602: How I’m Using AI To Grow My Store And Courses In Unexpected Ways

Summary

Podcast Summary: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast with Steve Chou
Episode 602: How I’m Using AI To Grow My Store And Courses In Unexpected Ways
Release Date: August 13, 2025

In Episode 602 of The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, host Steve Chou delves into the innovative ways he leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance his e-commerce store and educational courses. Joined by his co-host Tony Chou, the episode explores the implementation of AI-driven strategies that have significantly boosted revenue and improved customer experience. Below is a detailed summary of the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

---

1. AI-Enhanced Product Recommendations

Boosting Sales with "Also Bought" Features

Steve Chou begins by sharing a recent success where implementing an AI-driven feature led to an 18% increase in sales within a single day:

[02:39] Steve Chou: "I launched something yesterday and already within one day, it's lifted my sales 18%."

To achieve this, Steve utilized the Python library FP Growth to analyze sales data and determine which products are frequently purchased together. This data is then used to populate the "also bought" section on product pages, similar to Amazon's recommendation system. However, with nearly a thousand SKUs in his store, many products initially lacked sufficient data for meaningful recommendations.

Overcoming SKU Challenges with AI:

Steve employed AI to generate similar product suggestions by analyzing product images, effectively filling gaps where different products didn't have enough purchase correlation:

[05:33] Tony Chou: "So if there's a product that normally doesn't have a 'bot with', it's just going to show similar type products below."

This approach ensures that every product, regardless of sales volume, benefits from relevant recommendations, resulting in a projected sustained lift of 10-20% in sales.

---

2. Revamping On-Site Search with AI

Addressing Poor Search Performance

Previously, Steve identified a critical issue where 60% of search queries on his site yielded no results, leading to high bounce rates:

[12:46] Steve Chou: "Almost 60% of the people who did searches on Bumblebee linens yielded zero search results."

To tackle this, he implemented an AI-powered search system that understands natural language, synonyms, and common misspellings. This system generates detailed product descriptions and utilizes a vector database to return the most relevant results even when exact matches aren't found:

[14:12] Tony Chou: "Yeah."

Impact of Improved Search:

Within two weeks of deploying the new search functionality, Steve observed a 10% increase in sales, underscoring the importance of effective search in enhancing user experience and conversion rates.

---

3. AI Chatbots and Customer Service

Balancing Automation with Customer Satisfaction

The discussion shifts to the use of AI chatbots for customer service. While AI chatbots can handle common inquiries efficiently, Steve and Tony express concerns about the potential for customer frustration when bots fail to address complex issues:

[16:44] Steve Chou: "But the number of people that are just looking for stuff where you can guide them along, I guess search maybe accomplishes this."

Challenges Highlighted:

• User Frustration: Customers often become irate when bots cannot resolve their issues promptly or switch to human representatives seamlessly.

• Performance Issues: Steve recounts a negative experience with a chatbot that delayed responses and provided canned replies, leading to increased dissatisfaction:

  [22:10] Steve Chou: "It took them two minutes to even get a response. And then after that they just gave me a canned response."

Insights:

Effective customer service using AI requires transparency and the ability to escalate to human support when necessary. Both hosts agree that while AI can streamline basic inquiries, maintaining high-quality human interaction is crucial for customer loyalty.

---

4. Implementing Steve Bot and Tony Bot for Educational Content

Enhancing Content Accessibility and Support

To improve the support for their educational courses, Steve and Tony introduced Steve Bot and Tony Bot—AI-powered bots designed to answer queries by accessing a vast repository of their content, including classes, blog posts, podcasts, and Seller Summit videos:

[26:13] Steve Chou: "It's way better than search. I've noticed people were using my search function on WordPress to find videos. That search function is horrific."

Benefits:

• Time Efficiency: The bots significantly reduce the time spent locating specific information within extensive content libraries.
• Accuracy: By pulling directly from verified content, the bots minimize misinformation and hallucinations, providing reliable answers.
• User Feedback: Positive reception from users, including direct feedback and increased engagement with Tony Bot:

  [28:22] Steve Chou: "I've received texts and voicemails about it. So I know Tony Bot is very popular."

---

5. Transitioning the Community to Discord

Building a Dynamic and Interactive Community

Steve moved his community platform to Discord, enhancing interaction and integration with AI tools like Steve Bot. Discord offers a more robust and flexible environment compared to traditional platforms like Facebook Groups:

[33:24] Tony Chou: "Is there a way to prevent people from being able to see what is queried? Because to me, that would be... I don't want people to see what I'm searching."

Features and Challenges:

• Real-Time Interaction: Discord's structure supports real-time conversations and easy access to resources.
• Privacy Concerns: Visible queries can deter some users, prompting Steve to consider private chat rooms or alternative configurations.
• Spam Management: Implementing AI-driven moderation to handle promotional content and maintain community standards.

---

6. Future of AI in E-commerce Tools

Anticipating Industry Shifts and Tool Obsolescence

The conversation turns to the broader implications of AI advancements on e-commerce tools and the Shopify App Store:

[39:13] Steve Chou: "I was gonna pick like a bunch of apps that are really popular on the Shopify App Store."

