At 11:47pm on a Tuesday, a buyer asks your Etsy shop if an item will arrive before a birthday on Saturday. You are asleep. At 8am Wednesday, you read the message and respond. By then, the buyer has already purchased elsewhere.
This happens regularly. Active independent sellers see versions of it dozens of times a month. The question was routine, and the answer was available in your shop policies and tracking data. The sale disappeared because of the response window, not because of inventory or price.
We built the Seltova reply agent to close that gap. Here is what it handles and where it stops.
What makes a buyer question routine
Before assigning message handling to an agent, you need to know which messages it can answer automatically and which ones still need you.
Our pilot data shows that roughly 65 to 75 percent of buyer messages are routine. Common examples include:
- Shipping timing questions ("will this arrive by X date?")
- Order tracking questions ("where is my package?")
- Return or exchange policy questions
- Customization questions ("can I get another color/size?")
- Combined shipping or bundle questions
- Basic listing questions about dimensions or materials
Your store policies, live order tracking, and product listings provide the source material for these answers. The agent does not invent details. It finds the relevant information and writes a direct response.
How the agent processes messages
When a buyer message arrives, the agent reads and sorts it. Can it answer correctly using the store information available, or does the message call for your judgment?
For a routine question, the agent drafts a response from your store information in your voice. During setup, you review and approve response templates that establish the tone and wording. Those templates act as the style guide. The result reads like a note from you rather than a support ticket because the phrasing starts with your own words.
The response is sent within two minutes, any time of day or night. Buyers get a reply speed they may not expect from an independent shop. Etsy displays that speed in seller statistics, and it can influence how the shop ranks in search.
When a message is outside the routine set, the agent flags it instead of replying. It appears in your morning summary with a short explanation. You take over when the question is genuinely complex or the buyer has a complaint.
Why response time affects sales
Etsy publishes seller response time on your shop profile, where buyers can see it. Its algorithm also treats response time as a ranking signal. A shop promising a response "within an hour" presents differently from one promising "within a few days."
Sellers who cannot watch messages all day see response times stretch. A message arriving at 10pm may wait until 9am for an answer. That is an 11-hour gap. Across a month of messages arriving at different hours, the average rises, and Etsy may show the shop less prominently.
The agent removes that delay for routine messages, answering in under two minutes at any hour. Your response-time metric reflects those replies. Sellers using the agent for a few months report average response times falling to under 10 minutes, even when they personally review messages only once daily.
A typical handoff
Take a digital print shop seller with 40 active listings. Buyers often ask before purchasing about file format, resolution, or design changes for a custom size. She has answered these questions hundreds of times.
Before Seltova, she kept saved replies in a folder, pasted them into messages, and made small edits. Each response still took a few minutes, so she handled them each morning. Messages accumulated through evenings and weekends.
She connected the reply agent and used those saved replies as the initial style templates. The agent now handles messages matching her standard question patterns. Requests needing her judgment, such as non-standard sizes, new color schemes, or work outside her offerings, are flagged with the relevant context: the listing, the buyer's words, and her modification policy.
Her personal review time fell from 30 to 40 minutes daily to about 10 minutes. That 10 minutes covers only the flagged messages that truly need her.
Customization and the automation boundary
Customization is one area where sellers often have questions. Handmade and independent shops may offer several custom options, and some requests are complicated. We want to be clear about how the agent handles them.
If a customization question has a yes-or-no answer in the listing, such as "yes I offer custom colors from this palette" or "no I do not offer size changes," the agent can answer it accurately. It checks the listing's customization details first.
Open-ended requests involving a quote or discussion are flagged immediately. The agent does not try to negotiate bespoke work. We are not claiming it can manage every inbox conversation. Its job is to absorb routine volume and leave the decisions that matter to you.
Reply agent setup
Setup centers on two jobs: defining "routine" for your shop and creating a library of response styles.
A short onboarding flow asks about your standard policies and presents draft replies for common message types. You review sample messages, edit anything that sounds wrong, and approve the rest. After about 30 minutes of setup, the agent has a practical model of how you communicate with buyers.
You can also adjust the classification threshold. A conservative setting flags messages that are even slightly unclear. If your volume is high and routine questions follow clear patterns, you can allow a wider range. Most sellers begin conservatively, then loosen the setting after reviewing performance against their real message patterns.
Buyer communication can feel personal while still being repetitive. When you answer the same shipping question for the 80th time, little judgment is being added. The agent handles those 80 replies so you can give full attention to the one conversation that truly requires you.