Introduction
In 2023, after the AI boom (which is still going strong), several companies integrated artificial intelligence into their native toolsets. Shopify was obviously no exception — they launched Shopify Magic, which initially focused on generating product descriptions with AI. Over time, the tool gained more robust features, and one of them is the integration with Shopify Inbox, making it a lot smarter.
In this article, we’ll walk you through how you can use Shopify Magic to get more out of your customer support — and how to tie together Shopify Inbox, Sidekick, and Shopify Flow.
Getting Started: Initial Setup for Shopify Inbox and Shopify Magic
Getting started with Shopify Magic and Shopify Inbox is actually pretty straightforward.
Head to the App Store from your Shopify admin panel and search for “Shopify Inbox,” or click here to install it. Keep in mind this is a first-party Shopify app.
Once installed, go to Shopify Inbox and click on Chat Settings. Under Instant Answers is where the magic literally happens. Out of the box, the “Track my order” option already comes enabled. This feature is great and one of the most used — because most customers just want to know where their order is and want a fast answer.
Inside Instant Answers, you can set up other quick responses, like the suggested ones:
- What are your shipping details?
- What is your return policy?
You’ll have a text box to enter instructions and information related to each topic’s answer.
Shopify’s AI automatically pulls from the information already in your store to answer customer questions — things like exchange and return policy pages, product descriptions, business hours, FAQs, and more.
With that in mind, you can keep adding common questions and answers to show up in the Instant Answers widget on the customer side.
In this case, if a customer asks “Where is my order?”, the AI doesn’t use your pre-written answer to make something up. It uses the available information about that specific order to deliver a contextualized response to the customer.
In other words, the AI works with the overall context of your store.
Shopify does not officially state that Shopify Magic pulls from other merchants’ FAQs to answer questions when it can’t find enough information in your own store. The recommendation is to keep your FAQ pages, policies, and product descriptions up to date to ensure more accurate responses.
So in general, Shopify Magic inside Shopify Inbox delivers faster answers based on information you already have in your store, plus contextual information from the conversation itself. That’s why it’s important to have solid documentation and good descriptions on your product pages, FAQ, and policy pages.
Another interesting aspect is that Inbox uses AI features to assist with customer service and organize interactions.
Although Shopify uses artificial intelligence and machine learning across its products, it does not state that Shopify Inbox learns individually from your store’s conversations the way a chatbot specifically trained for your business would.
Shopify Flow and Sidekick: Your Automation and AI Assistants
Still within Shopify’s native app ecosystem, there are two other interesting tools: Flow and Sidekick.
What Is Shopify Sidekick?
Sidekick is the AI assistant that lives inside your admin panel. It’s there for you to ask anything about Shopify and your store — analyzing store data, offering customization suggestions, generating response templates, helping with reports, explaining metrics, and much more. It’s basically your all-in-one AI assistant.
Must-read: Shopify customer service support for beginners.
What Is Shopify Flow and How Does It Help Customer Support?
Shopify Flow is an automation app that lets you build workflows to eliminate repetitive tasks, applying logical conditions and integrating with a wide range of tools like Slack, Google Sheets, Klaviyo, Trello, and many others.
Some interesting things you can do:
- Analyze customer sentiment. If a customer is upset, complaining, and on the verge of canceling, you can build automations to flag that behavior and trigger an action.
Note: Sentiment analysis typically requires additional integrations or apps, as it’s not a default native feature of Shopify Flow. - Advanced abandoned cart flows. Depending on the customer type, one action could be sending a limited-time coupon for the abandoned product.
- Inventory control. Let’s say a product’s stock is about to run out in 6 days. Flow can generate alerts, notifications, or kick off internal restocking processes.
Note: Automatically sending orders to suppliers depends on the integrations your store uses and is not a default behavior of Shopify Flow alone.
It’s a great tool for automating processes and can contribute a lot to your customer support strategy.
How Shopify Inbox, Flow, and Sidekick Work Together for Customer Support
1. Shopify Inbox: Your First Line of Response
Set up Shopify Inbox to deliver the fastest, most common answers to your customers. Keep your knowledge base updated — especially around exchange policies, returns, promotions, and support hours.
2. Shopify Flow: Automating Support Workflows and Escalations
In Flow, you can set up automations so that, for example, if a customer mentions “return,” a workflow kicks in — it logs the ticket, pauses promotional messages to that customer while the case is under review, and notifies your team so you can take immediate action.
This type of workflow typically depends on integrations with customer service platforms, CRMs, or email marketing tools.
3. Shopify Sidekick: Daily and Weekly Performance Insights
Sidekick can give you a general overview at the end of the day or week. You can ask it to analyze that day’s complaints, identify support patterns, review store metrics, and get suggestions on potential improvements.
Sidekick’s features continue to evolve frequently, so new capabilities may be added by Shopify over time.
Conclusion: Using AI Tools to Build a Smarter Shopify Support System
By combining these AI tools to serve your customers, you can build incredible — and literally magical — workflows that will save you money, deliver accurate information, and free up a ton of your time.
The data generated from your customer interactions is pure gold. Use it to your advantage.
And don’t forget, if you need to outsource customer support services for your Shopify store, reach us out!