Key Points:

• Tool Replacement: As AI becomes more sophisticated, many existing tools and plugins may become redundant, leading to the decline of numerous SaaS products.
• Cost Implications: Businesses may face high monthly expenses due to the proliferation of specialized plugins, urging a shift towards more integrated AI solutions.
• Developer Perspective: Steve highlights the potential challenges in maintaining AI-driven tools, including continuous updates and handling new content.

Conclusion:

Steve anticipates significant changes in how e-commerce businesses utilize technology, emphasizing the need for adaptability and proactive integration of AI to stay competitive.

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Key Takeaways

• AI Integration: Effective use of AI can substantially increase sales and improve user experience through smarter product recommendations and enhanced search functionalities.

• Customer Service Balance: While AI chatbots offer efficiency, they must be implemented thoughtfully to ensure they complement rather than hinder human customer support.

• Content Management: AI-powered bots like Steve Bot and Tony Bot can revolutionize how educational content is accessed and utilized, saving time and increasing engagement.

• Community Building: Transitioning to platforms like Discord can foster a more interactive and supportive community environment, though privacy and moderation remain critical.

• Industry Evolution: The rapid advancement of AI poses both opportunities and threats to existing e-commerce tools, necessitating continuous innovation and flexibility from businesses.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Sales Boost:

  Steve Chou [02:39]: "I launched something yesterday and already within one day, it's lifted my sales 18%."

• Search Improvement:

  Steve Chou [14:12]: "And now when someone queries that description and returns the closest possible thing."

• Customer Service Challenges:

  Tony Chou [17:16]: "I always hate them because I feel... that's where I feel like it gets frustrating."

• AI Content Bots:

  Steve Chou [27:07]: "This is genius, honestly."

• Future of AI Tools:

  Tony Chou [39:21]: "Like, we have people on the course that ask this question a lot."

---

For more insights and resources on starting your own e-commerce business, visit mywifequitherjob.com.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. Now in this episode, I'm sharing the AI changes that I've made to my store and courses that are directly boosting revenue. You'll hear about what's working right now, what surprised me, and how you can apply these ideas to your own business. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale [e-mail] and if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e commerce conferences that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step by step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches. People who are running their own e commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs, no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We've sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It's happening April 21st to April 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you're doing over 250,000 or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they're ever going to be, so if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we're going to be covering everything that I've been doing while Tony has been traveling Europe on vacation.

[Tony Chou]

I wasn't on vacation. Let's be clear.

[Steve Chou]

It looked like a vacation to me. I saw your Instagram feed, you know.

[Tony Chou]

Actually, oh my gosh. I had a great podcast topic and I couldn't remember what it was to this morning because I'm, you know, 52 and I can't remember anything anymore. But we have to do a podcast in the future about can you really be a digital nomad, like still work and travel?

[Steve Chou]

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, so that's. Maybe we'll do that next coming soon folks. But anyway, yes, I'm curious because I feel like I left and all of a sudden you got super productive. So I was like, am I holding Steve back most days? Because I, I leave the country and all of A sudden he's built robots and all sorts of things and really cool stuff.

[Steve Chou]

Actually, you were gone a month.

[Tony Chou]

I was gone a month, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, let's go over the stuff that's fresh in my head. Like, literally, I launched something yesterday and already within one day, it's, according to the stats, it's lifted my sales 18%. Whoa. For just that one day.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

But I'm optimistic. I, I, I'm pretty sure it's not going to stay at 18%.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But I'm, I'm anticipating 10 to, you know, 20% lift. Okay. You know how I, this has been on my list for like a year to do with my store. You know how Amazon has that bot with. Okay. And I've always wanted to implement it, but it is a pain in the butt to implement because you gotta manually put all the bot with stuff together or you use code. Okay. So let's start from the beginning because this is a much more tedious problem than I thought originally. So the first thing that I wanted to do was items that are commonly bought together statistically figure out what those are and then just display that. That is relatively easy, but I didn't know how to do it. But now that there's AI, I can just have AI write the code. And it turns out, and this is the only time I can talk about this geeky stuff, turns out there's like this package called FP Growth where you just feed it all of your sales data and it'll tell you what goes with what at what confidence level and at what lift percentage.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

Right. So, for example, let's say that you're.

[Tony Chou]

Talking about does this.

[Steve Chou]

It is a Python library.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

That does this. So let's say item B is often bought with item A. The confidence is the probability that that's going to happen and then the lift is how much more likely that item is bought with that.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

So you literally have to go through your database and dump out every single order that you've ever gotten and what it's correlated at. And then it creates this chart and then I update that into the database. So now every time you look at a product, it shows what that product is commonly bought with. Nothing fancy. Right. Amazon's had this for a long time.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

The problem with my store is we have like, I don't know, almost a thousand SKUs. And so that isn't actually populated for a lot of the products because in order for this to work, there needs to be a lot of products bought with each other.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And you Know, in any typical store it's like 80, 20. Right. Only 20% of your products. And so I had tons of similar products for like my best sellers, which is great. But then I had this whole library of products that you know, didn't have anything.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And I told you the stats earlier. Right. 18% lift. So I want that on every single product.

[Tony Chou]

Right, Right.

[Steve Chou]

The other problem is you don't even know like whether products are being bought with each other because you're displaying them with each other or because people are finding them.

[Tony Chou]

Right, Right.

