How a Chat Sale Actually Completes: Catalogues, Payment Links and Delivery
The previous piece set out the four parts of a chat sale. This one follows a single
order through all of them, in the order the customer experiences it, and marks where each
step usually breaks.
The example is a caterer, because catering has every awkward feature a chat sale can
have: a price that depends on headcount, a date, a delivery window, and a deposit.
Step 1: the message arrives
A customer writes on WhatsApp at 9.40pm: “hi do you still have the nasi lemak set for
40 pax on the 8th”.
Three facts are in that sentence: a product, a quantity and a date. A system that
treats this as a frequently asked question will reply with the menu. A system that reads
it properly extracts all three and checks availability for that date.
Where it breaks: tools that need the customer to phrase things their
way. Real messages have no punctuation, mix languages, and arrive as voice notes. If what
you are evaluating cannot handle fifty real messages from last week without cleaning them
up first, it will not handle Tuesday.
Step 2: reading the catalogue
The conversation needs the price for 40 portions, whether that date is free, and what
the delivery options are. That is a read against real data, not a retrieval from your
website copy.
Three catalogue setups, and what each can answer:
| Catalogue | Can answer | Cannot answer |
|---|---|---|
| Google Sheet | Item, price, tiers, what is listed as available | Live stock movements, anything your shop system knows |
| Meta or Instagram catalogue | Item, price, variants, images in-channel | Capacity and scheduling |
| Shopify or WordPress store | Live stock, variant pricing, your real shipping rates, discounts | Whatever is not in the store, such as a bespoke quote |
For a seller with no storefront at all, the Google Sheet route is the easiest
zero-subscription way to start selling in chat. It is not an order management system, and
it is not meant to be the end state. Sellers grow into a real store.
Where it breaks: a catalogue the conversation can see but not trust.
One price on the Sheet, another on the website, a third in the Instagram catalogue. Fix
the data before you automate the answer.
Step 3: the quote, and the limits on it
The reply has to include a price, and this is the first point where you need the system
to be constrained rather than clever. Can it apply the 10% bulk discount at 40 pax? Can it
agree to a 7am delivery? Can it hold the date without a deposit?
Those are your commercial decisions, and they should be enforced by the software, not
written into the AI’s instructions as a suggestion. In AeroChat the merchant sets limits
on refund amounts, discounts, delivery dates and when to hand over, and the system applies
them. The practical difference: if the ceiling lives in the instructions, a persistent
conversation will eventually talk past it. If it lives in the code that executes the
action, nothing the customer says matters.
Where it breaks: vendors who answer “where is the refund limit
enforced” with a description of their prompt. Ask the question directly.
Step 4: the payment link
The customer says yes. They now need to pay a deposit without leaving WhatsApp.
A payment link is a single-use checkout sent into the thread. It works on your website chat,
WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and email. The customer taps, pays, and comes
back to the same conversation.
Two properties to insist on. First, the money is yours immediately: AeroChat never sees
card numbers and never holds your funds, and money settles directly into your Airwallex
balance. Second, confirmation is not left to the customer: AeroChat confirms every payment
twice, once the moment the Airwallex webhook fires and again when the customer lands on
the confirmation page.
The deposit is doing a second job here that is easy to miss. It converts a verbal yes
into a commitment. For any appointment or date-based business the deposit is the main lever
on no-shows, and it is far easier to ask for inside a conversation than in an email.
Where it breaks: a paid link that does not create an order. If nobody
is told to cook 40 portions on the 8th, you have collected money and created a problem.
Step 5: delivery
The order exists and is paid. Now it has to arrive, and the customer has to be able to
see that it will.
AeroChat books delivery with POS Malaysia directly. That covers creating a shipment and
label, booking a pickup, rescheduling or cancelling it, tracking a parcel and quoting an
international rate. Delivery updates then go to the shopper on the channel they used, so
the “when is it coming” question is answered in the thread it would have been asked
in.
Worth being precise, because it gets garbled: the payment provider and the courier are
two separate connections. AeroChat connects to each directly. Neither is reached through
the other.
Where it breaks: the automation stops at payment. This is the most
common half-built version of chat selling, and it is the one that produces the new support
queue described in the previous piece.
Step 6: the follow-up, and what it costs
Two days before the date, the customer writes: “can you make it 45 instead”.
That is an order change, which means reading the order, re-pricing, taking the
difference and updating the delivery booking. It is the same five steps again, compressed,
and it is the clearest test of whether a tool acts or only answers.
It is also where the bill shows up. Since 1 October 2026 Meta charges
for service messages, the freely worded replies inside the 24-hour window a customer’s
message opens. There is a free tier of 1,000 per business phone number per month with no
rollover, and per-message pricing has applied since 1 July 2025 (Meta’s WhatsApp Business Platform pricing documentation).
Which changes one habit. Sending four short messages because it feels friendlier now
costs four times as much as sending one clear one. Count your replies per finished
conversation. See conversation-based pricing.
What to make a vendor show you
Demos are built on the easy path. A seller called Jane buys one t-shirt in a medium and
everything works. That tells you nothing you needed to know. Six things to ask for
instead, all of which are ordinary Tuesday events.
- Run my fifty messages. Export fifty real messages from last week
without tidying them. Ask to watch those go through, including the voice notes and the
ones in two languages. - Change the order after payment. 40 to 45 portions, with the price
difference collected and the delivery booking updated. - Hit a limit. Ask for a discount beyond what you allow and show me
what happens. Then tell me where that ceiling is enforced. - Break the catalogue. Make the Sheet disagree with the store and show
me which one wins and whether anyone is told. - Refuse an answer. Ask it something your data does not cover. I want
to see a handover, not a guess. - Hand over and come back. Pass the conversation to a person with the
order number and transcript attached, resolve it, and let automation pick up the next
routine question in the same thread.
Anything that cannot do item 2 is answering questions, not completing sales. Anything
that fails item 3 will eventually agree to something you did not authorise, in writing, to
a customer who kept a screenshot.
The shortest version
- Read the message properly, including the messy ones.
- Check real data, not website copy.
- Quote inside limits the software enforces.
- Take payment in the thread, into your own account, confirmed twice.
- Book the delivery and send updates to the same channel.
- Handle the change request with the same five steps.
Six steps. Most businesses have two of them.
Read next
- Payment link
- Conversation-based pricing
- AI agent
- Conversational commerce
- The four pieces a chat sale needs
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