Guide
A B2B AI Chatbot for Wholesale That Never Guesses a Price
Trade buyers ask detailed questions, often outside your working hours and in their own language. An AI chatbot can answer most of them from your catalogue. The ones that involve money should never be answered by AI at all. Here is how to set one up so it does both.
Maqsood R.Founder, HolaReply · Updated · 9 min read
The short answer
- A wholesale AI chatbot answers trade buyers from your own catalogue and pages, at any hour: specifications, pack sizes, lead times and how to open a trade account.
- Anything commercial, such as a price, a quote, a minimum order or payment terms, goes straight to your sales team with the buyer’s company and the whole conversation.
- Set those as “locked topics” so the AI can never state a number on your behalf.
What trade buyers ask, and why it is different from retail
A retail shopper asks “Is this in stock?” and buys. A trade buyer is building an order, often for a business that resells what you make, and needs detail before they commit. Their questions fall into two groups.
Questions your website can answer
Specifications and ingredients, pack and case sizes, shelf life, certifications, delivery areas and lead times, how to open a trade account, where to find a data sheet.
Questions only your team should answer
Trade prices and price lists, volume quotes, minimum orders that depend on the product or account, payment terms and credit, samples, custom products and private label.
Buyers in other time zones send the first group at 2 a.m. your time. If the answer is on your site, there is no reason to make them wait a day. The second group is where the sale is decided. It deserves a person, and a person who already has the context.
What the chatbot should answer, and what it must hand over
This is the most important decision in a B2B chatbot. Here is a sensible default for a wholesale website:
| Question | Chatbot answers from your site | Goes to your sales team |
|---|---|---|
| Product specs, ingredients, certifications | ✓ | |
| Pack sizes, case quantities, shelf life | ✓ If they are on the product page | |
| Delivery areas and standard lead times | ✓ If they are published | Exceptions and rush orders |
| How to open a trade account | ✓ | Approving the account |
| Trade prices, price lists | — Never | ✓ Locked topic |
| Volume quotes | — Never | ✓ Locked topic, with the details |
| Minimum order quantity | ✓ Only if one fixed MOQ is published | ✓ If it varies by product or account |
| Payment terms, credit, invoices | — Never | ✓ |
| Samples, custom products, private label | The published policy, if any | ✓ With company and contact |
Adjust it to your business. The rule of thumb: if a wrong answer would cost you money or a customer’s trust, a person answers it.
Why be so strict about prices? Because a chatbot speaks for your business. In 2024 a Canadian tribunal held Air Canada to a refund policy its chatbot had invented. A price your chatbot states is a price a buyer will hold you to.
Setting it up on any website, WordPress or WooCommerce
On any website, HolaReply is one line of code from HolaReply Desk. It reads your pages and products by itself, and you can upload files such as spec sheets (PDF, Word, text or CSV). On WordPress and WooCommerce it is a free plugin. The steps are the same on both. A Shopify app is coming soon to the Shopify App Store.
Index your catalogue and trade pages
Include WooCommerce products, your wholesale or trade page, delivery and returns pages, and FAQs. Leave out anything that only logged-in trade customers should see: a public chatbot should only know public content.
Add what isn’t written anywhere
Most wholesale sites never write down the answers buyers ask most: how to open an account, pallet delivery, how long a quote takes. Add them to the knowledge base as short questions and answers.
Lock the commercial topics
Add prices, price lists, quotes, discounts, payment terms and credit as locked topics. The assistant won’t answer them; it passes the conversation to your team straight away.
Ask for the buyer’s details at the right moment
Ask for name, email and company when a buyer asks for a price or quote, not before the chat starts. HolaReply’s default buying words already include “quote”, “price list”, “order”, “wholesale”, “bulk”, “invoice” and “samples”.
Test it as a buyer would
Ask for a spec, a pack size, a price, a quote for 500 units and a question in another language. Check that each enquiry reaches your sales inbox with the conversation.
straight from the growers.
Trade packs for kitchens, bakeries and shops. Order by the kilo or by the pallet.
