Your technical people are the bottleneck
In most manufacturers and suppliers, product questions land on two or three people who know the range. They spend their days answering the same specification questions.
Most of those answers are in a datasheet nobody can find, which is exactly the problem a bot solves.
What trade buyers ask
- Does this fit or work with that?
- What is the lead time?
- What is the minimum order quantity?
- Do you have a datasheet or certificate for this?
- How do I open a trade account, and what are the terms?
Compatibility questions are the highest-volume and the most annoying to answer repeatedly. They are also the easiest to answer from a specification document.
Feed it the technical material
- Specification sheets for every product line
- Compatibility and cross-reference tables
- Certifications and compliance documents
- Standard lead times by product family
- Trade account terms and application process
Be careful with stock and lead times
Stated lead times must be current or they generate complaints. Where they move, publish a range and say when it was last updated.
Live stock needs an integration. Without one, the bot should direct people to check rather than assert.
Trade account applications
Capturing an account application through chat — company details, trade references, expected volume — is a good use of it, and those enquiries are valuable.
Route them to whoever opens accounts, same day, because a trade buyer who cannot open an account quickly goes elsewhere.