A shop with a Discord gets asked the same things every day. When will my order ship? Do you ship to Canada? Can I return something I've worn once? Which size should I get? The answers are already in your shipping policy, your returns policy and your size guide. Someone on your team copies them into chat anyway.
Ascend AI answers those questions in Discord from the policies you give it, so the answer in chat matches the answer on your site. Anything about one specific order goes to your team. This post walks through the setup with an invented shop, Tidewater Ceramics, as the example.
Which shop questions can a Discord bot answer?
The ones with a policy behind them. How long shipping takes, which countries you ship to, what shipping costs, how to return an item, how long refunds take, how sizing runs, how to care for a product, when a restock or a drop is planned. If it's the same answer for every customer, it belongs in the bot's knowledge base.
What it can't answer: where a particular parcel is right now, or whether one customer's refund went through. Ascend AI has no connection to your store or your orders. It can tell a member where tracking links are sent and how long a refund usually takes under your policy, and it can point them to a person for the rest.
What does an answer look like?
Every fact in that reply came from Tidewater's shipping document: the three working days, the tracking email, and the channel to ask in. The bot didn't look anything up; it read the policy.
What should a shop put in the knowledge base?
One document per policy, written the way you'd explain it to a customer. Paste Markdown, or Upload a Markdown, text or PDF file and it becomes a document. For Tidewater:
- Shipping: processing time, carriers, countries, costs, and where tracking is sent.
- Returns and refunds: the window, the condition items must be in, how to start a return, and how long a refund takes.
- Sizes and care: dimensions, dishwasher and microwave guidance.
- Drops and restocks: how drops are announced and whether you take pre-orders.
- Wholesale and collaborations: who to contact, so those requests leave #general.
How do you make sure it never contradicts your policy?
Set the knowledge base to Strict. On Strict, the bot answers only from your documents and the channels you mark as reference, and says it doesn't have anything else. It won't fill a gap in your returns policy with a general idea of how returns usually work.
When a policy changes, edit the document. The change is used from the next message. Every edit keeps the version before it, so if you need to know what the policy said last month, it's in the document's history.
For announcements that change often, like a drop date, add #announcements as a reference channel. The bot reads its topic, pins and recent messages, refreshed every few minutes.
How do order problems reach your team?
Two routes, depending on how private the question is.
- Support channel. When the bot can't answer, it says so and points the member to your support channel. It also posts a notice in your mod channel, including the questions it handed over.
- Support tickets. For anything with an order number or an address in it, switch on Support tickets in Modules. A member opens a private support thread from a panel, your staff claim and close it, and the transcript is kept. Categories like "Where's my order", "Return" and "Damaged item" sort them before anyone reads them.
When your team answers something the documents didn't cover, Learn from mod answers asks your admins whether to save that answer to the knowledge base. An admin decides; nothing is added on its own.
What else helps a shop's Discord?
A few modules shops tend to switch on, each off until you do:
- Sticky messages: keeps a note, such as "Order problems? Open a ticket in #order-help", at the bottom of a channel. It reposts itself as people chat.
- Welcome & goodbye: greets new members with a pointer to your shipping and returns channels.
- Self-serve roles: members opt into a role that gets pinged for drops.
- Giveaways: timed giveaways members enter with a click.
Admins can also set these up by chat: mention the bot and ask for a welcome message or a sticky note in plain words. Only the server owner and members with Administrator or Manage Server can.
What does it cost a shop?
One plan per server, not per seat. Community is $9 a month or $90 a year. Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year and adds higher limits. Each plan includes a monthly number of questions. A question pack is $5 for 1,000 more questions, and it lasts 90 days. That suits a launch week or a holiday rush, without changing plan. There is no free trial.
The Ascend AI docs cover every setting, and the setup guide goes step by step.
Questions
Can the bot tell a customer where their order is?
No. Ascend AI has no connection to your store or orders. It can explain your shipping times and where tracking links are sent, and point the member to your team or a private ticket for a specific order.
Will its answers match my published policies?
They come from the documents you give it. On the Strict setting it answers only from those documents and your reference channels, and says it doesn't have anything else.
Can customers open a private support thread?
Yes, with the Support tickets module. A member opens a private thread from a panel, your staff claim and close it, and the transcript is kept.
What if a holiday rush uses up our monthly questions?
The bot warns your mod channel as you get close and again at the limit. A question pack is $5 for 1,000 more questions, and it lasts 90 days. You can add one instead of changing plan.
Is there a free trial?
No. Community is $9 a month or $90 a year for one server, and cancelling ends it at the close of the period you paid for.
