performing. A good CX platform becomes the backbone of your operation.
We recommend using an ecommerce-specific helpdesk with the following features:
Read more: Best AI helpdesk tools: 10 platforms compared
You now have the building blocks of what makes a strong customer experience. The next step is to put those elements into practice by improving the touchpoints customers feel most strongly about and tightening the systems that support them.
AI-powered support helps you do this at scale by resolving repeat questions instantly and giving your team more time for work that moves the business forward.
Book a demo to explore how leading ecommerce brands use Gorgias to automate up to 60% of support inquiries.
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