What to Ask Before You Buy an AI Support Agent

The product questions

1. Can it look up a real order, or does someone have to set that up?

“Where is my order?” is the question online shops get most. If the agent cannot look up a real order number, it just sends a link to your tracking page — which the customer already found. Ask to see it give a live order status on a store connected during the demo, not a recording.

2. Does it answer only from content you approved — and what does it do when it cannot?

When an AI does not know something, only two answers are acceptable: ask the customer a question back, or hand over to a person. Confident guessing is not one of them. An invented returns policy is a refund you have to honour, or a chargeback you have to fight. Ask what happens instead, then ask to see it happen.

3. Where do fit and size answers come from?

For clothing, this decides whether the parcel comes back. Ask whether the agent reads your own size chart, including tables inside a product description, or is guessing from the product title. Then ask what it says when a measurement is genuinely missing. “I do not have that measurement, shall I check with the team?” is right. A confident, invented centimetre is not.

4. Do you own the WhatsApp number, or does the supplier?

This one is easy to miss and expensive to find out late. If the number belongs to the supplier, your customer chat history and your most direct line to buyers are tied to that contract. With your own Meta Business account, the number stays yours and you can take it with you. Ask directly: if we leave in twelve months, who keeps the number?

5. Can one account run several brands with separate content?

If you run more than one brand, the thing that goes wrong is brand A’s customer getting brand B’s returns policy. Ask whether the uploaded content, staff access and reports are really kept apart per brand, or whether it is one shared set of content with a different logo on the chat window.

6. What does a customer see in a language you do not speak?

Most tools can reply in several languages, so that part is standard now. The harder half is what happens when the chat reaches your team. If your English-speaking staff open a Japanese chat and have to paste it into a translator, you have not really bought multilingual support. Ask whether the inbox translates both ways.

The pricing questions

7. What happens when the allowance runs out — does it pause, or does it charge?

This is the question most buyers skip, and the one that produces the surprise invoice. There are three common pricing models, and they behave very differently in a good month:

• Pay per conversation solved. Every chat the AI closes adds a line to the invoice. The unit price is clear, the monthly total is not — your best sales week is also your biggest bill.
• Pay per user, then pay for AI on top. Two meters running at once. One goes up every time someone joins your team, whether or not the AI does any more work.
• A flat monthly plan with a set allowance. One price and a set number of AI replies. What matters is what happens at the limit: does the AI pause and tell you, or keep going and bill you?

Ask for the answer in writing. “It scales with you” is not an answer.

8. Does the price change as your team grows?

If the price is tied to how many staff you have, hiring a Christmas temp pushes up your software bill when your margin is thinnest. Ask what your invoice looks like with two more people in the inbox.

9. How long from signing up to a real answer on your shop?

Ask for an answer in hours, not a range of weeks, and ask what a developer has to do. On a normal Shopify store, connecting your products and adding a chat window is not a technical project. If the answer involves a planning call and a setup fee, you are buying a rollout, not a tool.

How AstroX answers them

It reads your live Shopify orders and products, so order status and stock come from the real record. Answers come only from the content you approved, kept in versions you can roll back. If the answer is not in your content, it asks a question or hands over to a person — never a guess. Size and stock questions are answered from live inventory; fit and conversion questions get your own size-guide wording — it never invents a measurement.

WhatsApp runs on your own Meta Business account, so the number stays yours. Several brands can run in one account, each with its own uploaded content, staff access and reports. The inbox translates both ways, so your team read the chat in their language and the customer reads it in theirs.

On pricing: one flat plan with a set allowance, and alerts at 75%, 90% and 100%. When the allowance runs out the AI pauses; nothing is charged automatically. Your price does not change when your team grows, and chat on a normal Shopify store is usually live in under thirty minutes, with no developer.