Sector · e-commerce and retail
AI in e-commerce: more orders, same team
For online stores, retailers and brands that sell online. AI takes over the work that grows with every order: customer questions, returns, product copy in several languages, feeds and purchasing. Connected to Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, your ERP and the marketplaces, with a human who approves.
- EasyToys: 132 hours a month saved
- Connects to Shopify and your ERP
- A human approves
Customer service agent
livereads 64 new emails in the customer service inbox
looks up the orders in Shopify and the status with the carrier
prepares 9 return labels, sends only after approval
Worked with us
The market no longer grows by itself. The margin has to come from the work.
- euros spent online by Dutch consumers in 2025, 1% less than in 2024Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, Thuiswinkel.org (2026)
- 35.7 bn
- online purchases by Dutch consumers in 2025Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, Thuiswinkel.org (2026)
- 347 m
- of online spending went to foreign online storesThuiswinkel Markt Monitor, Thuiswinkel.org (2026)
- 13%
- a month saved on product copy at EasyToysNinA AI client case
- 132 h
01 / Why now
What does AI do in e-commerce and retail?
AI in e-commerce takes over the work that grows with every order: answering customer questions, handling returns, writing and translating product copy, keeping feeds in order and preparing purchasing. Your team keeps the customer, the brand and the decisions. The rest goes faster, and it no longer grows in step with your revenue.
That last sentence is the point. According to the Thuiswinkel Markt Monitor, Dutch consumers spent € 35.7 billion online in 2025, 1 percent less than the year before. So the market no longer grows by itself, and 13 percent of spending goes to foreign online stores. Whoever grows does so at someone else's expense, and on a thin margin.
Then every minute per order counts. Every 'where is my parcel', every return, every product page someone fills in by hand. At a hundred orders a day you don't notice. At a thousand you do, and in Black Friday week even more so.
01Customer questions
The reply is ready with the right order status. Your employee checks and sends.
02Product content
Copy in several languages from supplier information, straight into the ERP or the online store.
03Returns and feeds
Return period checked, label ready, feed errors fixed before the marketplace rejects them.
04Purchasing
Stock, sales and lead times side by side. A proposal for the buyer, no more Excel.
02 / Sound familiar?
The work that grows with every order.
Revenue grows, and the manual work grows with it. None of it is a big problem, but added up it costs a team days every week.
Where is my parcel?
“A third of the emails are the same question. We copy track-and-trace links all day.”
Returns
“We check every return by hand: return period, condition, refund. In January we drown.”
Five languages
“The new collection only goes online once the translations are back. That takes weeks.”
Feeds
“The marketplace has rejected forty products again. Nobody knows exactly why.”
Purchasing on gut feeling
“What do we need to reorder? Mark knows. Mark is on holiday.”
Reviews
“We want to respond to every review. In practice we only answer the angry ones.”
03 / What we automate
Which e-commerce processes does AI take over?
These are the processes where e-commerce and retail businesses can best start. In all of them the input is digital, the volume high and the outcome measurable. And in all of them a human stays in charge of what goes to the customer.
Customer service
Customer questions
Order status, delivery time, size and fit, payment. The draft is ready with the right data from your online store and the carrier.
Aftersales
Returns and complaints
Return period and order history checked, return label or credit note as a draft. Anything outside the policy goes to a human.
Order processing
Orders and exceptions
Failed payments, address changes, B2B orders by email or Excel: read and placed in the ERP as a draft.
Content
Product content in several languages
Titles, descriptions and attributes from supplier PDFs and emails, in your own tone and in every language you sell in.
Channels
Feeds and marketplaces
Product data in order for bol, Amazon and Google Shopping. Missing fields filled in, rejections investigated.
Purchasing
Purchasing and stock
Sales, stock and lead times side by side, with an order proposal for the buyer. Order confirmations checked.
Reputation
Reviews
Every review read and categorized, a reply as a draft, and recurring complaints flagged to purchasing or product.
Management
Reports
Revenue, margin, return reasons and stock in one weekly overview, with an explanation of what stands out.
04 / Case
EasyToys: product copy in six languages, 132 hours a month back.
EasyToys sells online, in six languages. Every new product starts with information from the supplier: a PDF, an email, sometimes a spreadsheet. That had to become product copy, in six languages, in the brand's tone, and then go into the ERP. By hand, per product, per language.
