Chatfuel
How can I show a product catalog and answer sizing questions in WhatsApp before a customer places an order?
This is a different problem than setting up checkout. A customer asking "does this run small?" or "what fits a size 10?" isn't ready to order yet. They're deciding whether to. Answer that badly, or slowly, and there's no cart to recover later, because they never got that far in the first place.
The fix has two parts, and most stores only build the first one: show the catalog, so the customer can see what's available, and separately, answer whatever they ask about it in their own words, not the words you expected them to use.
Why scripted replies break on sizing questions specifically
Sizing questions come in more phrasings than almost any other pre-sale question: "runs small?", "true to size?", "what's a US 8 in your sizing?", "will this fit broad shoulders?" A flow built on exact-match keywords catches maybe a third of these and leaves the rest sitting unanswered, or worse, answered with an unrelated canned response that makes the bot look broken.
Chatfuel's AI Co-pilot is built around that gap. You describe the behavior in plain language, something like "when someone asks if an item runs true to size, check the product notes and answer from there, then ask what size they're considering," and it reads every incoming message as written. "Does this run small?" and "true to size?" get routed to the same logic, no need to anticipate every version of the question in advance.
Keep the catalog and the Q&A connected
A customer who gets a straight sizing answer but then has to go hunting for the actual product listing again has lost the thread. The catalog should surface right alongside the answer, in the same message or the very next one, so browsing and asking questions happen in one place instead of two disconnected steps.
Pro-tip: if your store sells across multiple size systems (US/EU/UK, or brand-specific sizing that runs differently by product line), put that conversion logic in the knowledge base the AI answers from, not in a separate PDF nobody on the team remembers to update.
When to let a human take it instead
Not every sizing question has a clean answer. "I'm between sizes, which do you recommend for a tighter fit?" is a judgment call, not a lookup. That's the moment to hand off to a person rather than have the bot guess and risk a return. Set that handoff point on purpose, the same way you would for any other ambiguous question, instead of letting the bot try to resolve everything by itself.
Try Chatfuel free and connect your WhatsApp catalog to an AI layer that answers the sizing question before someone decides whether to order.