I taught an AI agent to answer my own customers. Here is what it took.

I own a small kids' furniture company. We sell an 11-piece foam play couch across Canada and the US, and the inbox never empties. Where is my order. Can I return this. The box arrived damaged. What is the foam made of. Every answer existed somewhere: the Shopify store, a product knowledge doc, my head. None of them were in a place an AI could read.

So before any agent, the knowledge. Shipping and delivery. Returns and refunds. Damaged, wrong and lost items. Materials and certifications. Care and cleaning. Each one written as a standalone article from the published policies and the product documentation, with nothing invented and nothing left to interpretation. This was the slow part and it is the part most people skip. An agent reading a vague policy gives vague answers, and a vague answer about a refund is worse than no answer.