[Steve Chou]

It's kind of like a chicken and egg thing.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And so what I did, and this is, wasn't possible before is I had AI generate me all the similar products for every single product in the library. Right. And I didn't know this was possible literally until I tried it last week. But you can feed it an image and then generate like turn the image into math and then compare that image with every single product on your site and find the most similar ones, put them in a database and always have that always bought thing populated.

[Tony Chou]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

So now if someone buys like a, a Battenberg lace handkerchief, the AI finds everything that looks like that Battenberg lace handkerchief and then displays it in the bot with. So, so now everything is popular.

[Tony Chou]

So if, yeah. So if there's a product that normally doesn't have a bot with, it's just going to show similar type products below.

[Steve Chou]

Correct?

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. That's smart. I like that.

[Steve Chou]

And so, and then also on my site, I don't know if you've been on bumblebee linens for a while. Whenever you click add to cart, there's a pop up that comes up that suggests products for you to add to your cart. And prior to that I was just using also bought data, but I didn't have like a good algorithm. I was just showing something random that someone has bought before.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Like among this huge library, I switched it over to a combination of frequently bought plus the similar item. Like if there's not enough similar items, I populate it, I add onto it with the similar products and that has grown that side probably like double.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

The lift just from doing this.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Because my pop up wasn't working that well before.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And also you know how there's some. This is really interesting because you know Amazon has all this data.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

I never had all this data for my site.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

But you know how like underneath the product there's, there's like a box that says, you know, you might also be interested in like Amazon has this And I've had this for a long time.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

But once again, the products down there were just kind of like haphazard, a random set of products that, that. And it wasn't populated for everything. And so that lifted tremendously.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, I can see why. Because when I think about the Amazon shopping experience, especially with certain types of items, right. Like when I put a book in my cart, I'm very interested to see what other people who like that book also read, right? And they. That's a big one. Right. Because then it lists and the books always make sense, Right. Like if you're getting a book on marketing, typically people who buy that book buy other marketing books. Right? Same thing with clothing. Like if people buy this shirt, they tend to buy like a belt or pair of pants or things like that. Like, it's kind of putting an outfit for. Together for you inadvertently because you know what other people are buying. I think a one click upsell does this to some. You can do this to some degree. Like they have some AI tools that help you do that, but it's not in. It's not. Doesn't always show up right away. It's sometimes it's like after the purchase or like further down the purchase cycle as opposed to like when you just add it to your cart or when you're just looking at the product page, Right? Because I know on Amazon it's on the product page, right?

[Steve Chou]

Like, yeah, yeah, it's on the product page.

[Tony Chou]

So I think one click upsell has a little bit of this capability, but not to the level that you're talking.

[Steve Chou]

Well, it's funny, as I was going to give a lesson in my class about this, and whenever I do this now, I look for a Shopify plugin that does it. And you're right. One click upsell kind of does this. But the problem with this is it's computationally intensive. Like that FP grow thing I was talking about. It literally takes probably like a couple minutes to calculate on my computer when I feed it and everything. And then that image similarity index that turns into math and compares the similarity, that also takes like a couple of minutes for that to happen.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And you can't do that in real time. The only way to do it is to. The way I do it is whenever I add a new product, it automatically regenerates everything.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

And then once a week, I do the other thing that calculates all the sales and, and what's bought with each other. Because it takes time. You can't do it like on the fly as someone shopping.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Unless like someone has a super fast machine. Like maybe I don't have a fast machine. I don't know. It, it, it. I. You can't do it in real time, otherwise it would bog the site down.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

And perhaps that's why the tools probably don't do it to the level accuracy. There's ways to like shortcut the problem.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, well, that's. I'll be interested to see like in 30 days where you're at with those numbers.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. But I was just shocked in like one day. It took me longer to code up all the tracking than it did to code up the actual feature itself.

[Tony Chou]

Interesting.

[Steve Chou]

But yeah, just in one day. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll revisit this and maybe in 30 days.

[Tony Chou]

Because I think anytime I do think to like caution people, I think this is great and I think, I think this is a great thing to have. But I think anytime you make a big change on a website, you're going to see a very high lift initially. Right. And then it's going to level out. I think you'll still see a lift for sure. But I, what I've seen people do is get like that 18% and then expect 18% every single day. And it's like probably going to level out to a lower than that. But Even if it's 10%, I mean, why would you not want, why would you not want that?

[Steve Chou]

I think it'll make a big difference on my site because we have so many products that are kind of undiscoverable because people aren't going to just sort through all the categories. Which brings me to the next thing that I fixed over the holidays, or I call your vacation holiday Holiday. The holiday month of July is I completely fixed my on site search to use AI as well.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, I was wondering about that.

[Steve Chou]

I also actually just gave a lecture to this to the class, but this took a lot of time. This was like a two. You were gone for how long?

[Tony Chou]

I was gone for a month.

[Steve Chou]

Four weeks. Okay. This one took like two weeks of that. Four weeks. What I did was I had AI generate very detailed descriptions of all of my products. So it took the photo and described every aspect of that product based on the photo. It. I had it spit out every possible occasion that that product could be used for every type of person that'd be looking for it. A whole bunch of things. Right. And then I fed that into, you know, I turned that into math with a vector database. And then now when someone queries that queries that description and returns the closest possible thing. Now, I had neglected my search for a while, and so I just kind of looked for the stat. Like I've been collecting stats about my on site search for a long time, but I never really. I stopped looking at it after I, you know, had it done the first time, which was years ago. And it was something like. Almost 60% of the people who did searches on Bumblebee linens yielded zero search results.

