Orders Arrived by Email and Text. Now They Enter Themselves.
A Sydney wholesale distributor's trade customers order the way tradies do: an email here, a text message there, a purchase order PDF when the big accounts feel formal. Here is how those orders started processing themselves into Shopify.
The problem: every customer orders their own way
This distributor runs its sales through Shopify, but its trade customers don't use the website. They fire off an email ("same as last time plus two of the big ones"), text the sales number from a job site, or attach a purchase order PDF in whatever format their own system produces.
Every one of those orders had to be read by a person, decoded, matched to the right products, priced at that customer's agreed rates, and keyed into Shopify by hand. It was slow, it interrupted the sales team all day, and an order that landed while everyone was busy could sit unnoticed for hours.
The worst part was the product search. The catalogue runs to thousands of variants — similar products in different sizes, grades and pack quantities — and customers never use the official names. Working out that "the usual blue ones" means one specific SKU meant scrolling, searching and second-guessing. A single emailed order could easily soak up ten minutes before anything was even typed into Shopify — and picking the wrong near-identical product meant returns, credits and an unhappy customer.
What we built: a pipeline that reads, matches and drafts
We connected AI to both channels — the order inbox and the SMS line. Every couple of minutes, anything new gets read and assessed: is this a new order, a reply about an existing one, or noise?
When it's an order, the AI extracts the line items, works out which products the customer means (even from shorthand and nicknames), identifies who the customer is, and applies their pricing — trade customers have negotiated rates, and the system knows whose price is whose. The result is a fully-built draft order, flagged for a quick human look. Confirmed orders become real Shopify orders, ready to pick, pack and invoice.
And it gets better with every order. The system learns each customer's behaviour — their shorthand, their nicknames for products, what "the usual" actually means for them — so the product matching that used to take ten minutes of searching happens instantly, informed by that customer's own history. It also reads tone and intent: an urgent order, a casual question and a complaint are all recognised as different things and handled differently, instead of everything landing in the same pile.
Email orders read automatically
Free-text emails and attached purchase order PDFs are both understood — no template or format required from customers.
SMS orders too
Texts to the sales number join the same pipeline, and replies can be sent from one shared inbox the whole team sees.
Right product, right price
Products are matched from shorthand, and each customer's negotiated pricing is applied automatically — no rate-card lookups.
Real Shopify orders out the end
A confirmed draft becomes a genuine Shopify order — stock, invoicing and fulfilment all flow on from there as normal.
The return on investment
The ROI stacks up in three places at once:
- Time. An order that took ten minutes of searching, checking and typing now takes seconds to review and confirm. Multiply that across every order, every day — the hours go back into selling and serving customers instead of transcribing them.
- Revenue protected. An order that sits unseen for an afternoon is an order a competitor can win. Nothing sits unseen anymore — every message is triaged within minutes, around the clock.
- Margin protected. Manual pricing from memory or rate cards leaks money in both directions — undercharging gives margin away, overcharging burns trust. Applying each customer's agreed pricing automatically closes both leaks, and picking the right product first time ends the returns-and-credits cycle.
The result
Orders now surface within minutes of arriving, whatever channel they came through, already decoded and priced. The sales team reviews and confirms instead of transcribing, and the "order that sat in someone's inbox all afternoon" problem is gone — every incoming message is triaged automatically, around the clock.
Customers didn't have to change anything. They still email and text the way they always have — the difference is what happens next.
Do your customers order by email or text?
If your team retypes orders into Shopify, an ERP or an accounting system, that step can usually go — without asking a single customer to change how they order.
How do orders reach your business?
Tell us which channels your orders come through and what system they end up in. We'll show you what the automated version looks like — no obligation.
- Works with Shopify, ERPs & Xero
- Customers change nothing