How It Works
Currency and location
We don't know where a customer is, or what money they want to pay in
Reads the clues it has (number, language, delivery place, a dropped pin), settles the currency by fixed rules, and asks only when the answer is really in doubt
Large trade requests
A trade buyer sends a spreadsheet of hundreds or thousands of parts
Reads it in one step, matches it to our catalogue, records every line under one request number, asks the supplier only for what we can supply, and puts the supplier's prices back on the same rows
Nobody left waiting
A customer is left waiting and hears nothing
No noise on every message; one holding message after four working hours without a reply from a person, asking for anything the quote still needs
Accurate quotations
A quotation goes out wrong: wrong currency, below cost, a deposit in the wrong money
Checks that must pass before anything goes to a supplier or a customer, live exchange rates, and core deposits shown the way Caterpillar shows them
A person behind every answer
Customers don't trust a bot, and bots make promises the business can't keep
The assistant always speaks for a named person, hands over to that person, and never promises stock, times or refunds
Privacy
Customer data leaks, or is kept forever
Pins are placed without leaving the server, numbers never appear on internal pages, customers can opt out or be erased, and silent customers are forgotten after a set time
Learning from what happens
The rules are guesses
Every currency guess is recorded next to what the customer then did, and reviewed monthly
What comes next
What is not solved yet
Obsolete part numbers that make suppliers ignore a request, and the other open items