[Tony Chou]

Interesting. That seems very.

[Steve Chou]

The reason for that is because people cannot spell.

[Tony Chou]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

People use a whole bunch of weird synonyms that aren't spelled correctly.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like hank. There's. There's actually like 10 ways to say hanky.

[Tony Chou]

I think handkerchief is a hard word to spell, honestly.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, here. You know what? Here, just give me a sec. Let me bring up also, like, you.

[Tony Chou]

Dropped the term Battenberg lace a few minutes ago, and I was like, how do you spell Battenberg? Is it with A, E, R, G, A, U, R, G? Like, I do think, especially for the types of products that you have. I wonder about that for, you know, the. The curriculum site. Like, curriculum's a word that gets misspelled all the time. I wonder how often that happens. Right. Where people are spelling curriculum with one R or. Yeah. So I think especially if you have something that can be used misspelled a lot of different ways, this is something that's very important.

[Steve Chou]

It's not just. Here, let me just. I brought up all the search results for Bumblebee since I.

[Tony Chou]

How do you spell I? Reset everything I or I, E, Y.

[Steve Chou]

You can do it all of those. But that's not what I mean. So some people will type long sentences like, I'm looking for a wedding handkerchief.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Out of the box. Shopify Search is never going to return anything.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

For that. Right. Or people just type in like, hydrangeas.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Steve Chou]

And so we don't necessarily have anything for that, but we can show something similar now because AI It'll return something similar.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And anyway, you get the point. Right. So almost 60% of my searches are returning nothing. And there's a stat online. And I. I unfortunately didn't have this tracked. But if someone doesn't get anything in the search results, there's something like almost 70% likely to just leave your site altogether.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, for sure. I believe that.

[Steve Chou]

Right?

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. And then Amazon has trained everyone, especially on mobile, to go straight for search.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Which means that I was probably hemorrhaging people.

[Tony Chou]

Mm. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Anyway, so the results are preliminary once again. So this Search has been out for three weeks.

[Tony Chou]

Two.

[Steve Chou]

Two weeks. How long you been gone to? Probably two weeks. And it's already lifted my sales 10% search.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So that.

[Tony Chou]

Those are a lot of sense because I do feel like if you go to a site you can't find what you want, you immediately just go to the next site.

[Steve Chou]

Right?

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And does anyone ever shop on Amazon by looking at categories? I. I don't think so.

[Tony Chou]

No. No, never. I mean there's.

[Steve Chou]

So. I actually didn't.

[Tony Chou]

But no.

[Steve Chou]

Think it would. I thought it would have more of an effect, but I think a lot of my traffic is coming in from ads. Going to a category page.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. So this is going to help with your organic traffic?

[Steve Chou]

Yes, yes.

[Tony Chou]

Or social or anything. If you were on Tick Tock or something like that and people were just coming in, I have seen. So speaking of all that, since we have been on YouTube, we've seen a huge lift in organic traffic.

[Steve Chou]

Nice.

[Tony Chou]

People just typing in the. The name of the store. Right. Stuff like that. Which I mean, I guess I was expecting, but not to the extent that I'm seeing it. Right. So I'm, I'm seeing a lot of like that brand recognition. So I'm sure once you get out there on social, this will actually benefit you a whole lot more because people are going to just be typing in the name of the store or coming to you organically and then that's when they're going to be searching. Right. Because they haven't seen a specific product in an ad.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, yeah. The other thing that I was thinking about doing, and this one is a little. Requires a little bit more planning, but to create an AI live chat widget, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet because I hate it when I.

[Tony Chou]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

When you get out someone's AI.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But the number of people that are just looking for stuff where you can guide them along, I guess search maybe accomplishes this.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

But people also want to know like, when is this going to ship or where my order is.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, I know.

[Steve Chou]

How do you feel about AI chatbots?

[Tony Chou]

So I always hate them because I feel, I feel like by the time I get to that I have a very specific thing that I need. Right. Like it's. I don't need to know when it's shipping. I need to know like there's a problem. So that's where I feel like. That's where I feel like it gets frustrating. But I do like, I do like it when I go to a site and I can just get into the bot and get the basic information, you know what I mean? Like, when is it shipping? How do I look at this? Where's the size chart? You know, something like that.

[Steve Chou]

So you have used it before?

[Tony Chou]

I have, and I don't mind it unless it's like, hey, I just want a representative, you know, and then it.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony Chou]

And then it continues to. When it loops you, when you can't get a representative, that's when I get very frustrated. So that's a tough.

[Steve Chou]

So I think what, what's challenging about this one also is if someone wants a representative, you need to kind of respond pretty quickly.

[Tony Chou]

Right?