Shop wholesaleView product
A wholesale product question answered from the product page, with the source shown.
Turning a quote request into a sale
When a buyer asks for a quote, your team needs five things to reply in one go: the product, the quantity, the delivery country, the timing and the company. A good chatbot conversation usually contains most of them already. Make sure the enquiry your team receives includes the whole conversation, so nobody emails the buyer to ask again.
With HolaReply Pro, every enquiry becomes a ticket in the Sales Desk. Your team can give it to the right person, set a priority and a follow-up date, add internal notes, and reply with a saved answer such as your price list request form. The reply reaches the buyer in their chat and by email, and the Desk bell tells the right person when a new quote request or the buyer’s answer arrives.
6 tickets · 1 follow-up due
The Sales Desk (Pro): each quote request as a ticket, with the whole conversation and a follow-up date.
Buyers who write in another language
Wholesale is international. A buyer in Spain or Germany will often ask in their own language. HolaReply replies in the language the question is written in, using your English content as the source, so you don’t have to translate your site first. Your team still receives the conversation and can reply in whichever language they use.
Find the gaps in your catalogue
Every question the assistant couldn’t answer tells you something your site doesn’t say. HolaReply Pro groups them in the unanswered questions report. Answer the common ones on your product pages or in the knowledge base, and the assistant answers them next time. For a wholesale site, this often surfaces missing pack sizes, lead times and certification details.
What visitors asked that your site doesn’t answer yet — most asked first.
The unanswered questions report (Pro): what buyers asked that your site doesn’t cover yet.
Privacy for business buyers
B2B conversations include company names and contact details. HolaReply removes names, email addresses, phone numbers and company names before any question is sent to the AI. On WordPress it keeps conversations and enquiries in your own WordPress database; on any website your team sees them in HolaReply Desk.
Try it as a buyer. The chat on this page is HolaReply, answering from this website. Ask it a question it can answer, then ask for a price it shouldn’t give, and see what happens.
“Can HolaReply send price questions to my sales team?”“Send me your price list for 500 units”
Open the chatWhat it costs
On any website, HolaReply is from $19 a month: Pro includes HolaReply Desk for your team and 500 AI conversations a month, with no AI key, and you can try it free for 7 days with no card. On WordPress, the free version includes answers from your site, locked topics and lead capture. Pro, with HolaReply Desk for your team, is $59 for one site, paid once. AI usage is billed by your provider on your own Gemini, OpenAI or Claude key, usually about $1.70 per 1,000 answers on Gemini Flash, with no per-message fees from us; or you can use HolaReply AI credits with no key, $12 per 1,000 answers. A Shopify app is coming soon to the Shopify App Store.
Questions people ask
Can an AI chatbot give trade prices?
It can, but it shouldn’t unless your prices are fixed and public. Trade prices usually depend on the account and the volume, so a person should quote them. Lock prices as a topic and the chatbot passes those questions to your team.
Can it show different information to logged-in trade customers?
HolaReply answers from public content only, the same for every visitor. Keep account-specific prices and terms out of its index and let your team handle them.
Does it work with WooCommerce wholesale plugins?
It reads your published WooCommerce products and pages. It doesn’t read prices set by wholesale pricing plugins for logged-in users, which is the safe behaviour for a public chatbot.
Will it capture the buyer’s company name?
Yes. The enquiry form can ask for the company, and the conversation goes to your team with it. The company name is never sent to the AI.
What if the AI service is down?
Buyers can still send an enquiry. HolaReply never loses a lead because the AI is unavailable.
Sources
Checked on 25 September 2026. Prices and features change; tell us in the chat if something here is out of date and we will fix it.
Founder of HolaReply. He builds AI assistants that answer only from a business’s own website, and checks every fact in these guides against the products’ own pages.
More by Maqsood R. →Answer trade buyers day and night. Let your team close the deal.
One line of code on Wix, Squarespace, Webflow or any website: 7 days free, no card. Free plugin for WordPress; Shopify app coming soon.