Now AI reads the supplier PDFs and emails, writes the product copy in six languages and puts it straight into the ERP. What's left for the team is checking instead of retyping.
The result: 132 hours and € 6,600 a month saved. Hours that now go to the range and the customer, instead of copying and pasting.
01Source
Supplier PDFs and emails, in any format.
02What AI does
Reading, writing in the brand's own tone, translating into six languages.
03Where it lands
Straight into the ERP, ready for the online store.
04Where the human is
The team checks, as with every workflow we build.
05 / Before and after
A day in the online store, before and after.
Five examples of how it works in e-commerce, plus the EasyToys case. The time savings in the examples are an indication; what it delivers for you, we calculate with your own numbers.
- Indication: 3 to 4 min per question
Where is my parcel?
Before
Look up the order, open the track-and-trace, type a reply. Two hundred times a day.
With AI
The reply is ready with the current status. If it's right, the employee sends it with one click.
- Indication: 5 to 10 min per return
Return registered
Before
Check the return period, find the order, create a label, prepare the refund.
With AI
Return period and history checked, label and credit note as drafts. Exceptions go to a human.
- EasyToys: 132 hours a month
New collection online
Before
Pulling supplier info out of PDFs and retyping it per language. Weeks of waiting for translations.
With AI
Copy drafted in six languages and straight into the ERP. The team checks instead of types.
Rejected by the marketplace
Before
Read the error message, find the product, fill in the field, resubmit.
With AI
Rejections investigated and the missing fields suggested. The content manager approves and publishes.
What should we reorder?
Before
An Excel file of Mark's, fed with exports from three systems.
With AI
An order proposal based on sales, stock and lead times. The buyer decides.
Responding to reviews
Before
Only the angry reviews get a response, if there's time.
With AI
A draft reply for every review, and recurring complaints flagged to purchasing.
06 / Integrations
Which e-commerce systems do we connect to?
We build on the systems you already have, usually with n8n in between and custom work where needed. No new platform, no migration. The condition is API access with the right permissions.
| What AI reads and prepares | Typical automation | |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Orders, customers, products, stock | Customer questions with order status, product copy, returns |
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | Orders, catalogue, attributes | Multilingual product content, order exceptions |
| WooCommerce | Orders, products, customers | Customer questions, completing product data, reports |
| Exact and other ERPs | Items, purchase orders, stock, invoices | Purchase proposals, order confirmations, invoice processing |
| bol and Amazon | Product data, orders, customer messages | Feeds in order, investigating rejections, answering messages |
| Helpdesk and email | Tickets, emails, chat messages | Draft replies, sorting and routing |
| Carriers and WMS | Track-and-trace, shipping status, stock location | Status queries, return labels, flagging exceptions |
Your system isn't listed? We can connect to almost anything with an API or an export.
07 / Do the maths yourself
What would AI deliver for your online store?
Three numbers: how many people work on customer service, content, orders and purchasing, how many hours of repetitive work per week, and what an hour costs. Then you see the value per year and the capacity freed up.
Calculator
Retyping, searching, answering emails, reporting
Share AI takes over
We always advise on the expected scenario, never on the best case.
Value per year
€ 264,960
Hours back per year
5,888
3.5FTE of extra capacity, without hiring anyone.
This fits package M.
The savings clear the 2x threshold of € 192,000. In the Quick Scan we check it against your own processes.
An estimate based on your input and the assumptions above. Not a quote and not a promise: the real numbers come out of the Quick Scan.
08 / Peak season
Black Friday without six temps.
E-commerce has peaks. Black Friday, Sinterklaas, Christmas, and then the wave of returns in January. The classic answer is extra temporary staff, who need to learn your products, your returns policy and your tone in a week. By the time they've got the hang of it, the peak is over.
AI scales with you without onboarding time. Whether a hundred or a thousand questions come in, the drafts are ready. During the peak your permanent team does what it does best: the tricky cases, the angry customers and the decisions. The rest runs.
That only works if it's running before the peak. A customer service agent that goes live in November has no time to prove itself. So start in spring, let it run alongside a human who approves everything for a few months, and go into the peak with confidence.
01Spring: go live
The agent runs alongside, a human approves everything.
02Summer: build trust
What goes without errors moves to spot checks.
03Autumn: the peak
Drafts for everything, your team on the tricky cases.
04January: the returns wave
Returns checked and prepared, exceptions set aside.
