Sales bots wired into your systems

A bot that answers a store’s WhatsApp and Instagram chats using the store’s real stock and prices, and hands the conversation to a person when it should. Today it handles around 6,000 conversations a month.

Channels
WhatsApp and Instagram
Connected to
the store’s catalog and stock, the daily exchange rate, and the trade-in price sheet
Volume
about 6,000 conversations and 23,000 incoming messages a month
In production since
July 2026
Model cost
under two US cents per reply
Runs on
Chatwoot plus Chatty, the platform I built to host these bots

Numbers from August 2026, for a tech retailer with more than 90,000 Instagram followers.

The problem

The store gets hundreds of messages a day. People ask for a price, whether a model is in stock, how much a used phone is worth as a trade-in, and what the payment plans are. Most of those questions have an exact answer somewhere in the store’s systems.

With a small team, the messages that arrive at night or on weekends wait until the next day, and some never get an answer. Every one of those is a sale that may go somewhere else.

A regular chatbot does not fix this. It does not know what is in stock, and when it does not know, it makes something up. A wrong price in a chat is worse than no answer at all.

How it works

Every message goes through the same four steps.

  1. The message arrives

    If the customer sends several messages in a row, the bot waits a moment and answers them as one. Photos and voice notes are turned into text first.

  2. The bot looks things up

    Stock, prices, trade-in values, and payment plans come from the store’s own data, updated every half hour. The bot never answers from memory.

  3. The reply is checked before it goes out

    Twenty-eight rules review the draft. If it quotes a price that did not come from the data, or claims stock that is not there, the draft is thrown away and written again.

  4. A person steps in when needed

    Repairs, payments, and reservations go to a human agent, with a summary of the chat already written. The bot stops talking the moment it hands off.

One reply, checked before it goes out
  1. Hi! How much is the 15 Pro, 256 GB?
  2. Looking up the catalog: 2 units in stock
  3. It’s $1,200,000.
  4. Rule: that amount did not come from the data. Rewriting.
  5. iPhone 15 Pro 256 GB, sealed, in stock. USD 980, or 1,533,700 pesos at today’s rate. Want the payment plans?
A reconstructed exchange. Names, models, and amounts are made up; the mechanism is the real one.

What it does not do

  • It does not make up prices or stock. If it did not look it up, it does not say it.
  • It does not do math in its head. Installments, trade-ins, and currency conversions come from a calculator, not from the model.
  • It does not give opinions on repairs or warranties. A person handles those.
  • It never confirms a payment as received.
  • It does not keep talking after handing the chat to a person.
  • It introduces itself as an automated assistant, and you can always ask for a person.

What the store gets

Answering chats is half of it. The other half is what the owner learns from them.

  • A daily report, by chat: what people asked for and the store did not have, who is on the waiting list, reservations, and which ad each customer came from.
  • A plain-language note for every improvement to the bot, written for the store, not for engineers.
  • A place to report when the bot gets something wrong, and to see when it has been fixed.

Questions people ask

How long does it take?
A few weeks for a first version connected to your data. After that the bot improves with use: every mistake you report becomes a test it can never fail again.
What do I need on my side?
A place where your prices and stock already live (a spreadsheet, a system, a website) and a WhatsApp Business number or an Instagram account. I take care of the rest.
What happens when the bot does not know?
It says so and passes the chat to a person. I would rather ship a bot that hands off than one that guesses.
How much does it cost?
It depends on the channels and the systems to connect. Write to me with what you have and I will give you a number.
What about my customers’ data?
It stays in your CRM. The bot reads what it needs to answer, and nothing is shared with anyone else.

How it is built

For the engineers in the room, I am writing up the inside of this system one piece at a time.

Want one for your business?

Tell me what your customers ask and where your prices and stock live. No forms, no commitment: write me and we will take a look.

Pedro Simon, Rosario, Argentina.