AI shopping assistant: add one to your store, no code
If customers keep asking the same questions about your products before they buy, an AI shopping assistant answers them instantly, day or night, without you typing a single reply. This guide explains what one actually does and how to set one up in Mavibot without writing code.
Short answer: an AI shopping assistant is a chatbot that answers product questions, recommends items, and calculates order costs using your real product catalog. In Mavibot, this runs on the "Sales assistant" role, configured with a table of your products and prices.
What an AI shopping assistant actually does
An AI shopping assistant sits inside your store's chat and does what a good sales assistant would do in person: answer questions about specific products, suggest something that fits what the customer is asking for, and add up the cost when they're ready to order. It pulls its answers from your actual catalog instead of guessing, so it can tell a customer that a jacket comes in three colors or that an item is out of stock, not just repeat generic marketing copy.
The difference from a regular FAQ bot is the catalog connection: a plain chatbot can answer "what are your hours," but only an assistant wired to your product data can answer "do you have this in a size medium" correctly.
Set it up in Mavibot
1. Get your product data into a table
Mavibot's AI assistant reads product information from a table, either a Mavibot sheet or a connected Google Sheet. List your products with the details a customer would ask about: name, price, variants, stock status, and a short description of each.
2. Choose the Sales assistant role
In your bot's AI assistant settings, select the Sales assistant role preset. This role is built to showcase products, share details about specific items, and calculate costs once it has product data to work from, instead of the generic Q&A behavior of the other assistant roles.
3. Write the behavior instructions
In the bot settings field, describe how you want the assistant to act: whether it should ask about budget before recommending something, how to handle out-of-stock items, or when to suggest add-ons. In the bot knowledge field, add anything that isn't already in your product table, like shipping policies or return rules.
4. Tune the response style
Mavibot lets you adjust the assistant's creativity level and word limit. A lower creativity setting keeps answers closer to your exact product data, which matters more for a shopping assistant than for a general FAQ bot, since a made-up product detail is worse than a short, plain answer.
5. Test it with real questions
Before launching, ask it the questions your actual customers ask: "what's the cheapest option," "is this available in blue," "what do you have for under $50." Fix anything that answers vaguely instead of pointing to a real product.
Where this fits with the rest of your store
The Sales assistant role can hand a conversation off into the rest of your funnel once a customer decides what they want, connecting to the same blocks, payment links, and CRM your regular chatbot flow already uses. It runs as one more role your existing bot can take on, not a separate product bolted onto your store.
Add an AI shopping assistant to your store
If you're tired of answering the same product questions over and over, Mavibot's chatbot builder lets you set up a Sales assistant tied to your real catalog today, no code required. Start free.
Frequently asked questions
Does the AI shopping assistant know my real product data?
Yes. It reads from a product table you connect, either a Mavibot sheet or a Google Sheet, so its answers reflect your actual catalog instead of generic responses.
Can it recommend products, not just answer questions?
Yes. The Sales assistant role is built to showcase products and share details about specific items based on what the customer is looking for.
Can it calculate the cost of an order?
Yes, when it has pricing data from your connected table, it can add up costs as part of the conversation.
Do I need to code anything to set this up?
No. You connect a product table, pick the Sales assistant role, and write your behavior instructions in plain text.
Will it ever make up product details that aren't real?
Lowering the creativity setting keeps its answers closer to your actual product data. Testing it with real customer questions before launch is the best way to catch anything it gets wrong.