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Shops and e-commerceGrok Bot

Have Grok Bot build an AI phone line that checks orders and changes them safely

Picked and checked by Olga Pearson, host of The Practical AI Show · Published

Result

self-reported

Built an AI phone agent in about two days, and it’s now Beardbrand’s main support line. The voice costs about 8 cents a minute and the middle service runs on Cloudflare’s free tier.

Eric Bandholz, founder of Beardbrand, had his Grok Bot build a phone support agent on xAI’s voice builder, connected to Shopify and Recharge through a small Cloudflare Worker so store keys never touch the agent. It gives order status with a real delivery date, changes unshipped addresses, handles lost packages and subscription skips, and emails a checkout link instead of taking cards. Private changes need a 6-digit code sent to the email on file. Every call lands on a dashboard inside Shopify admin.

Who did it

Eric Bandholz (@bandholz)Beardbrand (men’s grooming brand, Shopify store)Eric Bandholz on X · Oct 10, 2026

Try it now

  1. Start with lookups only: order status and delivery date. Add one action at a time after that.
  2. Put a small service between the AI and your store, so the AI never holds your Shopify keys.
  3. Require two matching details for status, and a code emailed to the address on file for anything private or any change.
  4. Never send callers somewhere else: if it can’t finish, it takes a message and emails your team.
  5. Test it like a scammer would, then have someone who isn’t you test it before it goes live.
Copy-paste prompt
Help me build an AI phone support line for [store] using [voice tool] and my [Shopify] store. Phase 1 is lookups only: order status with the expected delivery date. Put a small service between the voice agent and the store so the agent never sees API keys. Verification: two matching details for status; a 6-digit code emailed to the address on file for anything private or any change. The agent never reads back personal info and never says why verification failed. Log every call to a dashboard with time, reason, verified or not, and outcome. Give me the build plan and the test script before we go live.

Make it run every week

A play works once. Turn it into a routine in three small steps:

  1. Run it once and check the result yourself.
  2. Give your AI a schedule. Tell it when to run this play (every week, or every month) and to message you with what it found before you act.
  3. Keep a log. One line per run: what was checked, anything flagged, what you did.

See how owners turn plays into systems →

What to watch out for

Self-reported by the founder. Early on, the agent read back a stranger’s name and email when he gave it a wrong name, which is why the two-level check exists. Don’t take payment over the phone. Build it with Page: a help page with the new phone number and your hours.

Did it work?

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