Stop Losing Sales to Slow Support Replies
Yes, slow replies cause customers to abandon carts and buy from competitors. AI agents provide instant answers, resolving up to 80% of common support tickets.
This is not a generic chatbot widget. We build custom AI automation that integrates directly with your backend systems like Shopify or WooCommerce. It accesses live order data to give customers specific, accurate answers about their purchases, returns, and shipping status.
We built an AI support agent for a 15-person apparel brand that was receiving 200 support emails daily. The system now resolves 75% of incoming tickets in under 10 seconds, freeing up two full-time staff to handle complex issues. The entire build took 3 weeks.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most online shops start with their helpdesk's built-in chatbot or a simple email auto-responder. These tools fail because they lack context. A chatbot that only knows your public FAQ page cannot answer a customer asking, "Why hasn't my order from Tuesday shipped yet?" It frustrates customers by escalating a simple question to a human, creating the very delay it was meant to prevent.
Email auto-responders are even worse. A reply that says "We've received your message and will respond in 24-48 hours" confirms to the customer that they have to wait. This is unacceptable when they can buy the same product from a competitor who offers instant chat support. The delay actively encourages them to look elsewhere.
A 10-person Shopify store processing 300 orders a day can receive 150 support inquiries. If 100 of those are simple "Where Is My Order?" (WISMO) requests, the support team spends hours copying and pasting tracking numbers instead of helping a customer with a complex return or a high-value pre-sale question. That priority inversion costs real money.
How Does It Work?
First, we connect to your backend systems using their native APIs, typically Shopify or WooCommerce, to access order, customer, and product data. This information is securely indexed in a Supabase Postgres database, creating a real-time source of truth. This allows the system to answer questions based on actual, up-to-the-minute order statuses, not static help articles.
The core of the system is a Python application built with FastAPI that orchestrates calls to the Claude API. When a query like "What's the status of my return?" arrives, the app classifies the intent, retrieves the customer's order history from Supabase, and generates a precise, context-aware response. This entire lookup and generation process handles up to 50 concurrent requests and completes in under 8 seconds.
We deploy the FastAPI service as a container on AWS Lambda, so it scales on demand and you pay nothing for idle time. We then integrate it with your support platform, whether it's Gorgias, Zendesk, or a shared Gmail inbox. A typical deployment handling 3,000 queries per month costs under $40 in AWS hosting fees, a fraction of an additional support hire.
Every interaction is logged using structlog, providing a clear, machine-readable history for debugging. We configure AWS CloudWatch alarms to send a Slack notification if the API's error rate exceeds 1% or if latency spikes. You get a daily report summarizing queries handled, the automated resolution rate, and any questions the system could not answer.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Answer 80% of Tickets in Under 10 Seconds
Our systems resolve the majority of common support queries instantly, 24/7. The entire custom build is live and handling real customer tickets in just 3 weeks.
Pay for a Build, Not Per-Agent Seats
A single, fixed-price project gets you a production system. You avoid recurring SaaS fees that penalize you for growing your support team.
Your System, Your Code, Your GitHub Repo
You receive the full Python source code in your own GitHub repository. There is no vendor lock-in, and your future engineering team can extend the system.
Alerts on Failure, Not After a Bad Review
We build in monitoring from day one. AWS CloudWatch alerts notify us via Slack if anything breaks, so we can fix it before your customers notice.
Connects Directly to Shopify and Gorgias
This is not a standalone widget. It integrates with your existing e-commerce platform and helpdesk, pulling live data and operating within your team's current workflow.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Week 1: Scoping and API Access
You provide read-only API access to your e-commerce platform and helpdesk. We audit the data and deliver a technical specification document outlining the build.
Week 2: Core Logic Development
We build the core system and train it to handle your specific query types. You receive a private staging link to test the agent's responses with real-world questions.
Week 3: Integration and Go-Live
We connect the system to your live support inbox and monitor the first batch of customer interactions. Your team receives training on the monitoring dashboard.
Weeks 4-8: Monitoring and Handoff
We provide 4 weeks of post-launch monitoring and tuning. At the end, you receive the complete source code and a runbook detailing system maintenance.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom support agent cost?
- Pricing is based on scope. Key factors include the number of backend data sources (e.g., Shopify only vs. Shopify + a shipping platform) and the number of unique query types (e.g., only WISMO vs. WISMO, returns, and product questions). A focused build takes 2-3 weeks, while a more complex agent can take 4-5 weeks. We provide a fixed-price quote after our discovery call.
- What happens when the AI doesn't know the answer?
- It is designed to escalate, not guess. If the system's confidence in an answer is below a set threshold, it automatically forwards the ticket to a human. It also passes along a summary of what it understood, giving your team context to solve the problem faster. This prevents frustrating loops for your customers.
- How is this different from my helpdesk's AI feature?
- Most built-in helpdesk AIs (like those in Zendesk or Intercom) use your public FAQ articles as their knowledge source. They cannot access live order data. We build a system that authenticates with your Shopify or WooCommerce backend. It can tell a specific customer *exactly* where their unique order is, not just point them to a generic shipping policy page.
- Can the AI's personality be customized?
- Yes. We define the agent's tone and personality in a system prompt before the build begins. Whether you want it to be formal, witty, or strictly professional, we can tune the Claude API to match your brand voice. We will provide several response examples for your approval before the system goes live with customers.
- How do you handle sensitive customer data?
- We do not store personally identifiable information. Customer data is fetched from your own systems in real time to answer a query and then immediately discarded. The service is deployed in your own cloud environment, giving you full control. All data in transit is encrypted using TLS 1.3, and you get the full source code for security audits.
- What kind of maintenance is required after launch?
- The system is designed for low maintenance. The primary task is reviewing the daily log of unhandled questions to identify new query types to support or gaps in your product information. We provide a runbook that covers common issues. We also offer an optional flat monthly maintenance plan to handle monitoring, updates, and retraining.
Related Solutions
Ready to Automate Your Small Business Operations?
Book a call to discuss how we can implement ai automation for your small business business.
Book a Call