Merchant guide · Customer service

How to choose a customer service app for your Salla store

Your store is selling, the messages keep growing, and you can't reply to every customer yourself. That's when you start thinking about a customer service app. The problem is that the Salla App Store has dozens of options, and they all say almost the same thing: auto-replies, WhatsApp, AI.

This guide gives you the criteria that really make a difference, so you can choose for yourself, even if you don't choose Karam.

1. Does it reply from your store data or with generic text?

The most important question. Some apps send canned replies you wrote yourself, and some apps are connected to your store's catalog and orders.

The difference shows in questions like:

• Is the black dress available in size M?
• Where is my order number 1042?
• How many days does shipping to Dammam take?

A canned reply doesn't know the answer. An app connected to the store does, because it reads the product, the stock and the order status.

2. Does it understand your customer's dialect?

Your customer doesn't write to you in formal Arabic. They write things like: "I wanna know if the order arrived or not", or: "you deliver to Jeddah?"

Try writing to the app the way your customers actually write, not the way you write. And see whether it understands, and whether it replies in a style that matches your store.

3. What happens when the app can't handle it?

Every app will reach a question it can't handle: a complaint, a request for an exception, an upset customer. What matters is what it does then.

A good app hands the conversation over to you or your staff, alerts you, and pauses the automated replies so it doesn't interrupt the staff member while they reply. A weak app keeps sending generic replies, and makes the customer even more frustrated.

4. An official WhatsApp number or a regular number?

Some apps work on regular WhatsApp through unofficial methods. These are convenient at first, and risky in the long run: the number can get banned, and you lose your customers' conversations.

The official route is WhatsApp for business from Meta (WhatsApp Business Platform). It has approved templates, bulk sending, official support, and your number is safer as long as you follow Meta's policies.

Ask: is the connection official through Meta? The answer must be clear.

5. Does it work while you sleep?

Customer service isn't just replies. Most lost sales happen in things that occur without you noticing:

• Abandoned carts: the customer added the product and left. One message after an hour brings some of them back.
• Order confirmation and shipping updates: fewer "where is my order" messages, and fewer returned orders.
• The customer who disappeared: hasn't bought in two months, and the right message brings them back.

Check whether the app does these automatically from your store's events on Salla, or whether you have to send them yourself.

6. The math: what does a staff member cost you compared with the app?

Compare against reality. One customer service employee costs you thousands of riyals a month, works 8 hours, and needs time off.

The app doesn't replace the employee, but it frees them up for the cases that need a person. Calculate: how many messages do you get a day? How many of them are repeated questions? If 70% are repeated, that's 70% of your employee's time back with you.

7. Try before you pay

Any serious app gives you a trial period. During the trial, do these three things:

1. Actually connect it to your store, don't test it on an empty store
2. Ask it your customers' real questions, taken from your past conversations
3. Try a hard case: a complaint or a return request, and see how it handles it