Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds

Let’s be honest, the most common question in e-commerce support is, and probably always will be, "Where is my order?" Answering this question manually is a massive time sink for any support team. Automation seems like the obvious fix, but basic tools often fall apart when things get complicated, like when a package is delayed and a customer is (rightfully) getting anxious.

Many Shopify brands turn to Gorgias to build a chatbot for these requests. It's a popular choice, but it’s important to get what its automation actually does, and more importantly, where it falls short. We’re going to walk through how to set up a Gorgias chatbot for delivery updates, cover its pros and cons, and look at what a truly intelligent AI solution can do instead.

What is a Gorgias chatbot?

Gorgias doesn't offer a single "chatbot" product in the way you might picture a conversational AI. Instead, it gives you a set of automation tools inside its helpdesk that you can piece together to create something that works like a chatbot. For e-commerce brands, this setup typically leans on two main features:

1. Flows: These are basically interactive, button-based menus. You design a path with set options like "Track My Order" or "Request a Return," and the customer clicks through to find their answer. It's a guided workflow, not a real conversation. It's strictly rule-based, which means it can't understand or respond to a question someone types out themselves.

2. Order Management: This is a self-service portal you can link to from a Flow. It lets customers track, return, or cancel orders on their own by plugging in their email and order number. It's a handy feature, but it puts the work back on the customer and pulls them out of the chat experience.

So, when we talk about a "Gorgias chatbot," what we're really talking about is a smart self-service system, not a true AI that can understand context, intent, and natural language.

A look at the Gorgias Flows interface, a key component of the Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

How to set up a Gorgias chatbot for delivery status updates

Building a Gorgias chatbot to handle delivery status questions is a manual, rule-based job. You're not training an AI; you're building a decision tree for your customers to click through.

Here’s a quick look at how that works:

You’d start by going into your Gorgias chat settings to build a new Flow. The main goal is to create a button that says something like "Track my order." This is the front door for your customers.

Setting up the rule-based system for a Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

Then, you connect that button to the Order Management portal. When a customer clicks it, they’re sent to a separate page where they have to type in their email or order number to see their shipping status. It works for simple requests, but it adds an extra step and a bit of friction to the process.

You can also set up a similar automation for email. Using Gorgias Rules, you can create a trigger that looks for keywords like "order status" in an email. When it spots a match, it shoots back a Macro (a pre-written template) with a link to your tracking page or the Order Management portal.

The bottom line is that the whole setup is about creating guided, self-service paths. You're paving a road and hoping the customer follows it exactly. There’s no room for detours or unexpected questions, which, as any support agent can tell you, are practically guaranteed to happen.

Benefits and limitations of a Gorgias chatbot

Using Gorgias to automate delivery updates has its perks, but the rule-based approach comes with some pretty big drawbacks, especially when you’re dealing with anything more complicated than a simple "Where's my package?"

The upside: Automating WISMO requests

Let's start with the good stuff. For straightforward questions, a Gorgias Flow offers some clear wins:

• Fewer Repetitive Tickets: By giving customers a self-service option, you can definitely deflect a chunk of those repetitive WISMO tickets. This frees up your agents to focus on more complex problems that actually need a human touch.

• Always-On Support: The bot is always working. Customers can check their order status at 2 AM on a Sunday without having to wait for your team to get online Monday morning.

• Faster First Response Times: The "response" is instant, even if it's just a link to a portal. This can make your support metrics look great, which is always nice when it’s time to run reports.

The downside: Where a Gorgias chatbot falls short

This is where things get messy. While Gorgias is fine for the basics, its automation really struggles with the nuance and stress that come with shipping delays.

• It’s not truly conversational. The system is all about buttons and keywords, so it can't understand what someone actually types. If a customer writes, "Hey, my order seems to be stuck, any idea what's going on?" instead of clicking a button, the Flow will probably just give up and escalate the ticket to an agent. This kind of defeats the point of automation and leaves the customer waiting.

• It can’t handle nuance around delay thresholds. This is its biggest weakness. A Gorgias Flow can't manage complex questions about delay thresholds. For instance, it has no way of answering, "My package was supposed to be here three days ago, what's the problem?" It can only show the exact same static tracking info from the carrier that the customer is already frustrated with. It can't recognize that a 3-day delay is a real issue, look into it, or offer a solution.

• The experience is rigid and impersonal. It’s a series of clicks, not a conversation. When a customer is worried about a delayed order, they want reassurance and a bit of empathy. A button-based menu just feels robotic and unhelpful, which can make a frustrated customer even angrier.

