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Website chat agent that pulls wholesale and corporate gifting buyers out of order-status traffic for a DTC brand on Salesforce
A custom AI chat agent on a high-volume DTC storefront resolves consumer order, shipping and returns questions on its own, spots the visitors who are actually wholesale, retail or corporate gifting buyers, qualifies them, and books them with the right regional rep. It also runs the follow-up a single SDR covering three regions cannot get to, so B2B demand that used to drown in consumer chat volume turns into booked meetings and Salesforce pipeline.
| ROLE | SALES | PLATFORM | CUSTOM |
|---|---|---|---|
| INDUSTRY | ECOMMERCE / DTC | ||
| DRAWN BY | HACKING DEMAND | ISSUED | OCTOBER 27, 2026 |
What The Wholesale Concierge does
A 200+ person DTC brand runs a busy consumer storefront, but a meaningful share of its revenue opportunity comes from B2B buyers: boutique and chain retailers wanting to stock the product, companies placing corporate gifting orders, and distributors in other markets. Today those buyers land in the same chat widget as thousands of shoppers asking where their package is, and the one SDR covering North America, the UK and Europe, and Asia Pacific sees B2B inquiries hours or days late, often after a time-zone gap, and rarely has time for second and third follow-ups. The Wholesale Concierge owns the website chat end to end. It answers routine consumer questions (order status, shipping times, returns policy) using verified order lookups and approved help content so they never reach sales, recognizes B2B intent from what the visitor says and from company-level visitor identification, asks a short set of qualification questions (business type, region, expected order volume, timing), books qualified buyers onto the correct calendar, and logs every B2B conversation in Salesforce as a lead or activity with context. For buyers who do not book, it owns a short, approved follow-up cadence so the SDR only steps in when a buyer engages. It is built and maintained as a managed service, including tuning before each seasonal peak.
Custom build
The team runs Salesforce, and the hard part of this build is not the chat window, it is separating very high consumer volume from a small number of valuable B2B buyers, with live order lookups, region-aware booking and clean CRM writes. A custom AI build gives full control over the intent sorting, the verified order lookup against the ecommerce platform, and the qualification logic, and it can be tuned for seasonal load without being tied to a help desk or CRM vendor's chat product. Salesforce stays the system of record, Chili Piper handles routing and booking natively against Salesforce, n8n carries the integrations and follow-up logic, and Warmly plus FullEnrich add company context so the agent spots business buyers early. A Salesforce-native agent is a reasonable alternative if the company already licenses it, but the order lookup and multi-region routing usually still need custom work.
What starts it
- A visitor opens chat on the storefront, wholesale page, corporate gifting page or contact page
- A visitor identified as coming from a business (via company-level visitor identification) spends time on wholesale, bulk pricing or gifting pages
- A visitor submits the wholesale or corporate gifting inquiry form without booking a meeting
- A qualified B2B chat ends without a booked meeting, or a booked meeting is a no-show, starting the follow-up cadence
- Peak season mode is switched on (for example ahead of holiday gifting), changing routing capacity and consumer deflection depth
What it reads
- Ecommerce platform order API (such as Shopify) for verified order status, tracking and return eligibility
- Approved help center content: shipping times by region, returns and exchange policy, product care and sizing
- Approved B2B content: wholesale program overview, minimum order quantities, lead times, corporate gifting options and regions served (no price lists)
- Salesforce leads, contacts, accounts and open opportunities, to recognize existing wholesale accounts and avoid duplicates
- Company-level visitor identification and enrichment (Warmly for site signals, FullEnrich for missing contact details on B2B visitors)
- Rep calendars and routing rules by region in Chili Piper
How it works, step by step
- Sort intent in the first two messagesThe agent greets with clear options (track an order, returns or shipping, buying for a business) and also reads free text. Anything about a personal order goes to the consumer path. Mentions of stocking, resale, bulk, employee or client gifts, or a company domain in the email address move the visitor to the B2B path. If visitor identification already shows a business visitor on wholesale pages, the agent opens with the B2B option first.
- Resolve consumer questions without touching salesFor order status, the agent asks for order number plus the email or postal code on the order, then pulls tracking and expected delivery from the order API. Returns and shipping questions are answered from the approved help content, with a link to start a return. Damaged items, missing packages past the carrier window, and refund disputes are handed to the support team. Consumer chats are never created as Salesforce leads.
- Qualify the B2B buyer in five questions or fewerThe agent asks business type (independent retailer, chain, distributor, corporate gifting), region, approximate order volume or number of gift recipients, needed-by date, and whether they already buy from the brand. It answers product, minimum order and lead time questions from approved B2B content as it goes, and checks Salesforce so existing wholesale accounts are recognized instead of re-qualified.
- Route and book by region and fitQualified buyers see the right calendar in Chili Piper: the SDR's regional time blocks for new retail and gifting inquiries, the account manager for existing accounts, and the partnerships lead for distributor inquiries. Below-threshold gifting orders are pointed to the self-serve bulk order page instead of a meeting. If the SDR has no slot within the buyer's needed-by window, the agent offers the overflow rep for that region.