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So we have someone dedicated for customer support. But I'm just thinking like, let's say for one day, like just even 10 people want to chat, like one person's not going to be able to handle.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Maybe they can. I don't know. 10 chats though, going on at the same time.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it would, it would almost be like, you've got to find a company that does it really well and mimic what they're doing. Right. Like, how do you, how do you transition people? And I think, you know, one thing that I don't mind is when they tell me that they're a bot. Right. When they're like, hey, like to me that's. If you want to implement something like this on your own site, you have to be very forthcoming with, hey, you're going to get a bottle. These are the questions we can answer for you. And then if you need more help, we will move you over to our like live customer service kind of thing. I think if that's. Yeah, I think if that information is at the forefront, then I don't really mind it at all. In fact, I was dealing with that. I think it was the, the train app that I was using in Europe. Like, it was like, hey, we're a bot during these hours, right? So if you need anything other than. And I was like, oh, okay, that makes like. And then I wasn't on there thinking that I was going to get something that I couldn't get at the time. So I think as long as you're upfront about it, you're probably okay.

[Steve Chou]

I don't know though. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now, this course is free and and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's my wifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. Yeah, I mean it's, it's a hard question. I was kind of checking out how Amazon does it. I mean, they have Rufus and whatnot, but I never really use it. Yeah, I don't either myself. And yeah, this would. Okay, here's what really fascinated me. So 11 labs just announced voice customer service.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And Google's had this for a long time where it sounds like a human, it acts like a human. Most people can't tell it's a human, but it's actually voice.

[Tony Chou]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

And so I have it on my list. I actually already have an 11 lab subscription and I wanted to try this. But how cool would it be? Well, in my mind at least. How cool would it be to have like a human be able to answer these questions?

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, that's where it gets weird.

[Steve Chou]

That's a harder problem.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know, I think anytime you can minimize the interaction that you have to have. Right. If you can get people through a flow that answers their questions the better. Right. Because I'm sure a lot of the questions are stuff that can be answered pretty easily. You know, I mean, there's always going to be the complicated cases, but I don't think that's the norm. It can't be. Because why would Amazon do it if it wasn't successful in cutting down?

[Steve Chou]

Well, you'll notice it's not prominent on Amazon, the Rufus.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, Yeah, I guess that's true.

[Steve Chou]

You have to like, you don't have to look for it, but I mean it's not. Yeah, it's not like right. Front and center.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

For you. So clearly they're testing stuff.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So we used to have a chatbot. I don't know if you remember this.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, I do actually.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I had a chatbot on manychat where it answered all those common questions like where's my order, order status and how long it's going to take to ship. The problem with that was like, if you make someone wait like, I would say longer than like even 30 seconds, like they're probably going to just close it and maybe even leave because they think that no one's supporting you.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

That's what I want to avoid.

[Tony Chou]

I like it when you get on the chatbot and you get like a. A little. I call it like a bubble menu. There's probably an official name, but it's like six bubbles of like, where's my order? I have a problem with my order. My order's damaged. Like, you know, it gives you like some. Some basic things and then it's like none of the above. And then you click through that. So any of the top ones, it just takes you into those flows. I don't know those. To me, I don't. I'm not bothered by. But you're right.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Tony Chou]

If you click and then you hear nothing that I get really irritated about, I'm like, is anybody here?

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Actually this happened with a tool that I pay for just the other day.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, okay.

[Steve Chou]

1. It took them two minutes to even get a response. And then after that they just gave me a canned. It. It was a cut and paste. I think it was a human, but they just did a cut and paste.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And it actually made me want to unsubscribe from the tool after that.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, I can.

[Steve Chou]

See that because it was broken. And what I don't want is. It's better just not even have that.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Then have that experience. In my opinion. That's why I actually took off the live chat from Bumblebee. It's. It's no longer there.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, That's. That's kind of a tough one because it really is about. Yeah, that one's tough.

[Steve Chou]

I think responsiveness and whatnot. I guess if it got out of hand, I could just hire someone else to handle.

[Tony Chou]

You have a lot of customer service.

[Steve Chou]

We do probably do.

[Tony Chou]

Because. Yeah. You. And you've got a different demographic and.

[Steve Chou]

You know, we have someone answering calls.

[Tony Chou]

People like to call us, which is crazy to me.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess.

[Tony Chou]

Not for your.

[Steve Chou]

Cater to older generations.

[Tony Chou]

Not for your demographics. I just like, I can't pay my kids to make a phone call. Like.

[Steve Chou]

But you're on the phone all the time.

[Tony Chou]

I am. I was just on. Yes. I was actually just gonna say I was on yesterday with American Express Press, and I'm going to give them a 10 out of 10.

[Steve Chou]

Oh.

[Tony Chou]

Whereas. Whereas Brian was on a call with Ring Doorbell and they're going to get a zero out of ten. But. Yeah. But here's the thing that I think Is important to think before you start implementing any of this stuff is like, my experience with American Express and it was a Filipino call center or, you know, I could. I could tell that. But my experience was so great, it just increased my loyalty to American Express. And. And Brian's was so horrid with ring that, like, I think if we didn't already, like, invest into the ring system of, you know, all the doorbells and all that stuff, like, he would buy the another brand. Right. So I think. I think when you're thinking about, like, customer service type decisions and using AI and bots and stuff like that, I think, actually I. I feel like we had a talk about this at seller summit one year or we need to have a talk about this is that, like, kind of customer service can actually be a great sales channel for your business based on how people interact with the whole process. Right. Like, it can either build that loyalty and like, hey, this is amazing. Like, even if there was a problem initially, it can turn people around versus just like. I mean, literally, I think Brian was ready to rip all the ring doorbells out of my house. Right. Like, just because it was so frustrating to get the. Like, he just was in a loop. Right. Of like, canned responses. And he's on the phone for, like, two hours. Like, nothing should take two hours. And that's.

