Chat, smartphones and mobile money are already the channel. Retail hasn’t wired them together.
01 No chat commerce
A website with a cart, an app few download, a call centre. Shoppers with 'do you have this?' have nowhere to ask.
02 Human-centric chat
A WhatsApp number answered by a staff member from a handset — works for fifty conversations a day, collapses at five hundred, no record of orders or payments.
03 Support-only chat
A bot that answers opening hours and hands everything else to an agent — the channel shoppers open most is used for the least valuable task.
Animated demo. A shopper orders groceries from Mlima Supermarkets via WhatsApp. The conversation shows browsing products, adding items to cart, checking out, paying with M-Pesa, and receiving delivery updates. All buttons are interactive.
15:365G ▮▮▮
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Mlima Supermarkets ✓Business account
Cart 0
Karibu Mlima Supermarkets 👋
You’re shopping at Kilimani, delivering to Karen.
What would you like to do?
+Message🎤
Back officeEnquiry
Illustrative demo. Mlima Supermarkets is a composite, not a customer.
How it works
Shoppers talk to the retailer's own branded number and bot. ChatWorks handles the many-to-one dynamic: thousands of simultaneous inbound conversations, each carried through a defined stage machine. Operators see an inbox sorted by urgency, with a deal pane, timeline and internal notes per conversation, and step in only where a human adds value.
A chat commerce desk of six to twelve people running a significant revenue generating channel that a call centre of a hundred could not.
One channel, every step, from 'do you have it?' to 'did you like it?'
Shopper-facing, automated
Product search and stock availability per branch
Pricing, promotions and loyalty balance
Cart management across sessions and channels
Saved payment and delivery preferences
Delivery tracking and delivery confirmation
Returns, refunds and after-sales satisfaction
Back office, digitised
Orders into a single queue tagged by channel and stage
Payment processing (M-Pesa STK push, card, MoMo) with reconciliation
Order-flow messaging at every stage change
Dispatch handover (pick lists, rider assignment, proof of delivery)
Stock signals back to branch and buying teams
Disputes, refunds and loyalty adjustments in the same case
A channel that measures itself.
Illustrative dashboard for a supermarket chain · not measured results
Conversations opened→Searched / browsed→Added to cart→Checkout started→Payment received→Delivered→Confirmed
Abandoned carts by stage and reason, recoverable carts
How fast the back office moves
Medians and 90th percentiles by branch, shift, picker, rider
Service and returns
Complaints by type, refund rates, satisfaction per branch and zone
Channel and staff performance
Conversion by channel and campaign, share of orders with no human message, operator response/resolution
The retailers, people, conversations and figures in these case studies are illustrative composites created to show how a ChatWorks deployment would operate for each retail vertical.
They do not describe any named company and are not measured results.
Grocery & general merchandiseMlima Supermarkets:The weekly shop, on WhatsApp.
• 12 branches across Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu
• 8,000+ SKUs: fresh, FMCG, household
• Existing: website with cart, M-Pesa till, in-store POS
• Peak: month-end payroll week
Before ChatWorks: Staff WhatsApp answered from a personal phone. Fifty conversations manageable, five hundred impossible. No order trail, no payment reconciliation.
‹Mlima Supermarkets ✓WhatsApp
Welcome to Mlima Supermarkets! How can I help you today?
Browse productsReorder last basketTrack my orderTalk to an agent
Auto parts, tyres & serviceKifaru Auto:The number plate is the search box.
• 3 locations: parts counter + service bays
• 120,000 part numbers, 4 aftermarket brands
• Existing: counter enquiries, phone quotes
• Peak: Monday mornings, pre-long-weekend
Before ChatWorks: Counter staff look up parts manually. Phone quotes lost. No link between quote, payment, and fitting appointment. Returns disputed without paper trail.
‹Kifaru Auto ✓WhatsApp
Welcome to Kifaru Auto! How can I help?
Quote by plate numberSearch by part nameCheck job statusTalk to an agent
Quote by plate number
Enter your plate number (e.g. KCG 421Y):
KCG 421Y
KCG 421Y → 2019 Toyota Hilux 2.4D. What do you need?
Front brake pads + rotorsService kitTyresOther parts
Front brake pads + rotors
Front brake pads + rotors: OEM KES 14,200 or Brembo KES 9,800. Fitting included at Industrial Area.
OEM — KES 14,200Brembo — KES 9,800Compare brands
Brembo — KES 9,800
Tomorrow 10 AM slot available. Book + pay KES 9,800 by M-Pesa now?
Book & payChoose another slotJust buy parts
Book & pay
Booked! Job #K-2291, tomorrow 10 AM, Industrial Area. M-Pesa prompt sent. We’ll send a reminder in the morning.
One AWS-native stack, white-labelled per retailer.
Channels
WhatsApp Business (Twilio messaging, template & session-window handling); Telegram Bot API webhook; embeddable web chat widget; one conversation record across all three.
Application & data
Next.js on AWS Amplify Hosting (SSR); DynamoDB for conversations, carts, orders, payments, catalogues, profiles; Cognito sign-in with MFA; S3 for images, receipts, booklist photos, proof of delivery; SQS/EventBridge for order events to dispatch, POS and ERP; SES for email.
Payments & integration
M-Pesa Daraja STK push with callback reconciliation; pawaPay for MoMo/Airtel Money; cards via Stripe; catalogue and stock via CSV upload or API sync from POS/ERP; optional escrow; CloudWatch monitoring, message error-rate alerts and a public status page.
Analytics
DynamoDB Streams → S3 data lake in the retailer's AWS account → Athena → QuickSight dashboards (funnel, demand, margin, operations timing, service and returns), tables shared with the retailer's BI team.
The operator console
Inbox sorted by urgency, filtered by channel and stage, with derived tags ('your turn', 'high value', 'repeat buyer', 'going cold'); deal pane with cart/job, timeline of every stage change and payment event, internal notes, quick-reply templates, WhatsApp session-window timer; stage transitions enforced by the platform (an order cannot be marked dispatched before it is paid).
If your retail business uses chat today with a person on the other end, or not at all, we can show a working demo of your catalogue on WhatsApp, Telegram and web chat within a week.
