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Let a website chatbot answer simple stock, pot-size and planting-time questions when the garden center team can't get to them

who McKenzie Lain, general manager and third-generation owner of Watters Garden Center in Prescott, Arizona, in an essay for Green Profit's Young Retailer Award

The problem

When the team can't reach the phone or answer website questions in time, simple everyday questions pile up and pull staff away from customers in the store.

What happened

She writes that AI Ken takes the pressure off her time and frees up the team for more face-to-face customer interactions, "allowing them to increase sales while scaling customer service." No figures are given. Owner-told.

Quoted in the source: McKenzie Lain, general manager, Watters Garden Center. Source: Green Profit: Learning From Each Other, essays by the 2024 Young Retailer Award finalists (Jennifer Polanz) (2024-06-01) · Added 2026-10-19.

How to set it up yourself

1. What Watters Garden Center does: a website chatbot called AI Ken answers simple daily questions (what's in stock, gallon sizes, the best time to plant) when the team can't get to the phone or website questions in time. The essay doesn't name the software, so the steps below are our DIY build in Tidio.
2. Write your answers first: your 20 most common questions with your own answers, the pot sizes you carry, planting windows for your area and how customers can confirm stock. Paste your notes into ChatGPT or Claude with the prompt below to turn them into short Q&A pairs, then fix anything that's wrong.
3. In Tidio, open Lyro AI Agent > Knowledge > Data sources, select Add knowledge, choose Website URL to scan your plant-care and FAQ pages, then add your Q&A pairs with Add manually (see Tidio's help article 'Data sources - Lyro's knowledge base').
4. Before you switch it on for customers, ask it 20 real customer questions, including a plant you don't carry and a sick-plant question, and make sure it points people to a person instead of guessing about stock or plant problems.

Copy-paste prompt

Turn my notes into short chatbot answers for {GARDEN CENTER NAME} in {TOWN AND GROWING ZONE}. Notes: {QUESTIONS AND MY ANSWERS, POT SIZES WE CARRY, PLANTING CALENDAR, HOURS, PHONE}. Write each as a Q&A pair with an answer under 50 words, friendly and local. For stock questions, never promise an item is in stock; say what we usually carry and to call {PHONE} or visit to confirm. For pests, sick plants or plants that may be toxic to pets, ask them to bring a photo or sample to the store. Don't add plants, sizes, dates or prices that aren't in my notes.

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