Customer assistant

The customer assistant is an AI chat that appears on your menu page for your customers. It answers their questions and helps them order, acting like a friendly staff member who knows your menu.

What customers can do with it

Customers can ask the assistant things like:

• "What are your hours?"
• "When is the breakfast menu available?"
• "Do you deliver to my area?"
• "What's good for vegetarians?"
• "Build me a meal for two under $40."
• "Swap the fries but keep everything else."
• "Add drinks if they still fit the budget."
• "What deals are available right now?"
• "Where is order #1042?"
• "I am missing an item from my order."

It answers from your live menu, hours, named menu timeslots, delivery settings, and currently public promotions. Budget meal requests use a deterministic planner for quantities and prices rather than asking the model to do arithmetic. Customers can swap an exact plan item or add drinks and dessert while preserving the rest of the signed plan.

Every plan is checked again against the live tenant, menu, price, stock, availability, and subtotal before it enters the cart. Checkout remains the authority for final promotion eligibility and totals.

Customer service and order help

The assistant is also the first stop for customer service. It can check one order after ownership is verified, using the signed-in account or the exact order number and checkout email. It can report the current order state, scheduled time, refund state, and an available courier tracking link.

If the assistant cannot solve the issue, it can create a durable support case after the customer asks for escalation:

• Orders, changes, refunds, missing items, food quality, allergens, pickup, and delivery route to the restaurant.
• Website or app defects, privacy, and security issues route to PayPerPlates.

Customers can follow replies under My Account → Help & Support. The assistant cannot cancel a placed order, issue a refund, or promise an outcome. Those decisions remain with the responsible team.

Turning it on or off

The customer assistant is controlled under Settings → AI Assistant. The Customer Chat Banner switch shows or hides the assistant on your menu page. Turn it on to offer customers help while they browse, or off if you would rather keep the menu page simple.

It shares your budget

The customer assistant draws on the same monthly AI budget as the merchant assistant. Both together count toward the limit you set under AI settings, and the usage view there breaks down how much each is using. If you enable the customer chat, keep an eye on the budget bar, especially on busy days.

Custom instructions

You can shape how the customer assistant talks — its tone, what it emphasizes — with your own instructions in the Customer Chat Prompt box under AI settings. Leave it blank to use the built-in defaults, which are tuned to be friendly and helpful and to never invent items or prices.

It cannot make business changes

The customer assistant can build the customer's cart and submit an explicitly requested support case. It cannot change your menu, prices, hours, settings, or a placed order, and it cannot issue refunds. Only you and your team can make business changes through the merchant assistant or the dashboard.