How Do I Stop an AI Chatbot Giving Customers Wrong Answers?
Make the AI answer from your own data, let your rules decide what it can do, and give customers a clear route to a person. AeroChat answers from your synced Shopify catalog, your pages and policies, your knowledge base and the customer’s actual order. Actions such as refunds and cancellations follow the limits you write. When a question isn’t covered, or a customer asks for a person, it hands over with the context instead of guessing.
Why AI support gets it wrong
Merchants on the Shopify Community share costly examples. An AI chat tells a customer the wrong return window or promises a refund the store doesn’t offer, and the store has to honor it or apologize. One merchant blind-tested a store’s AI chat with dozens of questions, twice. It answered discount questions well and failed every request to talk to a human. A second test found it gave different answers about the same membership each time.
The causes are usually the same. The bot answers from general knowledge instead of the store’s policies. It can’t see the order, so it guesses at status. Nobody set limits on what it may promise. And there is no handover, so a customer with a real problem is stuck. Merchants asking whether they’d trust AI with order status and refunds say yes, but only within set limits and with a person behind it.
The usual fixes and their limits
- Write longer instructions. A detailed prompt helps a general chatbot sound right. It still can’t check an order, and instructions alone don’t stop it promising something.
- Restrict it to FAQ answers. Safer, but the customer who needs their order checked or changed gets a policy paragraph and emails you anyway.
- Review every AI reply before it sends. Some tools let staff approve drafts. It removes wrong answers and most of the time saved.
- Switch AI off. No wrong answers, and every question is back on your team.
How to handle it in chat with AeroChat
AeroChat answers from sources you control: products, variants, prices, collections, pages, blog posts, discounts and shipping rules synced from Shopify, plus files and FAQs you add. For order questions, it verifies the customer and reads the real order. Actions follow your rules: AeroChat’s engine decides each action against the limits you set, such as a refund cap or a cancellation only before shipping. Handover is the safety net. You list when a conversation goes to your team, and a customer who asks for a person gets one, or is told when the team is back. You see every conversation and can take over or switch the AI off.
Customer: Can I return a swimsuit if I’ve worn it once? (example)
AeroChat: For hygiene reasons, we can’t accept swimwear back once it’s been worn. That’s in our returns policy (example). If it’s faulty, I can pass it to our team to look at. Is something wrong with it?
Customer: No, I just don’t like it. Can I talk to someone?
AeroChat: Of course. I’ve passed your question to our team with your details. They’re online until 6pm today and will reply here.
In AeroChat: the answer came from your returns policy, the conversation moved to your team with a summary, and the AI stopped replying.
Copy this into AeroChat
Answer only from our Shopify catalog, our store policies and our knowledge base. If the answer is not there, say you will check with the team and hand the conversation over. Do not guess.
- For anything about an order, verify the order number and email or phone first, then answer only from the order.
- Never promise a refund, a discount, a delivery date or an exception that our policies don’t state.
- You may refund up to US$40 (example) for a damaged item after the customer sends a photo. Anything more goes to our team.
- If a customer asks for a person, hand the conversation over straight away with a one-line summary. If our team is offline, tell them when we’re back.
- If the customer is upset after two replies, hand it over.
Reply in the customer’s language.
Change the refund limit and the handover cases to match your store before you paste it.
What to connect
- Your Shopify store. Built in. Install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store and connect your store, so answers come from your synced catalog, pages and orders.
- Your policies and FAQs. Keep them on your Shopify pages or upload PDF, Word, text or spreadsheet files to AeroChat’s knowledge.
- Your team and hours. Add your team and set your business hours, so handover reaches a person or tells the customer when someone is back.
Questions
Can AeroChat still give a wrong answer?
Any AI can misread a question. Answering only from your sources, verifying orders before answering, setting limits on actions and handing over when unsure keeps that risk small, and you can see and correct every conversation. Read more on AI hallucination.
What happens when a customer asks for a human?
AeroChat hands the conversation to your team with a summary, or, if nobody is online, tells the customer when the team is back and keeps helping. See live chat handover.
How does it keep answers consistent?
It answers the same question from the same source each time: your policy page, your product data or the order. Put each fact in one place and keep it current.
Can I stop it offering discounts?
Yes. You can turn proactive discount sharing off and exclude products or collections from discounts.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
Put your own rules behind the AI
Install AeroChat, paste the recipe, and ask your own store chat a policy question it shouldn’t bend on.
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