The AI Chat Bot handles most shopper questions on its own, but you still want to know when it’s getting things wrong and you want a clean handoff to a human when it can’t help. This guide walks through enabling thumbs-up/down feedback inside the chat widget, asking for context when shoppers rate a reply negatively, and routing them to your support channel when the AI can’t resolve their question.
Step 1: Open the feedback settings
- In your WordPress admin, go to StoreAgent → Settings.
- Click the AI Chat tab.
- Open the Customer Feedback sub-tab from the left-hand menu.
Step 2: Turn on customer feedback
- Toggle Enable Customer Feedback on. Thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons will appear next to each AI reply in the chat widget.
- Edit Feedback Prompt Text if you want a different question above the rating buttons (200-character limit). Default is “How would you rate this answer?”.
- Edit Skip Button Text if “Skip” doesn’t suit your tone — most stores leave it as “Skip” or change it to “Not now”.
- Click Save Feedback Settings.
Step 3: Ask for context on negative ratings (optional)
Toggle Request Reason on Negative Feedback on. When a shopper taps thumbs-down, the AI asks them what went wrong before moving on. The free-text reply is saved alongside the rating so you can see specific complaints, not just a thumbs-down count. This toggle is on by default.
Step 4: Set up support escalation
Support escalation gives shoppers a path off the chat bot when the AI can’t help. You configure it in the same Customer Feedback tab, in the Support Escalation section below the feedback toggles.
- Toggle Enable Support Escalation on.
- Enter your support page URL in the Support URL field (must start with
https://). This is what the chat widget links shoppers to when they accept the escalation offer. - Optionally enable Offer Escalation After Negative Feedback so the AI surfaces the support link automatically when a shopper rates a reply negatively.
- Click Save Feedback Settings.
Step 5: Send chat summaries to admin (optional)
When a shopper escalates, StoreAgent can email you an AI-generated summary of the conversation so you have full context before replying. The email is sent from your store address, but its Reply-To header is set to the customer’s name and email — so when you hit Reply in your inbox, your message goes straight to the customer, not back to the store address.
The email is triggered automatically by the escalation flow. Confirm a recipient email is configured on your StoreAgent settings, and that your WordPress site can send mail (test with a plugin like WP Mail Logging if you’re not sure).
Tracking chat-influenced orders
StoreAgent counts how many AI replies a shopper saw in their session and saves that number on their WooCommerce order. The count lives in the order’s metadata under _saai_response_count — order analytics tools, plugins, or custom reports can read it to attribute revenue to chat sessions.
If a shopper never opens the chat, the count stays at zero, so a non-zero value is a clear signal the order followed a chat interaction. The count resets each new session — it doesn’t accumulate across visits.
Troubleshooting
I get a 500 error when I save feedback settings, but the values do persist
This was a known bug in earlier plugin versions. The save endpoint returned a 500 status code even though the database write succeeded, so your settings were stored — the 500 was misleading. Update StoreAgent to the latest version, then re-save your feedback settings. The 500 should be gone; if not, file a support ticket with your StoreAgent and WordPress versions.
Thumbs-up/down icons don’t appear in the chat widget
Confirm Enable Customer Feedback is on and the change was saved (the page reload should show the toggle still active). Then clear your site cache — page caches often serve a stale copy of the chat widget for several minutes after a settings change. If the icons still don’t appear, open your browser’s DevTools console on a frontend page and look for JavaScript errors from storeagent-ai-for-woocommerce.
Shoppers can’t reach the support page from the chat widget
Check the Support URL field in the Support Escalation section. The URL must start with https:// and resolve to a real page — relative URLs and broken links don’t render the escalation prompt. Visit the URL in a private browser window to confirm it loads without requiring a login.
Escalation emails aren’t arriving
Confirm WordPress can send mail. Install WP Mail Logging or a similar plugin and trigger an escalation from the chat widget on the frontend. If the log shows the email was sent but it never reaches the inbox, the problem is your mail server (SPF/DKIM/blocklists) — use an SMTP plugin like WP Mail SMTP to route through a dedicated sender.
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