• It relies on a separate portal. The workflow kicks the customer out of the chat and into a different portal where they have to enter their information all over again. This adds friction and feels clunky, creating a disconnected experience right when a smooth one is needed most.

• The setup is labor-intensive. Every single Flow and Rule has to be manually built and maintained by your team. If your shipping policy changes or you want to add a new option, an admin has to go in and rework the logic. It's a constant, hands-on process that doesn't scale well.

A better way: Using a true AI agent

While Gorgias offers a decent first step with self-service menus, a true AI agent like eesel AI can handle these conversations with the intelligence and flexibility of a human. It's a totally different approach that moves from rigid, rule-based automation to genuinely helpful, conversational AI.

Go live in minutes by learning from your past tickets

Setting up Gorgias Flows means manually building out those decision trees. In contrast, eesel AI connects with your Gorgias helpdesk with a single click and immediately starts learning from your past tickets. It analyzes how your team has handled thousands of previous shipping questions and automatically picks up your brand's tone, empathy, and procedures.

You don't have to build any rigid, button-based flows. The AI learns from your best agents and is ready to handle real customer conversations from day one.

eesel AI learns from past tickets to understand brand voice, a better alternative to a Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

Handle complex delay threshold questions with custom actions

This is where a true AI agent really stands out. eesel AI can do much more than just send a tracking link. With custom actions, you can set it up to check internal systems or carrier APIs in real-time to get the full story.

For example, you can define a custom delay threshold. If an order is delayed by more than three days, you can program the eesel AI agent to:

1. Automatically check for known carrier outages in that region.

2. Proactively apologize to the customer for the delay.

3. Offer a small discount code for their trouble.

4. Update the ticket with a tag like "shipping_delay" for your team's records.

A conversation could look something like this:

• Customer: "My tracking says my package is stuck in Chicago, it's been 4 days. What's going on?"

• eesel AI: "I see that your order has been held up by 4 days, and I'm so sorry about that. It looks like there's a regional carrier delay in the Chicago area. To make up for the wait, I've added a 10% discount to your account for your next purchase. Your package should be moving again within 24 hours."

This is a level of proactive, empathetic problem-solving that a rule-based system just can't touch.

eesel AI’s custom actions allow for nuanced responses to shipping delays, a feature missing in a Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

Test with confidence using powerful simulations

With Gorgias Flows, you pretty much have to launch them and hope for the best. There's no way to know how they'll actually perform until they're live with real customers.

eesel AI takes that risk off the table. Before you activate anything, you can run simulations on thousands of your past tickets. You can see exactly how the AI would have responded to real customer questions about delivery status, get an accurate forecast of its resolution rate, and tweak its behavior in a safe, practice environment. This lets you roll out your AI with complete confidence that it's actually ready to help.

The simulation feature in eesel AI allows testing the AI's performance, a key advantage over a standard Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

Gorgias pricing

Gorgias's pricing is based on the number of "billable tickets" you handle each month. A billable ticket is any conversation that gets a response from an agent, a Rule, or an AI feature.

Plan	Price (Monthly)	Billable Tickets/mo
Starter	$10	50
Basic	$60	300
Pro	$360	2,000
Advanced	$900	5,000

This ticket-based model can get unpredictable, especially during busy seasons like Black Friday when WISMO inquiries can go through the roof. You might see your costs jump just because more customers are asking simple questions. This is different from eesel AI's pricing model, which is based on a predictable number of AI interactions with no per-resolution fees, so you don't get penalized for your own success.

A view of eesel AI’s transparent pricing model, an alternative to the billable ticket system for a Gorgias chatbot to check delivery status and delay thresholds.

Why upgrade from a Gorgias chatbot for delivery updates

Look, automating "where is my order" updates is no longer optional for a growing e-commerce brand. Gorgias provides a solid self-service solution with its rule-based Flows, but this system hits a wall when faced with the complexity, nuance, and emotion of real customer conversations, especially when shipping delays are involved.

For brands that want to provide truly great support, the next move is shifting from rigid menus to intelligent automation. A true AI agent like eesel AI offers a conversational, smart, and fully customizable solution that fits right into your existing helpdesk. It can handle the full range of shipping questions, from simple tracking to complex delays, with the empathy and efficiency of your best agent.

Ready to see what a true AI agent can do for your support team? Set up eesel AI in minutes and run a free simulation on your past tickets to see your potential automation rate.