An Instagram chatbot that handles the order, not just the DM
Instagram chatbots that only answer FAQs leave the hard DMs for you. Hay.chat looks the order up in Shopify and replies in the customer's own Instagram thread with the actual answer, not a link to your help centre.
Most Instagram DMs to a store are support tickets in disguise.
Somebody saw your post, bought the thing, and now they want to know where it is. Or it doesn't fit. Or they were charged twice. They message you on Instagram because that's where they already are, and they expect a reply that sounds like a person typed it.
A lot of Instagram automation is built for the other kind of DM. Comment a keyword, get a discount code, join the list. That's marketing, and tools like Manychat do it well. It falls apart the moment the DM says my parcel never arrived.
Hay.chat is for the DMs that need something done. It answers from your policies and then acts where the answer lives, which for most stores means Shopify for the order and Stripe when money has to go back.
What it doesn't do
Three limits worth knowing before you connect your account. Better you hear them from us than find them in week one.
DMs only, not comments
Hay.chat reads and answers direct messages. It doesn't read or reply to comments on your posts, and it doesn't do comment-to-DM automation or broadcasts.
Text only
It handles text in both directions. Images, stories, reactions and other attachments a customer sends are ignored, and replies go out as plain text. Rich content support is planned.
The 24-hour window
Instagram only lets a business send a free-form reply within 24 hours of the customer's last message. After that, Hay.chat waits until they write again. That's Instagram's rule, not a setting of ours.
How Hay.chat handles an Instagram DM, step by step
Step 1: Understand
Instagram DMs are short and mostly lowercase, and the order number tends to get tacked onto the end of a sentence. Hay.chat reads the whole thread and works out what the customer actually wants.
Integration Hay.chat NLU
Your customers already DM you. Give them an answer that finishes the job.
Start Your Free TrialInstagram is where they message. Hay.chat acts in the systems behind it.
Your integrations don't care which channel the question came in on. If Hay.chat can open a return from your web chat, it can open one from an Instagram DM.
Teach Hay.chat what to say in your DMs
Upload your docs
Drop in your returns policy and your size guide. Hay.chat takes PDF, Word, HTML and Markdown, or crawls your help centre from a URL.
Control what Hay.chat knows
Categorise documents and keep drafts out of the agent's hands until you publish them. Internal notes stay internal.
Keep it current
Change a policy and save it. The next DM gets the new answer, so a holiday returns extension doesn't need a separate Instagram update.
See what Hay.chat learns from every Instagram DM
The dashboard below is filled with sample data so you can see the shape of the reporting. These are not customer results.
Escalation reasons
Above 0.8 confidence Hay.chat replies or acts, between 0.5 and 0.8 it checks again, and below 0.5 it hands the conversation to a person. Both thresholds are yours to move. Every decision it made on the way is in the log.
See how the Instagram playbook works
One playbook, written in plain language, deciding what Hay.chat does with an Instagram DM from the first message to the handoff.
Instagram · orders & swaps
1 This is an Instagram DM. Keep it to a line or two, match their tone, and ask one question at a time.
2
If they're asking about an order, get the order number, then check it with 
Tracking status and reply with the carrier and where the parcel is.
3
For a size swap, check it against Returns policy then use Open return and tell them whether the new size is in stock.
If they say they sent a photo, tell them plainly you can only read text here and ask them to describe it. Don't pretend you saw it.
4 Refunds over £100, or anyone who asks for a person: say someone from the team is taking over, and hand the conversation to a human.
-
Agent
Instagram gets its own agent. Channels are assigned per agent. Give Instagram its own one and it can run shorter replies and a looser tone than your email agent.
-
1
Written for the medium. It's a DM on a phone. The playbook says so, and Hay.chat keeps replies to a line or two instead of pasting a policy.
-
2
Type @ to reach your stack. The body is a document, not a flowchart. Type @, pick the Shopify action, and Hay.chat checks the order itself.
-
3
Honest about what it can't see. Attachments are ignored on Instagram. The playbook tells the agent to say so and ask for words, rather than pretend it looked.
-
4
Handoff, not a dead end. Escalation is a line you write. Your team takes over in Hay.chat's Conversations view with the thread already there.
“But what if the AI says the wrong thing in a DM?”
Instagram DMs feel personal, so a bad reply stings more than it would in an email. Hay.chat doesn't have to answer every one. You decide where the line sits, and the DMs past it go to a person.
-
Confidence tiers. Every reply is scored. Above 0.8 it goes out. Between 0.5 and 0.8 Hay.chat rechecks before answering. Below 0.5 it hands the DM to your team.
-
Escalation rules you control. A refund above your cap, say, or a customer asking for a human. The rules live in your playbooks, in plain language you can read and edit.
-
Approve replies first, if you want. Turn on message approval and AI replies wait for a person to approve, edit or block them before they're sent. It holds replies, not actions, so keep refund caps in the playbook too.
-
Action guardrails. Refund caps and return-window checks run before anything changes in Shopify or Stripe. Hay.chat takes the actions you've authorised and nothing else.
-
EU data storage. Conversation data is stored in the EU on DigitalOcean. AI replies are generated by OpenAI in the US under EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
The point is to clear the repetitive DMs off your plate. The ones that need you still reach you, with the lookups already done.
Let Hay.chat take tonight's Instagram DMs
Sign in with your Instagram Professional account and connect your store. The next order question gets answered right there in the thread.
- 30-day free trial
- No credit card required
- Set up in under 10 minutes
- Hosted in Europe