- Write it to Salesforce cleanlyAn n8n workflow creates or updates the lead or contact, attaches the chat transcript and qualification answers, sets lead source, region and buyer type, enriches missing fields, and creates the meeting activity. Duplicates are matched on email and company domain before anything is created.
- Run follow-up the SDR cannot get toFor qualified buyers who did not book, or who missed a meeting, the agent sends an approved two to three touch email cadence from the SDR's name timed to the buyer's local business hours, each with a booking link. Any reply that is more than a simple booking is routed to the SDR as a task with the full history, so the SDR spends time only on engaged buyers.
- Review and retune weeklyUnanswered questions, misrouted chats, and B2B leads that slipped into the consumer path are reviewed weekly. Content gaps are filled with approved copy, and qualification thresholds are adjusted with the sales lead, with a heavier review before each seasonal peak.
When a person takes over
- Wholesale pricing, custom terms, private label or large first orders go to the regional SDR or account manager, because the agent never quotes prices or negotiates terms.
- Consumer issues the agent cannot resolve from policy (damaged goods, lost parcels past the carrier window, refund disputes, chargeback threats) go to the support team through the help desk with the order details attached.
- An existing wholesale account raising a problem with a current order or invoice goes straight to its account manager, not into the new-lead queue.
- When the SDR's calendar is full during a peak period, qualified buyers with near-term needed-by dates go to a named overflow rep or the sales manager rather than waiting days for a slot.
Rules it follows
- Order details are shown only after the visitor matches an order number with the email or postal code on it. The agent never reveals addresses, payment details or another customer's order.
- The agent never promises refunds, replacements, discounts, wholesale prices or delivery dates beyond what the order API and approved policy say. Anything outside that is a handoff.
- Consumer chats stay out of Salesforce sales objects, so seasonal shopper volume never floods the SDR's lead queue or distorts pipeline reporting.
- Peak season mode keeps the B2B path one click away even when consumer volume spikes, and gifting buyers with holiday deadlines are flagged as time-sensitive in routing.
- Follow-up emails use approved templates only, respect opt-outs and regional consent rules, and stop the moment a buyer books, replies or unsubscribes.
How you know it works
- Meetings booked from chat per month, split by region and buyer type (retail, corporate gifting, distributor)
- Time from qualified B2B chat to booked meeting, by region
- Share of qualified B2B conversations that end in a booked meeting or an engaged follow-up reply
- Chat-sourced pipeline created in Salesforce and its conversion to first wholesale or gifting orders
- Share of consumer chats resolved without a human, tracked weekly and especially through seasonal peaks
From pilot to live
- Pilot: one region, wholesale and gifting pages onlyLaunch the B2B path on the wholesale and corporate gifting pages for the region where the SDR's backlog is worst, with consumer questions still answered but limited to order status and returns policy. Validate qualification questions, Salesforce field mapping and routing with the SDR reviewing every transcript for the first weeks.
- Expand: all three regions and the full storefrontPut the agent on the full site with time-zone aware routing for all regions, switch on the follow-up cadence for unbooked and no-show buyers, and add the overflow rep rules. Connect visitor identification so business visitors are recognized before they type.
- Operate: peak readiness and ongoing maintenanceRun a pre-peak load and content review before each seasonal rush (shipping cutoffs, returns windows, gifting deadlines), turn on peak season mode, and keep a monthly cycle of transcript review, content updates, routing changes as the team grows, and reporting to the sales lead.
Tools that fit
Chili Piper
Demand conversion platform
Warmly
Reveal site visitors and buying signals
FullEnrich
Waterfall contact enrichment
n8n
Workflow automation platform
Some tool links are partner links. Hacking Demand may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This blueprint is a version of The Concierge (website chat agent) ↗
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Scope this agent ↗ Get your own blueprint ↗Good questions.
Straight answers.
Our chat is mostly 'where is my order' messages, and it gets far worse in the holiday rush. Will the B2B buyers still get through?
Yes, that is the core design. The agent sorts intent in the first message or two, resolves order status and returns questions itself through verified lookups, and keeps the business buyer path visible at all times. In peak season mode, consumer deflection is deepened and gifting buyers with deadlines are flagged as time-sensitive, so they reach a calendar instead of a queue.
One SDR covers three regions. How does a chat agent actually reduce their load instead of just creating more leads?
It does the first touch, the qualification and the booking, so the SDR's calendar fills with qualified meetings rather than inbox triage. It filters small gifting orders to self-serve, sends existing accounts to their account manager, and runs the follow-up emails for buyers who did not book. The SDR only gets tasks when a buyer replies with something that needs a person, and overflow rules cover time zones or weeks when the calendar is full.
What does 'build and maintain' cover once it is live?
Keeping it accurate and working: weekly transcript review, updating approved content when shipping cutoffs, returns windows or wholesale minimums change, adjusting routing when reps or regions change, fixing integration breaks with Salesforce or the order platform, and a pre-peak review before each seasonal rush. Your team approves any new customer-facing language and qualification thresholds.
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