A complete overview of Gorgias AI customer engagement in 2025

Gorgias has become a big name in the ecommerce world, and it’s no shock they're diving headfirst into AI to help with customer support and maybe even drive a few more sales. The idea is pretty simple: let AI handle the common questions so you can turn more window shoppers into actual customers. But how well does it really work, and is it the right move for your business?

In this article, we’re going to give you a straight-up, balanced look at the Gorgias AI Customer Engagement features. We’ll get into what it can do, unpack its slightly confusing pricing, and point out a few key limitations you should be aware of. By the end, you'll have a much clearer picture of whether Gorgias's all-in-one setup makes sense for you, or if a more flexible, plug-and-play solution might be a better fit.

What is Gorgias?

At its heart, Gorgias is a customer service platform, often called a "helpdesk," that was built specifically for ecommerce brands, especially those on Shopify. Its main selling point is pulling all your customer chats, from email, live chat, social media, you name it, into one single, organized inbox.

The reason online stores love it is its tight integration with ecommerce platforms. When a customer gets in touch, your support agents can see their entire order history right there in the ticket. No more jumping between tabs trying to find an order number or tracking information.

A deep dive into Gorgias AI Customer Engagement

Gorgias AI isn't just a single chatbot. It’s more like a toolkit designed to automate support and connect with shoppers on your site. It’s built to handle conversations both before and after a sale, splitting its work between two main components.

The two core components: Support Agent and Shopping Assistant

Support Agent: This is the AI that works on the "post-purchase" side of things. It’s designed to automatically answer all those common questions that flood your inbox after a customer buys something. You know the ones: "Where is my order?," "How do I make a return?," or "What's your refund policy?" The Support Agent jumps in to give instant answers, which frees up your human agents to handle trickier problems.

Shopping Assistant: This is the "pre-purchase" AI that chats with people while they're still browsing. It mostly works through your site's chat to answer product questions, offer up personalized recommendations, and maybe even drop a discount code to encourage a purchase. The main goal here is to boost your conversion rate by making the shopping experience more interactive and helpful.

Key features for proactive engagement

Gorgias uses a few specific tools to start conversations with shoppers, rather than just waiting for them to ask a question. These include:

• Suggested Product Questions: On product pages, the AI can pop up a few common questions like "Is this machine washable?" or "What's this made of?" Shoppers can just click one to get an instant answer, which makes it super easy to start a conversation.

• Ask Anything Input: This is a little chat box that follows visitors around your site with a friendly prompt like "Have a question? Ask me anything." It’s a simple trick to make the AI feel more available and encourage people to chat.

It’s worth mentioning that some of these proactive features, like the one that was supposed to engage shoppers after they used the search bar, are sometimes unavailable. That can be a bit of a letdown if you’re counting on the AI to be consistently active across the entire customer journey.

How Gorgias AI does more than just talk

One of the neatest things about Gorgias AI is that it can actually do things, not just answer questions. Because it integrates with other ecommerce apps, it can automate tasks that a human agent would normally have to handle.

For instance, the AI can edit a customer's order right in Shopify, kick off a return through an app like Loop Returns, or cancel a subscription in Recharge. This shows it's more than a basic Q&A bot; it can actually resolve certain issues from start to finish without anyone needing to step in.

How Gorgias AI is trained and managed

Gorgias has a four-step process for its AI: "Onboard, Automate, Observe, Coach." The whole idea is to treat the AI like a new team member who needs training, tasks, supervision, and feedback to get better.

Onboarding: Teaching the AI about your brand

Gorgias AI learns from a few main sources to get up to speed on your business:

• Your Shopify store data, like your product catalog and customer orders.

• Your public help center articles and website pages.

• Your brand's tone of voice and past customer chats to learn how to sound like you.

This works pretty well for information that’s already neatly packaged for customers. But it's not so great at learning from the internal knowledge many teams depend on, like detailed product specs in a Google Doc or complex shipping policies tucked away in a private Confluence page. If your team's real knowledge base lives outside your public help center, the AI might have a tough time finding the right answers.

Managing: Observing and coaching the AI

Once the AI is live, you can keep an eye on how it's doing by reviewing the tickets it handles. In each ticket, you can see what knowledge source it used and give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Gorgias also has reports that track metrics like your automation rate and customer satisfaction scores.

