Arbyn is a support assistant that lives inside your Shopify store. It reads incoming customer messages, looks up the real answer in your actual store data, and either replies on its own or hands the conversation to your team, depending on how confident it is and how much control you've given it. This article is the map: what it covers today, how a message actually gets answered, and where every safety net sits.
What it does
Right now, Arbyn answers customers in two places: your support inbox (email) and the chat widget on your storefront. Both go through the same assistant and the same store knowledge, so a shopper gets a consistent answer whether they emailed you or opened the chat bubble. Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger are on the roadmap. They aren't connected yet, so don't expect Arbyn to answer a DM today.
Arbyn never invents information. Every claim about an order, a product, stock, a price, or a policy is looked up in your real Shopify data at the moment it's needed. It doesn't guess, and it doesn't remember a stale answer from last week. If a lookup fails or comes back empty, Arbyn says so ("let me check on that") instead of filling the gap with something plausible-sounding.
Where to find it
Your Command Center (Arbyn's home screen) is where you see what Arbyn is doing right now: open conversations, what needs your attention, and your monthly numbers.
Every conversation lives in your Inbox, whether it came in by email or chat.
The chat widget itself lives on your storefront, wherever you've placed it in your theme.
How much Arbyn is allowed to do on its own is controlled from Settings → Guardrails.
How it works
When a customer writes in, by email or in the chat widget, Arbyn runs through the same basic shape every time, though the details differ slightly by channel:
1. It figures out what's being asked. Arbyn detects the language the customer is writing in and classifies what they want (a shipping question, a refund request, "where's my order," a product question, and so on). This happens before anything expensive runs, so simple questions get answered fast and cheaply.
2. It looks up the real answer. If the question touches an order, Arbyn looks up that order in your Shopify data (status, fulfillment, tracking, what was in it) instead of trusting whatever the customer claims. If it's a policy or product question, Arbyn searches what it actually knows about your store: your shipping and return policies, your product catalog, any documents you've uploaded, and facts it has learned from resolved conversations with your team's help. Nothing here is memorized once and reused forever. It's looked up fresh.
3. It writes a reply. Behind the scenes, Arbyn uses a tiered set of AI models: a fast, lightweight one for simple questions, stepping up to a more capable one for anything nuanced, with a safety-focused fallback if something goes wrong. You never see which tier answered. You just see a reply that reads like your brand, in the customer's own language.
4. It decides how confident it is. Every draft comes with a confidence score. A high-confidence, low-stakes reply (like a shipping-policy question) can go straight to the customer. Anything uncertain, sensitive, or outside what you've allowed Arbyn to do on its own gets escalated, and held for a real person on your team to review, answer, or approve, in your Inbox and Approvals queue.
5. It respects your guardrails. For anything that touches money or an order (refunds, cancellations, address changes, reships, discounts, returns), you choose per action whether Arbyn is off (never touches it), needs your approval (drafts it, waits for your sign-off), or autonomous (handles it within a cap you set, like "refunds up to $50"). Nothing above your cap ever goes through without a human. This is entirely your call, and you can change it any time from Settings → Guardrails.
6. It learns your voice before it acts alone. When you first install Arbyn, it starts in shadow mode: it drafts every reply but doesn't send anything, so you review and send. Every conversation you review moves Arbyn toward "ready." Once it reaches that point, your Command Center tells you, and you choose when to flip on auto-send. Nothing changes on its own.
Chat gets more than email
The chat widget can do things a plain email reply can't: show product cards, let a shopper add items to a cart right in the conversation (the "Chat Bag"), run a product quiz, or offer a bundle, all backed by your real, live catalog. Email and the future Instagram and Messenger channels stay in plain text with links, since that's what those surfaces actually support.
Good to know
A conversation is a whole thread, not a message. One customer emailing back and forth five times, or one chat session, counts once, not five times.
Your first 50 conversations are always free, on any plan, before you've even chosen one, so you can see Arbyn work before committing to anything.
Nothing Arbyn tells a customer about their order, your policies, or your catalog is invented. If Arbyn can't verify something, it says so rather than guessing.
Provider or model names are never shown to you or your customers. You'll only ever see Arbyn's own tier labels internally. What matters to you is the reply, not what's under the hood.
You can pause Arbyn or change any guardrail at any time, even after you've turned on auto-send. Turning auto-send on doesn't remove your safety nets.
FAQ
Does Arbyn ever guess about an order or a policy if it isn't sure? No. If a lookup fails or the answer isn't in your store data, Arbyn tells the customer it needs to check rather than making something up.
What happens when Arbyn can't confidently answer, or the customer asks for something Arbyn isn't allowed to do? The conversation is escalated to your team. It shows up in your Inbox (and, for specific actions, your Approvals queue) so a real person can take it from there.
Do Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger work today? Not yet. Those channels are planned but not connected. Today, Arbyn answers over email and your storefront chat widget.
Can I see everything Arbyn is doing, or does it happen invisibly? Every step Arbyn takes on a conversation (what it looked up, what it decided, why it escalated) is visible on that conversation's own timeline, not hidden.
Does upgrading plans change what Arbyn can do? No. All three plans include every feature. The only difference is how many conversations are included each month; see Plans & conversation limits.