[Steve Chou]

Wow.

[Tony Chou]

That's not whole. That's talking to people. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony Chou]

So anyway, yeah, I think that's something that is really important for your business.

[Steve Chou]

Actually, you know what happened to me recently? And I'm gonna call this company out because it pissed me off. So. So Terminix, we had a problem a year ago, and they didn't even tell me, but they put me on a subscription.

[Tony Chou]

Oh.

[Steve Chou]

And so I got charged last week, you know, hundreds of dollars.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And then I. I didn't. They didn't tell me they were putting me on a subscription. And then I had to call to cancel. You could not cancel online.

[Tony Chou]

I hate that. I hate when you have to call to cancel.

[Steve Chou]

You could not cancel online. And it took me like, 45 minutes to cancel the dang thing. 45 minutes of my day gone.

[Tony Chou]

Yep. Oh, that's so frustrating. Yeah. Anyway, I just think that that's really. I think people tend to, like, try to find the cheapest, easiest customer service solution. And I actually think that's something that can really send your business to another level if you have great customer service.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, no, no. It totally matters. Like, when someone calls us.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

It's like 80% sale.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Maybe even Higher than that. I don't know anymore since I stopped tracking. But, yeah, huge. This is why the decision to do the live chat requires thought.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And even Jen was a little iffy on that. So, anyway. Okay, so the next cool thing while you were gone. This is the first thing I implemented, actually, while you were gone was Tony Bot and Steve Bot.

[Tony Chou]

This is so cool. This is the coolest thing you've ever done. Honestly, like, I. I was. I spent far too much time yesterday with that link that you sent me reading through. So Steve created this, and then he sent me a link yesterday where I could see what people were inputting, and I was like, it was like a Netflix bit binge.

[Steve Chou]

Well, you should see Steve Bot.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, I'm sure I was.

[Steve Chou]

That class is.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, yeah, I was. I wasn't gonna ask. I was curious, but I was like, I don't want to. I don't want to know.

[Steve Chou]

What's funny is, I don't know. There's some frustrated queries in there sometimes.

[Tony Chou]

Yes. I saw a couple in tonybot.

[Steve Chou]

And I don't think people know that I'm tracking, but I did say it before, Like, I'm tracking all these.

[Tony Chou]

I mean, you have to think if you're typing something in, it's going to get tracked. Like, to me, that's sort of a. I don't know, a known thing. But this is so. Talk about this, because this is. This is genius, honestly.

[Steve Chou]

So I read in all of the lessons in both of the classes, all the blog posts, all the podcasts, although I haven't put up the podcast just yet. And then all the seller summit videos, and now you can query them and then you'll get an answer back. It'll find out which lesson that covered that topic, and then it'll send you a link to that lesson. Because I was getting a ton of questions that are covering the lessons, but, you know, there's. There's like 450 videos in the other class now. Yeah, it's impossible to watch all that. And so this is way better than search. I've noticed people were using my search function on WordPress to find videos. That search function is horrific.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like, it doesn't return anything. And so this bot, not only does it answer the question without hallucinating, because it only grabs from stuff that you've actually said, but it returns an answer and then it tells you what lessons or blog posts or whatever cover that topic. And I think so far people have loved it.

[Tony Chou]

I've gotten a decent amount of feedback. I'VE got. I actually received texts. I got a voicemail about it. So I know tonybot is very popular. I'm sure Steve Bot is equally as popular.

[Steve Chou]

What's funny was for your bot. I was going to have it flatter me after every response, but then I was thinking to myself, well, what if someone new signs of and they have no idea? Like. So I took that out. But it was fun for a while when I was testing.

[Tony Chou]

I'm sure, I'm sure you had far too much fun with that. I think this is such a great idea because one thing, when I was looking through some of the queries yesterday, I think sometimes people don't know exactly like what exactly they want to ask. And so when they put something that's close, it finds the right videos, which I thought was good. And then I also think for you and I, because we made all the videos and. But I don't remember what the title of that video was. Right. So I would have to. So when people, especially when people asked a question that wasn't a. I can answer you in a couple sentences. It was a. I really need to like dig in. I would spend 15 minutes looking through the videos, trying to remember where we covered it. Like downloading the PowerPoint slides, trying to find it. So I think it's a huge time saver on both sides.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, no, totally. I actually even find myself querying it. Like if a student emails me a question and I'm like, I know I covered that. I just can't figure, I can't remember where. I'll just type it into Steve Bot and then I'll send them. I need to train people to use Steve Bot more.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Because it is, I mean, it's new, right? It's, it's like a month old right now at this point.

[Tony Chou]

No, I thought, I think that's a great. That's not. But that's the problem with the Steve and Tony bot is that is something that is, I would say, tougher for people to implement on their own. Like you built that was. That was a process for you to build that. That wasn't something that someone can just plug and play.

