Use case
AI customer service for small business
You are running a business. You are also answering email. The two things compete for the same hour. Trigli reads your policies and drafts the easy replies so you can do the rest of your job.
The pain
- You are answering the same questions every week and you know it.
- Hiring help is a big step. Most days you do not need full-time support coverage.
- You tried a chatbot once. It was bad. You are not doing that again.
- You want AI to help, but you do not want to lose control of what goes out under your name.
I am going to be direct: most small businesses do not need a helpdesk. They need a way to stop personally answering "do you ship internationally" 30 times a month. That is what Trigli is built for.
What Trigli does for a small business
You connect your Gmail (just regular Gmail or Google Workspace, both work). You upload your business policies, your FAQ, anything you have written that explains how you do things. The AI uses those documents to draft replies to incoming customer emails. You approve before anything goes out, or you let the easy categories auto-send.
It is not a chatbot. It does not pretend to be a person. It reads what you wrote, drafts a reply in your voice, and either lands it as a Gmail draft for you or sends it automatically if you have told it to.
The realistic time savings
I will not give you a fake number. Time savings depend on how much of your inbox is repetitive and how good your documentation is. Honest ranges I have seen:
- A solo operator with decent docs: 3-5 hours a week back. Most of the inbox is the same five questions.
- A 3-5 person service business: 5-10 hours a week across the team. Mostly drops on the person who used to triage everything.
- A team that does not have docs yet: limited savings until you write a few. The system tells you exactly what to write next, but you do still have to write it.
What kinds of small business this works well for
- Service businesses (cleaners, contractors, instructors, consultants) where customers ask about pricing, scheduling, service area, what is included.
- Online retailers and DTC brands. Sizing, shipping, returns, restocks.
- Course creators and digital products. Access issues, refunds, "how do I download my files".
- Subscription boxes. Pause, skip, swap, change frequency, address change.
- Local food, drink, or hospitality businesses with a website that takes orders or reservations.
- Nonprofits taking donor questions or volunteer signups.
"What if the AI says something wrong?"
This is the right question to ask. Two answers:
First, Trigli only answers from documents you uploaded and emails your team has sent. If the answer is not in those, it does not guess. It flags low confidence and lands the reply as a draft for you to handle, or escalates as a ticket.
Second, you control auto-send. By default, nothing auto-sends. You decide which categories you trust to go out without review. Most people start with auto-send off for the first week, watch what the model does, then enable it for the obvious stuff (shipping confirmations, FAQ answers) and keep it off for billing or refund questions.
Pricing for small business
Free tier: 50 emails, 25 chats, 10 tickets per month. No credit card required. Plenty to test with for a week or two.
Starter: $49/month for 500 emails, 200 chats, 100 tickets. About right for a solo operator or small two-person team.
Growth: $149/month for 2,500 emails, 1,000 chats, 500 tickets. About right for most 3-10 person small businesses.
Pro: ~$349/month for 8,000 emails and unlimited team members. For when you have grown into something bigger.
All paid plans have a 14-day free trial. Cancel anytime in the first 14 days and you pay nothing.
How to set it up (be honest about the time cost)
The connect-Gmail step takes about a minute. Where it actually takes time is uploading the right documents. You want to upload:
- Your shipping/returns/cancellation policy.
- Your FAQ. If you do not have a written FAQ, this is the moment to write one.
- Any pricing or tier explanations.
- A few "best examples" of past customer replies you would be happy for the AI to mimic.
Total time investment: usually 30-60 minutes the first day. After that you tweak as you spot gaps. The system tells you what is missing.
Live chat (if you want it)
Bundled in your plan: a chat widget for your website. One line of code. The AI answers visitor questions from the same docs. If no one is online and a visitor needs a real human, the widget captures their email and creates a ticket for your team.
You can run just the email side and never enable chat. That is fine.
When Trigli is not the right call for a small business
- You actually love doing customer service and it is part of how you build your brand. Do not automate something that is working.
- Your business is so personal that every reply needs your judgment. Some businesses really are like this and that is legitimate.
- You do not have any documentation and you do not want to write any. The system needs something to work from.
- Most of your support is on phone or in person. We do not do those.
When it is the right call
- You catch yourself typing "as mentioned in our shipping policy..." for the tenth time in a week.
- You have customers waiting hours or days for replies because you cannot keep up.
- You are losing sales because pre-purchase questions sit in your inbox while you are running the business.
- You are about to hire help but the math is shaky and you would rather buy time first.
Free tier handles 50 emails a month. Plenty to see if this is the right fit before you decide.
Other use cases: Shopify stores, SaaS companies.