E-commerce
Direct answer
Shop guides keep refunds and delivery answers on a page you wrote. A draft email or a website chat widget may repeat that page and must stop when the page is silent. Supplier research can list a wholesale price only with a link you open. Posts must not invent reviews or stock you do not have.
Small shops where the same delivery and refund questions arrive all week, and a made-up policy would be a consumer-rights problem.
Online shops already have a returns page, or they should. Point the reply draft at that page. UK consumer rules on refunds are not something for a model to summarise from memory into a customer email.
Supplier research is for the products you might stock, with every price opened in a browser before it reaches a product listing. Do not publish a model-written review.
Playbooks that fit
- Research for quotes and suppliersGrok15 minutes to save the prompt, then the time you spend checking linksabout £0–£23/mo
A Grok research brief for supplier quotes
Give Grok a fixed brief for supplier research: three companies, their websites, and a price only when that price is printed on the page you are given. Open every link before you trust a figure or put it in a quote. Estimates are not allowed. Not live-tested yet.
- Social post repurposingGoogle SheetsOne sitting to make the sheet, then a note when the work is done£0 on the free plan/mo
A month of social posts planned in a sheet
Plan social posts on a private Google Sheet: one row for the date, the network, and a caption taken from work you actually did. ChatGPT can draft the caption from that note. You publish it yourself. Buffer is the separate queue. The free ChatGPT plan was listed on 25 October 2026. This has not been live-tested.
- Customer FAQ repliesChatGPT1–2 hours, mostly writing the policyabout £0–£15/mo
Customer replies from a written FAQ, drafted in ChatGPT
Put your real refund, price, and booking rules into a ChatGPT Project and let it draft customer replies from that page only. You send the email. If the answer is not in the page, the draft should say you will check, not invent a policy. Not live-tested yet.
- Customer FAQ repliesChatGPTOne sitting with the questions written down first£0 on the free plan/mo
Draft the public FAQ page from questions you already answer
Write a public FAQ by listing questions customers have already asked and drafting answers only from rules you supply. ChatGPT can arrange that page. You publish it. The email-reply guide and the website chat come after the page exists. The free plan was listed on 25 October 2026. This has not been live-tested.
- Google review repliesChatGPTAbout 30 minutes to write the rules, then a few minutes a review£0 to try, or about £15 if you pay for Plus/mo
Google review replies drafted in ChatGPT
A reply to a Google review should use the customer's words and your own policy, then be posted by you. ChatGPT can shorten the tone. It must not invent a visit, a refund, or a discount. Google's help page is how replies are managed. Nothing here posts overnight. This guide has not been live-tested.
- Social post repurposingBufferAbout an hour to connect the channels and write the rule£0 on the free plan/mo
Social posts queued in Buffer
A social scheduler for a small business should queue posts you have already approved. Claude can turn one true note into a Google post, an Instagram caption, and a LinkedIn post. Buffer's free plan, on 25 October 2026, held three channels and ten scheduled posts each. You press publish. This has not been live-tested.
- Customer FAQ repliesTidioAn afternoon to write the page, then an hour for the widget£0 on the free plan, with Lyro's paid meter left off/mo
Website support chat with Tidio
A support chatbot for a small website should repeat a page you wrote and stop when the page is silent. Tidio's free plan was $0 for 50 billable conversations a month on 25 October 2026. Lyro's first 50 AI conversations were a lifetime allowance, not a monthly refill. You handle the rest. This has not been live-tested.
Questions
Can the chatbot see the order?
Not in these setups. Looking up an order is a helpdesk feature you would add later, with access you understand. Version 1 does not connect a bot to the shop admin.
What if the policy page is wrong?
Fix the page first. A perfect draft of a wrong refund rule is worse than a slow reply. The FAQ playbook starts there.
Do you cover marketplaces?
The method covers questions you answer yourself. A marketplace's own messaging rules are theirs. Read them before you automate a reply.