[Steve Chou]

You know what's funny about all this is someone went up to me and they said, hey, maybe you should offer like a server or a plugin or something that does this. It'd be very easy to do a WordPress plugin for this. What's harder is, you know, transcribing the videos and all that stuff.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So it could be done. I guess the only Downside now is whenever there's a lesson that's added, it needs to go through this whole process now. Right, right. Of getting transcribed, generated into the bots and then fed in. But I don't know. So many ideas. I'm like, debating whether there's, like, so many plugins and services now with AI that I can easily implement. And I was talking to. Who was I talking to this about. Oh, Bernie. I was talking to Bernie about this. I was asking about customer support. Because once I create someone for someone and, like, they pay, it obviously has to work.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

All the time.

[Tony Chou]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

Whereas right now, with the stuff that I'm doing.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

For myself, like, let's say there's like a minor bug. It's not a big deal, so I'll just suck it up and, you know, whatever. It's not, it's an inconvenience. But once you productize something, you. You can't do that anymore. So that's always been my dilemma.

[Tony Chou]

What did Bernie have to say? Because he's. He's released products, he's released.

[Steve Chou]

He said customer service wasn't that big of a factor. But then I countered him. I was like, well, to sell your product, I mean, you had to probably answer a ton of questions. He said people are. It's much harder to sell someone a SaaS product, is what he said.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Because one, people just want you to do it for them.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, you can see that.

[Steve Chou]

And two, like, people are a little recurring revenue averse now. Right. I've always been like, I don't want to pay Adobe a certain amount for something that. Well, actually, I use Adobe every day. That's a bad example. Microsoft.

[Tony Chou]

Right?

[Steve Chou]

Microsoft Word and all. I barely use it now, to be honest with you.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. I use Google Docs for everything.

[Steve Chou]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Tony Chou]

Or Google Drive or whatever. But yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And then the final thing that. Oh, actually, are we done with this?

[Tony Chou]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

The bot is cool. It works well. The final thing that I did is I moved my community over to Discord.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, yes. This is the big one.

[Steve Chou]

And that was a huge win. Like, there's people actually just the other day that were like, hey, I don't like how it doesn't have threads. I was like, actually, it does have threads. You know, the problem with the interface is it's kind of complicated in the beginning as you're getting used to it. But what I love about Discord is that you can code anything into it. So I incorporated Steve Bot into Discord, so people can just ask, you know, Steve Bot questions. Actually, that has not been as popular as I anticipated because then you get to see what other people are querying. Like, everyone can see it.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, I can see why that's not quite as.

[Steve Chou]

And I think people are a little more squeamish, but, you know, still available, whatever. Yeah, but it's like slack on steroids is the best way for me to describe it.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. I think the disc. I have been in there a little bit. I think it's a better solution for sure.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, it's much better than Facebook groups. Oh, no, no question.

[Tony Chou]

No question.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Tony Chou]

Is there a way to prevent people from being able to see what is queried? Because to me, that would be. I don't want people to see what I'm searching.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, there's probably a way to do it. I could probably create a private Steve Bot group that automatically generates and then as soon as you leave it, it dissipates. That's how the voice chat rooms work. Right now. You double click on it, it creates a room, and then you can chat with anyone. And as soon as you're both off, the room disappears. Yeah, I can do that with Steve Bot. It just requires. I question whether it's worth my effort to do that. Because you can just go to the website and use Steve Bot on there privately.

[Tony Chou]

Right, right. So the question about the Discord, because I know you did spend a good amount of time, like, building this out and getting it all set up right now it's open to course members. You said you were going to open it up to other people. Are you still thinking.

[Steve Chou]

Well, not for a little bit.

[Tony Chou]

Are you still thinking that or what's. What's the.

[Steve Chou]

Well, I am, but it requires infrastructure.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So, for example, I'm gonna have a bot that monitors every message to see if it's promotional. Like, I'm gonna have AI give me an analysis, and if it's promotional, I'll put that guy in a little penalty box. Yeah, I haven't written that yet, but these are things that you can't really. You certainly can't do it in Facebook.

[Tony Chou]

No, no.

[Steve Chou]

I question whether you can do it in circle or school or some of these other places to combat spam. I don't know. Yeah, but having a spam bot is awesome.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Like if I create the right AI prompts for it and whatnot.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah, because to me, you're going to want to leverage that. The. That Discord community, you know what I mean? To help grow the course eventually.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, that's the goal. Yeah, that's the goal I have too many things like launch, like the podcast is launching next week. So many things going on. But AI has really got me more excited about the stuff that I've been doing more than a long. Because we've been doing this for a long time. Yeah, it gets a little old after a while. But this, all these new possibilities for me have made me really excited lately.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. It's funny, I was thinking about this over the weekend because I was working on scripting and doing a bunch of things for my new project and I remember when AI first people first started talking about it, you know, two years ago. Right. And people were, I think it was even Spencer who did like 100 blog posts with AI and to see if he could rank. And there was just a lot of stuff like that where I felt like it was kind of garbage. Not what Spencer was doing, but in general like a lot of garbage content being spit out. But now I feel like things have shifted and people are actually using the technology to build like Liz is building this really cool email tool. Right. I think some that like to me that's the benefit and the interesting part of things. It's definitely made it much more, I don't know, palatable to me versus initially. I mean I used it even on my trip. I used it to like plot out walking paths and like to get safety information. And then I cross checked it with actual like people in the hotel and things like that because I was like I'm not gonna just trust AI with my own safety. But I don't know, I, I had it restaurant reservations like all. I mean it was like I used it a ton, just like personally which I think is really cool and saved me a ton of time. Right. Just doing those types of things.

