Your Instagram DMs are already a shop floor.
Every 'price?' under a reel and every 'is this in stock' in your inbox is a shopper with their hand up. MerchantIQ answers them with the same assistant that runs on your storefront, grounded in your live catalog and your published policies.
- priya.kasked: price? Answered
- rohan.dasked: is this in stock in M Answered
- meera_sasked: does it ship to Indore? Answered
- anil.vasked: where's my order Answered
A comment is a question. Most stores walk past it.
Your best-performing reel does two things at once. It sends people to the store, and it fills your comments and DMs with the questions that decide whether they buy. Price. Size. “Does it ship to Indore.” “Is this still available.”
Those questions arrive at nine at night, in batches, from a phone. A founder answers the first eleven and the rest go cold. A keyword bot answers all of them badly, which is worse, because a shopper can tell within one reply that nobody is home.
MerchantIQ answers in the thread, grounded in your live catalog and your published policies, so the question turns into a cart instead of an unread notification.
It sells in plain text.
Instagram gives you no bold, no bullets, no tables. Most “AI for Instagram” demos quietly ignore that and show you a dashboard instead. The assistant writes the way a good salesperson texts: short sentences, one recommendation, a reason, and a question back.
Answers in the thread
Handles size, stock, materials, and shipping questions from your live catalog and published policies, so answers track what you stock today instead of a stale FAQ copy.
Sends product cards
Shows up to ten products with Buy now and Add to cart, built from your own checkout links, not a generic storefront URL.
Builds the cart in the DM
Collects taps into one cart card with a total and a Checkout button, drawn from your live prices, so nobody has to start again in a browser.
Waits before it speaks
Holds for about ten seconds so three fast messages become one considered answer, not three half-replies to a half-finished thought.
Offers the next step
Suggests up to four short replies plus a standing Talk to a human, drawn from where the conversation is, not a fixed menu.
Notices a high-reach account
Flags a verified or high-follower handle to the assistant before it answers, so your most visible shoppers are not handled like a cold lead.
Every one of these runs on the same assistant as your storefront widget, against the same shopper record, so a question asked in a DM on Tuesday and on a product page on Friday gets one consistent answer.
When a person should take it, the assistant steps back.
The worst thing an assistant can do is keep talking after a shopper has asked for a human. So “talk to a human” is a permanent option in every thread, not a buried fallback.
Ask for a person and the assistant stops, your team is notified, and the shopper gets one honest line: “I've let our team know — someone will be with you shortly. 🙌” Nothing else is sent for two hours.
And if one of your team simply starts typing in Instagram, the assistant notices and pauses on its own for thirty minutes of quiet, so a customer is never answered twice by two different voices.
Replies sent from the dashboard respect Meta’s messaging windows, so a reply is either delivered or clearly refused, never silently dropped.
- Shopper asks for a human
- Assistant stops (the assistant is paused here)
- Your team is notified
- Resumes after two hours
- One of your team replies in Instagram
- Assistant notices
- Pauses for thirty minutes of quiet (the assistant is paused here)
- Resumes
Connect once, then edit the openers.
You connect your Instagram business account to MerchantIQ once. From then on the assistant has permission to read and answer messages and comments on that account, and nothing more.
Instagram shows up to four openers to a first-time visitor. We seed three, “🛍️ Shop new arrivals”, “📦 Track my order” and “💬 Talk to a human”, and you rewrite them and add a fourth in your own words. The five-item menu under the message box should read like your store, not like software.
What you need
- An Instagram business account
- Your store connected to MerchantIQ
- An admin who can approve the connection
- About ten minutes to write the openers
What we store
Connecting grants MerchantIQ permission to read and reply to messages and comments on that one account, and that is the extent of it. Comment moderation reads live from Instagram each time you open it, with no local mirror of your comments. What lands on the shopper record is the conversation itself: the messages exchanged, the products shown and the cart built, tied to the Instagram handle rather than an email or phone, because Instagram never hands those over. The full detail is in our privacy policy.
Every thread becomes commerce intelligence.
Instagram conversations land in the same reporting as your storefront conversations: how many threads started, how many got past a single message, how many product cards went out, and how many carts began. Campaign tags on an ig.me link carry through, so a story sticker and a bio link do not blur into one bucket.
Two honest notes on anything you read from this channel. The card count is cards the assistant sent, not cards a shopper looked at. And because Instagram reports nothing when someone taps through to checkout, cart starts understate what the channel did.
Shopper: do you ship to indore, and what if the fit is off
Store: We do. If the fit is off you can return it within a week, so it is safe to try at home. Want me to check the Kora Linen Shirt in your size?
- Intent
- Shipping question
- Product
- Kora Linen Shirt
- Objection
- Fit uncertainty
- Campaign
- ig.me · story sticker
Instagram first, the rest when it is real.
WhatsApp and Messenger are where this goes next, and neither is built yet. No integration, no beta, no date we are asking you to plan around. When one is live you will read it here, and it will be live on stores before it is on this page.
If WhatsApp is the channel you care about, say so on the walkthrough and we will tell you exactly where it stands.
WhatsApp, coming soon
The channel we are asked about most, and not built yet. Nothing to connect, nothing to join, no date to plan around.
Messenger, coming soon
The Facebook inbox, on the same assistant when it arrives. Not built yet, and not on a date.
Instagram on MerchantIQ, in short.
What kind of Instagram account does it need?
An Instagram business account, connected once to your store on MerchantIQ. From then on the assistant has permission to read and answer messages and comments on that account, and nothing more.
Is this the same assistant as my storefront?
Yes. It runs on the same assistant, the same catalog and policies, and the same shopper record as the storefront widget, so a question asked in a DM and one asked on a product page get one consistent answer.
Will it reply to every comment?
No, and that is deliberate. It answers comments carrying a genuine buying question and leaves praise, emojis, tags and spam alone. Comments are switched on per store, so you decide whether it touches them at all.
What happens when a shopper asks for a person?
The assistant stops, your team is notified, and nothing else is sent for two hours. If someone on your team simply replies in Instagram, the assistant notices and pauses on its own for thirty minutes of quiet.
Does it work on WhatsApp too?
Not today. Instagram is the only messaging channel that is live. There is no WhatsApp integration yet, and we will not promise you a date we cannot keep.
Is it included in my plan?
Yes. MerchantIQ Social is part of every plan and switched on per store, so there is no add-on and nothing extra to buy for Instagram.
See it answer a real DM.
Book a 20-minute walkthrough and we'll run the assistant against your own catalog, in a storefront thread and an Instagram thread, side by side.
Not every comment wants a reply. The ones asking a question do.
A blanket auto-reply under every comment is the fastest way to look like a bot and the fastest way to get an account reported. Praise does not need a sales pitch. Three fire emojis do not need a product link.
So the first decision is not what to say, it is whether to say anything. Each comment is judged for buying intent before anything is sent, and most are left alone. You choose whether comments are in scope at all: run DMs only, or DMs and comments.
It answers
It leaves alone
When a comment does carry a question, two things happen at once. A short public acknowledgement goes under the post, so everyone scrolling sees the brand is awake: “Sent you a DM 📩”. And a private reply opens the thread, where the answer, the product card and the cart belong.
Your team keeps the controls. Reply, hide, or delete from the MerchantIQ dashboard, read live from Instagram rather than from a copy that has gone stale.
Shopper: is this available in M?
Store: Yes, the Kora Linen Shirt is in stock in M. Here it is.