When your prospective customers are looking for a trusted pet food maker they often have questions. Enquiries are inevitably focused on specific races, sizes, life styles, habitats etc. Who can they turn to?

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If it is online, chances are that the website’s Search box will not be good enough, and other available tabs such as FAQs, blogs etc. will hardly compensate. In the recent past, you may have added a button at the bottom right of your website to give access to a chatbot. The button promised to reply to classic sentences. Answers had to be prepared meticulously and results were only good if the questions remained within the planned range of topics.
If the visitor was using his smartphone, the typing process was quite tedious and that initial technology did not allow for spoken questions and oral answers.

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AI Agents are now replacing older chatbots. The back and forth discussion can be written, or typed, in any language, making it far more natural, both on a PC or a smartphone. Answers need not be prepared per se, the set-up work is facilitated because it only requires content rich weblinks, carefully chosen documents and complementary Q&As learned over time. The AI engine will handle scanning the pool of data for each question and preparing thoughtful answers. The experience is very pleasant, and effective.

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Your current e-commerce store rarely offers that service despite the huge progress AI has made: it is a good time to upgrade.

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If it is in-store, the preferred scenario is for shoppers to ask in-store clerks. Even in specialized stores, this is getting harder to achieve, and in supermarkets it simply never happens.
A new trend can be spotted, especially with Gen Z pet owners. Shoppers are starting to use OpenAI or Gemini when facing the product inside the aisle. They launch their favorite AI app, take a picture of the product, and start asking questions. It is fairly natural.

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The good news? It works.

• AI already knows your brand and your products in amazing detail
• It can already explain why products must be chosen, the quantities that are right for their pet, the specific compatibilities, and answer most questions.

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The bad news?

• Generic AI can not reliably identify each reference, even from a photo taken on the spot. It tends to give generic answers and send users back to the packaging or your website.
• Free AI access comes with limits. After a few questions, customers often hit a paywall or get blocked until they upgrade, typically for around €23/month. Not all shoppers are delighted.
• AI doesn’t know the store context: available inventory, promotions, client preferences… Generic AI hints may miss the mark.
• You get no visibility. You will not know who is asking, what they’re asking, or whether the answers were right or wrong.

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You will miss valuable feedback that could help improve your marketing, training, and customer guidance. Those of you who have a chatbot in place know that the person in charge of managing the Q&As gets valuable insights, every day.

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There’s a Smarter Way: Use a Private AI Agent

Ask Mona’s AI Agent is meant to deliver this service. It can work online starting with an URL, or in stores from a QR code printed either in shelf tags or the packaging itself. This unlocks powerful benefits:

• The link sends directly to the right product and proven AI model, ensuring precise answers for that specific product
• The AI service cost is already covered, no extra charge, no limits for the customer.
• Your AI Agent only answers based on your controlled content: brand identity, ingredients, tutorials, proven answers.
• You get detailed reports showing usage, questions asked, and answers given.
• You can improve the provided content over time so that almost every question is answered precisely.

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Who Benefits?

1. Your customers, before and after the purchase, who can access help 24/7, in their language, from any smartphone. No extra investment required, and it works indoors, outdoors, and gets better over time.

2. Store employees, especially new hires, who get an easy self-service tool to learn and troubleshoot faster.

3. Your Marketing, with a steady influx of real world verbatims, they get a continuous sense of what is happening in the field.

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Is it Urgent to prep your AI Agent?

At this time your web shoppers are probably limited by keyword optimized search, the private AI Agent will only help.

What is more urgent is the case of customers finding sub-optimal answers from generic LLMs. This needs to be addressed.

Lastly, you may notice that several retailers are rushing to provide their own LLM to capture and redirect your brand’s traffic. These new unwanted habits may last more than you like, and proposing your private AI Agent instead will safeguard your brand’s standing.

Ask us for a trial (link) or even set-up your own agent in self-service (link).

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