Ernest is an AI chatbot for WordPress and WooCommerce. It answers your customers’ support questions around the clock, in their own language, using your real store content. This plugin adds the Ernest live chat widget to your site — paste your workspace slug from the Ernest dashboard and the chat widget appears on your storefront.
Unlike a scripted chatbot, Ernest learns from your own website: your FAQ pages, shipping and returns policies, and product catalogue. On WooCommerce stores, connecting your store from the Ernest dashboard also lets the chatbot look up live order status and help customers manage their orders — so it works as a lightweight AI helpdesk, not just a chat box.
Common questions it handles without a human: where is my order, what is your return policy, do you ship to my country, is this in stock, how do I care for this product.
Features:
- 24/7 AI chatbot that answers customer support questions instantly
- Live chat widget for any WordPress site — no coding required
- Trained on your own website content, FAQ pages and policies
- WooCommerce order status lookup, cancellations and returns (via the Ernest dashboard connection)
- Replies in the customer’s own language
- Hands off to your team by email when a question needs a human — a small helpdesk without the ticket queue
- Customizable appearance — color, position, greeting, and suggested questions are configured in the Ernest dashboard, no re-embed needed
- Lightweight: one deferred script, isolated from your theme’s CSS
Who it’s for
Small and mid-size WordPress and WooCommerce stores that want AI customer service without per-seat helpdesk pricing. If you currently answer the same shipping, returns and order status questions by hand, the chatbot handles them and escalates the rest.
What it does not do
Ernest is a chat and email agent. It has no phone, SMS, WhatsApp or Instagram channel, and it does not issue refunds on its own — refunds always wait for your approval in the dashboard.
External Services
This plugin relies on Ernest, a third-party service operated at heyernest.ai. It is required for the plugin to function — the plugin is a thin integration and does not work without it.
- The chat widget script is loaded from heyernest.ai on your site’s public pages whenever a workspace slug is configured. On each such page load, the visitor’s browser contacts heyernest.ai to fetch the widget and its configuration; like any web request, this sends standard request data such as the visitor’s IP address and user agent.
- When a visitor uses the chat widget, their messages (and the workspace slug identifying your account) are sent to Ernest’s service to generate support replies.
- No data is sent to Ernest while no workspace slug is configured.
Ernest’s terms of service: https://heyernest.ai/terms Ernest’s privacy policy: https://heyernest.ai/privacy