09 / What to watch for
Six pitfalls in e-commerce, and how we avoid them.
Promises that aren't true
An agent that promises 'free returns' when that isn't the case costs you money. That's why a human approves until it has proven itself.
Your brand loses its voice
The AI gets your best copy and writing rules to work from. A human always reviews bestsellers and new categories.
Product claims
What the supplier claims, you can't always say. Sensitive categories get a fixed check.
Customer data
Data stays in the EU, the agent only sees what it needs and everything is logged. In line with the GDPR.
Messy product data
AI doesn't fix bad data. If the foundation is messy, that's step one, and we'll tell you upfront.
Building what you can buy
Does a standard app in your online store solve it? Buy that. We build where standard stops.
10 / How to approach it
From first conversation to an agent in customer service.
We build within the AI Partnership. You start with the € 6,000 AI Quick Scan: one day observing customer service, content and purchasing, and within a week you know what it delivers.
- 01
Intro call
Fifteen minutes
Where is most of your manual work: customer questions, content, returns or purchasing?
- 02
AI Quick Scan
One day plus a week
Processes mapped with three numbers per step, a business case per opportunity, a twelve-month roadmap.
- 03
First process live
Quarter 1
Usually customer questions or product content. Connected to your online store and ERP, with a human who approves everything.
- 04
Expand before the peak
After that
Returns, feeds, purchasing. Every month you see what it delivers, in hours and euros.
You could feel the energy. Our whole team walked out with concrete ideas that we started using that same week.
11 / Cases
What it delivers, in e-commerce and beyond.
12 / Questions
Frequently asked questions about AI in e-commerce.
What can AI do for an online store?
In an online store, AI can prepare customer replies with the right order status, handle returns, write product copy in several languages, keep marketplace feeds in order, respond to reviews and draw up a purchasing proposal. At NinA AI, an employee approves whatever goes to the customer.
Can AI answer my online store's customer questions by itself?
Technically yes, but we always start with a draft reply that an employee checks and sends. That way, at one of our enterprise clients, 80 percent of the 6,000 questions a month have a prepared answer before the ticket opens, up from 30 percent. Only when a type of question has gone without errors for a long time can it move to spot checks.
Which e-commerce platforms do you connect to?
Shopify, Magento and Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, ERPs such as Exact, marketplaces such as bol and Amazon, helpdesk software and carrier systems. We usually build in n8n, with custom work where needed. The condition is API access with the right permissions.
Can AI write product copy in several languages?
Yes. At EasyToys, AI reads the supplier PDFs and emails, writes product copy in six languages and puts it straight into the ERP. That saves 132 hours and € 6,600 a month. As with every NinA AI workflow, there's a human in the loop who checks.
How does AI help with returns?
AI reads the return request, checks the return period and order history, creates a return label or draft credit note and drafts the reply to the customer. Returns outside the policy or with a complaint go to an employee. AI also shows which return reasons keep coming up, so purchasing and product can act on them.
Is AI worth it for a small online store?
That depends on volume. A partnership with NinA AI starts at € 4,500 per month, and the partnership as a whole has to earn back at least twice the investment. At a few orders a day, that doesn't pay off. Then start with a workshop for your team, so you work smarter with AI yourselves, or with the standard AI features in your e-commerce platform.
What does AI for an online store cost at NinA AI?
You start with the € 6,000 AI Quick Scan. After that, the AI Partnership runs as package S (€ 4,500 per month, 30 hours), M (€ 7,500 per month, 50 hours) or L (€ 12,000 per month, 80 hours), for a minimum of twelve months, then two months' notice. What goes live is covered by a maintenance contract from € 245 per month, including AI usage. All amounts excluding VAT.
What about customer data and the GDPR?
Customer data stays in the EU, on your own infrastructure or on our servers with a European provider. The agent only sees the data it needs for its task, everything is logged and data agreements are settled before we build. We work to ISO 27001 and NEN 7510 (certification in preparation).
Ready for more orders with the same team?
Book an intro call. Together we'll look at where most of the manual work in your online store sits, and what it delivers to hand that over to AI.
01
Intro call
Fifteen minutes, no strings. Where does work get stuck and what do you want to achieve?
02
AI Quick Scan
One day on site. Within a week, a business case and a roadmap.
03
AI Partnership
A dedicated team that builds, trains and shows what it delivers every month.
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