[Steve Chou]

So I actually just met up with one of my buddies who's really high up in Google in the AI, one of the AI departments. And he was telling me, you haven't seen anything yet.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, I believe.

[Steve Chou]

And I was like, hey, can I work at Google just so I can be exposed all like I'm considering going back to work now. I'm actually not even joking about this. Maybe once like the kids or maybe once Karina goes goes to school then maybe I'll. There's just so much stuff that's happening right now. It's like when, remember like when the Internet first came out. I know we're old enough to remember that and it was really exciting but it didn't excite me that much to work in industry because what you'd Be making router, designing routers and hubs. Right. Which was, I think, the big thing for me in my industry. But all this AI stuff, you know, we're on the outside right now. We only get, like, what's been tested and released. There's so much stuff under development that, that we're not privy to.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And you can only be privy to that stuff if you work at a company that's on the cutting edge of this.

[Tony Chou]

Right. Yeah, well, that's. I mean, most people can't do that, realistically.

[Steve Chou]

No, that's not true. I think coders and engineers are. I don't know. I mean, I think we might be a dying breed once AI allows everyone to do this stuff.

[Tony Chou]

Oh. I'm saying most people can't just go work for a company that's doing those things. Like.

[Steve Chou]

Well, no, they can. That. What do you mean?

[Tony Chou]

Like, I just couldn't go get a job at Google tomorrow if I wanted to be on the cutting. Well, I probably could, but, like, I'm just saying most people couldn't.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. I mean, hiring is really bad right now.

[Tony Chou]

Obviously, in general, I don't think anybody can get a job at Google. Right.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I mean, they're.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Actually all the tech companies are, Are shedding people because of automation, I think.

[Tony Chou]

Right. So then that leads to. And this is probably a whole nother podcast. Cause I know we're out of time, but you know, then what happens? Like, I mean, a lot of these software tools you're. You're building, and while you're building them today, I feel like in a year from now I can probably build them. Right. Because so, so whereas, you know, today I need to pay $15 a month to have access to XYZ, next year I don't, because I can just build it myself. Right. Like, yeah. So. So then what happens to all the tools, all the plugins, all the SaaS products? Right. Like what? I don't know what happens.

[Steve Chou]

So I was going to create a video on YouTube about how I think the Shopify App Store is in trouble.

[Tony Chou]

We've talked about this for a while.

[Steve Chou]

We, we talked about this for a while. But like, I was gonna do. I was gonna actually pick like a bunch of apps that are really popular.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

On the Shopify App Store.

[Tony Chou]

But you just want to be blackballed by every.

[Steve Chou]

I know, Yeah, I, I thought about that actually, because they would be pissed. But there's a lot of tools out there. I said, like, you know, they don't do anything and they charge you, like, 20 bucks, 50 bucks a month. Yeah, right.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And it adds up if you don't know how to implement these things.

[Tony Chou]

Oh, I've seen. It's funny because. And this is partly from Seller Summit, but like, you know, people will give us access to their accounts to look at things. Right. And then you see that people are, you know, they might be on the 79amonth Shopify plan, but their bill every month is $532 because of all of the additional tools that they're paying for. I mean, it really. Especially if you're starting a new business, right. If you're building your brand and you're just starting out, like, that's a lot of money every month. If you're not bringing in that money every month or you're, you know, that's a huge chunk of your, of your expenses.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, people have plug and bloat, to be fair. Like, when you're first starting out, you're not going to be installing all those plugins. It's only once you start researching. Oh, that would be nice. Oh, that.

[Tony Chou]

I think people get like, as soon as people do it, I think. Haven't you met people that are like, what plugins do? I mean, we have people on the course that ask this question a lot and it's like, well, you don't really need any of them right now. You're not making any sales. But yeah, anyway.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, that's probably another topic for another.

[Tony Chou]

Another. Stay tuned. On a secret podcast on our Patreon where Steve will list all the apps he thinks are going to be put out of business in the next 18 months.

[Steve Chou]

You know, it's funny, I, I get emails from companies who want me to promote them probably every single day.

[Tony Chou]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

There's this one that recently contacted me and they were like, hey, it's a tool that helps you edit your images and write copy for your product listings. Why the heck would I promote, like, why. Why would someone need to pay you to do that stuff when you can just do everything and what's available right now?

[Tony Chou]

Yeah. And that's the one thing that I'm. And this is probably an issue for people that own, that have stores with like, actual contractors and employees that work for them, is getting their employees and contractors on board using AI. Because one thing that I have seen is that not everybody that I am dealing with on a regular basis uses it. And I'm like, you could cut your time in half, right. If you used AI to do this part of your job or you used AI to even like summarize some things for you. And that's one thing that I'm seeing. And it probably is very industry dependent too. Um, but I think like getting the people that work with you on board and being more efficient is really important because then they have time to do other things that probably will impact your business in a greater way.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, no, absolutely. So, Tony, when is, when's your next vacation?

[Tony Chou]

Right. Next week, actually. Have fun.

[Steve Chou]

Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay, tuned for.

[Tony Chou]

Stay tuned for what Steve builds when I'm out.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to know more details about what I've done, which can get a bit technical, feel free to send me email. For more information and resources, go to my wife. Quitherjob.com Episode 602 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event, go to sellersummit. Com and if you're interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.