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Support escalation in the AI chat

ShopGuide's storefront chat is an AI agent, not a human-staffed live chat. There is no queue of human agents answering your customers in real time. What ShopGuide does provide is a built-in escalation path: when the AI can't fully help a customer, it hands them off to a real contact channel you control.

This page covers that escalation behavior, plus where to get help with ShopGuide itself as a merchant.

How the AI Hands Off Customers​

The chat agent has a contact_support tool it calls when it can't answer a question or resolve an issue. The instructions to the AI are explicit: it should say honestly that it can't help further and use the tool immediately rather than promising to "forward this" without following through. You configure which channel it hands off to in Settings → Essentials → Support Channel:

  • Email: The AI asks the customer for their email address, then sends your team a summary of the question or problem, including any order number, urgency level, and conversation context.
  • Slack: Same flow, delivered to a Slack webhook you configure — optionally with a custom message template.
  • WhatsApp: The AI shows the customer a click-to-chat button pre-filled with a summary of their question, so they can continue directly with your team on WhatsApp. No email is required for this path.

If the configured channel isn't set up yet (no support email, no Slack webhook, no WhatsApp number), the AI tells the customer the store hasn't configured support and asks them to reach out via the website instead.

When Escalation Happens​

  • The customer explicitly asks for support (a broken feature, an order problem)
  • The AI can't answer a product or shop question — this doubles as lead capture, since a name/email is often collected in the process

Conversations that end in an escalation, along with related patterns, also feed the knowledge gaps list, so recurring unanswered topics are visible even without a human reading every transcript.

Order & Cart Help Without a Human​

Separately from escalation, the AI can handle a fair amount on its own if you enable it in Settings → General → Order Features: looking up order status/shipping info, and — if you also enable order editing — canceling items or changing a shipping address. If these are disabled, order-related requests are routed straight to contact_support instead.

Getting Help With ShopGuide Itself​

If you (the merchant) need help with your ShopGuide setup — installation, configuration, billing — reach out through the contact details you provided during onboarding, or through your ShopGuide plan's support terms (higher-tier plans include priority support from the ShopGuide team; see Plans & subscription pricing).

Next Steps​

The AI is designed to be honest with customers the moment it can't help — and to always follow through on the handoff it promises.