Customer support for pet food and treat brands

Hope AI is a chatbot for Shopify food and treat brands. It reads your product descriptions, ingredient lists, FAQ and shipping and returns policies, and answers customers using only what you've written. If something isn't on your pages, it tells the customer it doesn't know and gives them your contact details.

What food and treat customers ask

People buying food for their dog are careful, and they ask before they buy. It tends to be the same handful of questions, week after week:

• Ingredients. "What are the treats made from?", "Is there chicken in this one?", "Does it contain palm oil?" It's on your product page, so the bot quotes it.
• Which allergens or ingredients you've declared for each product.
• Delivery: how long it takes, which days you dispatch, whether you ship abroad, and what to do if a parcel looks late.
• Subscriptions, and how to skip, pause or cancel a repeat order, as your own policy describes it.
• How to store an opened bag, whether it can be frozen, and what your pages say about best before dates.
• What happens with a damaged or wrong item, and whether opened food can go back.

Where it draws the line on health

Food is where customers most want a vet's opinion from a chatbot, and Hope AI won't give one. It never gives veterinary, medical or dietary advice. It won't say whether a food or treat suits a particular animal's condition, allergy, medication, age or pregnancy, even if your product page makes a general claim like "gentle on sensitive tums".

It will still quote plain product facts, such as the ingredient list or the feeding information you've published. For anything about a specific animal, it suggests the customer asks their vet and offers your contact details. I've written more about this in how a chatbot should handle "is this safe for my dog" questions.

How I set it up

I build it from your FAQ, your shipping and returns policies and your full catalogue, usually within a day. It answers only from your store's own information and doesn't fill gaps from general knowledge. Details like dispatch days and the returns window get quoted exactly as you wrote them.

When it can't answer, it says so and points the customer to your email or contact page. You also get an email with the question, which shows you what's missing from your pages.

Orders and tracking

It can't see your Shopify orders. If a customer asks where their order is, it can tell them your shipping policy and how to reach you, but it has no way of finding their parcel. Better you know that now than hear it from a customer.

Cost and alternatives

Setup is a one-off fee, and you only pay it after you've seen your bot working on a private demo page. The pricing page has the details and the FAQ has the rest. If you're weighing it against the free option, read Hope AI and Shopify Inbox. If you sell other things as well, there are pages for pet supplement brands and accessory and apparel brands.