Short write‑ups of problems we hit running a real commerce operation and what we changed in the code because of them. No product announcements; just the reasoning.
We built reply suggestions for the customer service chat inbox, set a goal of 60% close to what staff really sent, and spent ten days between 10 and 20%. Better writers, a critic, 23,000 past replies as examples and a coverage gate did not move the live number. We stopped. For a drafter that gets one shot, the technology at a cost that makes sense is not there yet, so the next attempt puts each staff member's own AI assistant on the conversation instead.
We read only the Gmail inbox, on purpose, and real customers were getting lost in Gmail spam. We now read the spam folder too. Rules clear most of it, a System One model sorts the rest for about four cents a month, anybody who has bought from us gets straight through, and nothing out of spam gets to open a file on its own.
We built an internal messenger into the ERP instead of sending the warehouse to a third-party app. Why it had to be separate from customer chat, why the first users were pickers on tablets, transparent translation between languages, chats that start from an order, and the rule that staff chat is work — so HR may read it.
A live chat on every storefront, answered from the staff app by agents who see the customer's account, orders and history beside the conversation; messages translated both ways; a session that can become a ticket, a Slack thread or a summary; presence and typing over WebSockets; a dashboard of who is on the site right now and from where. And the tone rules we wrote down when an assistant started drafting replies.