Live chat works as long as someone is sitting at it
Only a human can make a decision in a chat. When a customer wants to change a colour after the order has shipped, or writes angrily because the courier left the parcel with a neighbour, they need someone who can promise something and then keep the promise.
The trouble starts with the green dot. Customers read it literally. If the status says “online” while you are standing at the label printer, the customer waits forty minutes for an answer and has every right to be annoyed, because they saw that you were there.
After closing, a chat can collect messages for the next day. That is fine on one condition. The customer has to know when you will reply and you have to keep to it, so a short “we will reply by 10:00 tomorrow” next to the form does more than the form alone with no explanation.
Before you plan evening shifts, look at your inbox and chat history from the last month. Your own data will tell you more than general statistics from the internet. If only two messages a week arrive after 8pm, and they ask for things that should be in the product description, an evening shift will achieve nothing and the time is better spent completing the descriptions.
Live chat vs chatbot: count the hours first
Take a shift from 8am to 10pm, seven days a week. That is 98 hours. With the standard 40-hour working week described in the guide “Working Time” from Poland's National Labour Inspectorate (PIP), you get 2.45 full-time positions for a single seat at the chat, before anyone takes a holiday or gets sick.
In a store run by one or two people, those hours come out of your own day. If you have an employee who answers between other tasks, count only the time that really goes into chat, and add the cost of the chat software.
The other side of the calculation is the bot. It costs money too, and besides the subscription it costs your time. Someone has to read the conversations, fix the data and reply to contacts collected overnight. In a small store that someone is you, usually in the evening after the last parcel is packed.
Is a chatbot paid?
An AI chatbot that knows your catalog and answers questions about specific products costs money. How you are billed depends on the provider. Some charge a flat subscription, others count conversations or messages and bill extra once you pass a limit. Before you sign anything, check the price list for what happens in December, when questions pile up.
CartBot is a managed service. The subscription starts at PLN 50 a month + VAT and includes setting up and running the bot. The exact amount depends on your catalog and store traffic, so a large store will pay more. We prepare a quote within 24 hours.
What a bot can handle on its own
A bot connected to your catalog searches products and answers questions about features that appear in the description. Back to the coffee machine cartridge. If the product page has a list of compatible models, the bot has something to rely on and will answer at 11pm on a Sunday too. If the list is missing, it should say plainly that it does not have this information and ask for contact details.
A well-configured bot has an instruction forbidding it to guess parameters. That lowers the risk of a mistake without removing it, so read the conversations every day for the first few weeks.
With a complaint, the bot can write down what happened and collect the customer's contact details. The decision about a replacement or a refund belongs to a human, and it is worth writing that into the bot's rules before it talks to its first customer.
When should a customer reach a human?
Every time the conversation needs a decision or knowledge from outside the store's data. In practice that means situations like these:
- A complaint, a refund, or a dispute over who pays for returning the parcel.
- Personalisation, or twenty units at once.
- A question with no answer in the product description or in the rules the bot received at setup.
- An upset customer.
- A request to talk to a person, even if the bot knows the answer.
Handing over a conversation by day and by night
When you are at your computer, you take over a conversation in the CartBot panel with one click, along with the full history, and the bot stops replying. The customer does not have to explain everything again.
At 11pm there is rarely anyone at the computer. Then the bot collects contact details and says when someone will be in touch, and that message has to match your actual schedule. If you know you will sit down at the panel on Monday morning, let the bot write “we will reply by Monday noon” instead of a vague “soon”.
How to test it in your own store in a week
Play one conversation yourself. Write to the bot like a customer with a complaint, ask for a human and see what you get back. Then open the panel and check whether the history lets you understand the case without asking questions.
For a trial, split the work. The bot takes questions about delivery and returns, and picking unusual products stays with you. After a week or two, read the conversations. Count how many cases the bot closed correctly and how many times a customer asked for help in vain. Those two numbers show whether the bot is taking work off you while you pack or only moving the work to the evening.