Your shop closes at 6. Customers still message at 9, on WhatsApp, and the ones you miss buy somewhere else tomorrow. Reggie, the AI store manager from Idle Work, reads the messages your customers send, replies to the routine ones from what it already knows about your stock, and holds anything it is not sure about for you. You stay in control: Reggie starts by watching, acts only within limits you set, and always asks before anything goes to a customer.
What you actually get
Reggie is an AI store manager from Idle Work for $50 a month. Its core job is the morning brief: every day it reads your register and sends you a plain summary of yesterday, what needs pulling or ordering, and what it has staged for your OK. Here is a sample brief from a store we made up, not a real customer:
Good morning. Yesterday: $4,210 net on 612 sales. Register 2 ran 14 voids on the evening shift, over your line of 6. Pull today: 7 items expired overnight. Order before Thursday's delivery: 18 items will run out. Dead stock: $2,340 in 41 items that have not sold in 60 days. Want me to draft a markdown?
The same thread is where customers ask about stock and orders. Reggie answers from what it already knows, replies in the chat apps you already use, and if it hits something it cannot answer, it says so instead of guessing. Nothing is connected until you connect it.
The cost of waiting
A customer who messages at 9pm does not wait until morning. They message the next shop, or order from the big online store, and the sale is lost before you open. Answering hours later costs you the sale; answering never costs you the customer. Miss enough of them and the loss grows quietly, week after week, because you cannot see which regulars stopped coming. Handing this to a machine is the only way to cover the hours when you are closed without giving someone keys.
How you stay in control
Reggie climbs up through four levels, and you decide each one yourself:
- Watch. It reads the register and tells you what it sees. It changes nothing.
- Suggest. It tells you what it would do, with the numbers, and leaves the call to you.
- Act with your OK. It gets the change ready and waits. Nothing happens until you say yes.
- Act within your limits. Inside the limits you set, it gets on with the job and tells you what it did.
Even at the top level, Reggie will never ring a sale, void or refund a sale, open the cash drawer, move money, or change a price without your OK. It never texts a customer who did not opt in. If you leave it at "suggest", you get everything read and flagged, nothing answered on your behalf, until you are ready to raise the bar.
Do it by hand in the meantime
If you are not ready for an agent, here is the routine it replaces. Do this once a day and you will already be ahead of most shops your size.
- Write down every question you answered more than once this week. Those are the ones a machine should handle; turn each into a saved reply.
- Post your hours where people look. Most after hours messages are simple: are you open, do you have X, can I order for tomorrow. An auto reply with your hours and order link stops the worst of it.
- Check unread messages the moment you open. Whoever replies first usually wins the sale; do not open the register before you answer.
- Keep a stock list where you can find it. You cannot answer "do you have this in size medium" from memory if 200 items are on the shelf.
- Say when you will follow up, then do it. A customer told "I will check and text you at 9am" is easier to keep than one you left hanging.
An agent does all of this from what it already reads every morning, and does it at 9pm when you cannot.
Getting started
Reggie reads your register, your books and your bank, keeps the details your register does not, and answers customers in the chats they already use, within the limits you set. Book an assessment and Idle Work comes back with what they would automate first, and what they would leave alone. Or try it live on the site first: no signup, ask it what you would really ask.