5 Ways to Automate 96% of Your Store’s Customer Support with AI

I recently had a conversation with a customer who runs a beauty brand on Shopify Plus. They were curious about why they should consider automating customer support with AI when their team of agents is already handling it well.

And I explained, today, you're managing 100 customer support requests, but tomorrow, you might be swamped with 10,000. How do you keep up? The answer lies in automation.

With the busy shopping season approaching, keeping up with customer queries can feel like a mountain of work. But don’t worry—there’s a way to make it manageable.

You can handle a huge volume of inquiries using automated customer support with AI without breaking a sweat. It’s like having a team of support agents working around the clock, answering questions, and solving problems for you.

In this guide, I’m going to show you five straightforward ways to automate up to 96% of your customer support. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Automate preorder queries
• Automate return & refund
• Average order tracking
• Automate discounts
• Automate store-related queries

So let’s understand how you can do it in detail:

Automate preorder queries

The shopping season often means a flood of orders, and by the second day of the sale, many products are out of stock, causing customers to leave your store. But this season, you can turn that around and keep those customers engaged.

With Manifest AI, you can automate handling out-of-stock and preorder inquiries and even collect leads for when products are back in stock.

This was a custom request from a well-known jewellery brand, that wanted to automate their out-of-stock and pre-order customer queries. Instead of the usual “notify me” option, customers could pre-order items and receive a delivery date. This approach worked wonders for them—they saved nearly $80,00 and gathered valuable leads for future marketing. I swear this will be a great add-on for your store this BFCM week!

Automate order tracking

You might be surprised, but one of the most common questions your customers ask is about their order status. It often takes up a lot of your agents’ time. This BFCM, why not make things easier by automating your order tracking?

Manifest AI is a GPT-powered customer support automation software that can help you handle these queries without needing any agent involvement. Here’s how it works:

1. Set Up: Install Manifest AI on your Shopify store. We’ll take care of the setup and training, and you’ll be up and running in just a few hours.
2. Training: Upload your store’s information, like shipping details and return policies, into Manifest AI (this will take just 1-2 hrs). This allows it to give accurate, personalized responses to every inquiry.
3. Automation: When a customer asks about their order, Manifest AI will automatically request the order ID or registered phone number if needed and handle the query smoothly.

With this setup, you can save a lot on agent costs and focus on other important tasks.

Here is a small glimpse of Manifest AI handling order tracking.

Automate discounts

Everyone loves a good discount! It’s a great way to encourage more purchases and boost your store’s average order value.

This shopping season, you can make it even easier to offer personalized discounts with Manifest AI. Whenever a customer asks for a discount on a product, the AI shopping assistant will automatically provide a discount code.

Here’s how you can set it up:

Offer Discounts for Key Moments: Set up discounts that trigger when customers visit specific pages, abandon their carts, or add items to their carts. These discounts will appear as helpful nudges.

Train Your AI Assistant: Add discount codes to your AI assistant’s FAQ so it can provide them directly whenever customers ask.

Don’t worry about the setup—my team will handle everything, from training the assistant to testing it on your store.

This is how the automated discount looks like

Automate store-related queries

Forrester estimates that handling store-related customer service inquiries can take between 2 to 5 minutes per interaction which means 4 hrs/day if 50 queries get answered. This is how much your agents are spending their time on these simple queries and if I tell you that all these queries can get automated and you can save 4 hrs on each agent every day, isn’t it surprising?

This is possible with Manifest AI. During setup, the AI assistant syncs with your Shopify store and learns everything about it in just 1-2 hours. You can also upload any additional documentation, like FAQs or manuals, to help it get even better.

The AI assistant can then handle all routine questions about shipping, refunds, returns, exchanges, and policies, freeing up your team’s time.

I hope this brings you some relief and allows you to focus on other important tasks.

Automate return & refund

Returns and refunds are the most time-consuming queries for support agents. Let AI help you automate this and save thousands of hours.

With Manifest AI, your Shopify store is trained with all your return and refund policies, and it can handle these queries effectively. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Start by installing Manifest AI on your store. Our AI expert will then train the assistant by syncing with your Shopify store for a few hours.
2. When customers ask about returning items, Manifest AI will automatically provide the steps mentioned in your policies and manage the process smoothly. If needed, it can also connect to an agent quickly.

This BFCM resolves all of your customer queries using Manifest AI and saves 96% of agent costs.

I would love to show you the live demonstration of Manifest AI and you know the best part, you can avail a 15-day free trial of the VIP plan of Manifest AI.

Book a chat, let’s meet :)