This feedback loop is helpful, but it's all reactive. You can only "coach" the AI after it's already talked to a customer. If it messes up, it messes up live. This is where a different approach can give you a lot more confidence. For example, eesel AI's simulation mode lets you test your AI on thousands of your past tickets in a safe, offline setting. You can see exactly how it would have replied, tweak its logic, and get a solid forecast of its performance before it ever chats with a real customer.

Understanding the Gorgias AI pricing model

Pricing is often where things get a bit tricky with Gorgias, and it’s something you really need to wrap your head around. The platform has a dual-cost structure, which means you're paying for two things separately:

1. A base subscription for the helpdesk itself, with different plans based on how many "billable tickets" you get per month.

2. An extra charge for every single ticket the AI resolves, usually billed per resolution.

The hidden costs of per-resolution pricing

The biggest problem with this model is that your costs can be all over the place. If you have a busy month, run a big sale, or a product issue causes a flood of support tickets, your AI bill could jump without warning. You're sort of punished for being successful, since the more tickets your AI handles, the more you pay.

Here’s a quick look at how that could shake out, based on their public pricing:

This per-resolution model is pretty common out there, but it’s not the only way. For businesses that need a more predictable budget, platforms like eesel AI offer straightforward plans based on your overall usage. You get a set number of AI interactions per month for one flat fee, with no surprise charges, so your costs stay predictable even when business is booming.

Key limitations as an all-in-one platform

Opting for a bundled solution like Gorgias, where the AI and the helpdesk are a package deal, comes with some big trade-offs compared to a more flexible, mix-and-match approach.

The headache of migration and platform lock-in

If you want to use Gorgias's advanced AI, you have to use the Gorgias helpdesk. Period. This "rip and replace" model means you have to move all your historical data, retrain your entire support team on a new platform, and rebuild all of your workflows from the ground up.

It’s a huge project that makes it difficult to ever switch away, effectively locking you into their system. If you’re perfectly happy with your current helpdesk, like Zendesk or Intercom, you're forced to make a tough call.

Siloed knowledge: A limitation

Gorgias is great at pulling data from Shopify, but its knowledge is mostly stuck in the ecommerce world. Most support teams rely on important info stored in other places to answer tricky questions. This could be technical docs in Confluence, internal policies in [Google Docs](https Gid://www.eesel.ai/blog/google-docs-ai-features-limitations-and-alternatives), or even just notes in Notion. An AI that can't tap into these sources is going to hit a dead end and end up passing more tickets to your human agents.

This is where a dedicated AI tool really makes a difference. A tool like eesel AI is designed to connect to the tools you already use, including helpdesks like Gorgias itself, and bring together knowledge from all your different sources. You get all the power of a top-tier AI without the pain of a massive platform migration.

The modern approach: A flexible AI layer for any helpdesk

So, to quickly recap, the issues with Gorgias's all-in-one model are pretty clear: unpredictable pricing, a painful platform migration, and knowledge that's cut off from your team's internal tools.

eesel AI was built to solve these exact problems. It works as a smart layer that plugs into your existing setup, giving you powerful automation without making you change how you work.

How eesel AI offers more control and predictability

Here’s a quick comparison of the two approaches:

• Go live in minutes, not months: Instead of a full platform migration that can drag on for months, eesel AI has one-click integrations that plug directly into your current helpdesk. You can be up and running in a single afternoon.

• Predictable, transparent pricing: With eesel AI, you can forget about per-resolution fees. Our plans are based on a flat monthly rate for a generous number of AI interactions, which keeps your budget simple and predictable.

• Unify all your knowledge: Connect not just your helpdesk and Shopify store, but also internal wikis like Confluence, documents in Google Docs, and conversations in Slack. This gives your AI the full picture for more complete and accurate answers.

• Test with confidence: Use our simulation mode to test the AI on thousands of your real past tickets before you go live. You can accurately forecast your automation rate and ROI without any risk to your customers.

Final thoughts

Gorgias offers a powerful, tightly integrated AI and helpdesk package that works well for ecommerce brands, especially those already using its other tools. But that all-in-one approach comes with some real downsides: pricing that punishes growth, the huge headache of switching platforms, and an AI that can't access your team's internal brainpower.

For teams that want to add powerful, customizable, and budget-friendly AI to their existing support tools, a dedicated integration platform like eesel AI is a more modern and flexible option. You get the best of both worlds: a top-tier AI and the freedom to keep using the tools you already know and love.

Ready to see how a flexible AI layer can transform your customer support without forcing a platform switch? Try eesel AI for free and get started in minutes, or book a personalized demo with our team.