What do food delivery customers, couriers and restaurants contact you about?
Most contacts concern an order that is live or just delivered, and come from customers, couriers and restaurants. In a 2021 Which? investigation, 59% of Deliveroo customers and 53% of Just Eat and Uber Eats customers reported a problem with at least one order in the previous 12 months, most often late delivery, cold food or missing items.
| Conversation type | Can Agent resolve it? | Hand off when | Data Agent needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where is my order, or it is running late | Yes. Reads live status and ETA and applies your lateness credit | No courier assigned, or well past the promised time (Example: 30 minutes) | Order state, courier ETA, lateness policy |
| Missing or wrong items | Yes, up to your refund cap per order | Over the cap, repeat claims, or a wrong item containing the customer's allergen | Itemized order, claim history, payment method |
| Marked delivered but never arrived | Sometimes. Compares the drop-off photo and location with the address pin | Photo shows the right door, high-value order, or a second claim this month | Proof-of-delivery photo, drop-off coordinates |
| Cold, spilled or crushed food | Yes, partial refund or credit under your policy | Broken tamper seal, foreign object, or the customer feels unwell | Photos, order items, pickup-to-drop-off time |
| Cancel an order or change the address | Yes, until the restaurant starts cooking; then by your cancellation rules | Already picked up, or a disputed cancellation fee | Order state, cancellation policy |
| Fees, promo codes and membership billing | Yes. Explains fees, applies eligible promos, cancels memberships | Refunds across several billing periods, or a threatened chargeback | Fee breakdown, promo rules, subscription status |
| Allergen and ingredient questions | Only by quoting the restaurant's published allergen information | Any reported reaction, at once | Allergen data from each restaurant |
| Courier at drop-off: wrong address, no answer | Yes. Messages the customer, updates instructions, starts your wait-time rule | The courier feels unsafe | Live order, customer contact route |
| Courier pay, tips and account status | Explains a delivery's pay breakdown and resends statements | Pay disputes, and every account restriction or appeal | Delivery records and pay statements, read only |
| Restaurant: tablet offline, item sold out, store paused | Yes. Marks items unavailable, pauses or reopens the store, resends missed orders | Repeated outages at peak, payout or adjustment disputes | Merchant account, menu, integration status |
Example scope for a delivery app, or a restaurant group running its own couriers. Set caps and timings from your own policy.
Give each party its own procedures and permissions. If you run the kitchen rather than the app, see AI customer service for restaurants; multi-seller platforms should read marketplaces.
What does an AI procedure for missing or wrong items look like?
Start with missing and wrong items: they are among the most common complaints, and every answer moves money. Agent turns each line below into steps that call your order platform and payment processor.
Example procedure: missing or wrong items
- Find the order. Use the order the chat was opened from. By email or SMS, match the account and list orders delivered in the last 48 hours.
- Check the window. Accept claims up to 24 hours after delivery; later ones go to a person.
- Ask item by item. Show the itemized order, ask what was missing or wrong and what arrived instead. Ask for a photo when a claim is worth more than $25.
- Screen for safety first. If the customer mentions an allergy, a reaction, feeling sick, a broken seal or something in the food, stop the claim and escalate to the safety queue. If the customer reports symptoms such as swelling or difficulty breathing, Agent's first reply names emergency services and the conversation goes straight to the safety queue.
- Check claim history. Three or more claims in 30 days, or a claim above $40, means no refund from Agent: say a specialist will review it within 2 hours and route it to risk review. Never say the account is under suspicion.
- Offer the remedy. Refund the items and their tax to the original card through Stripe, or the same amount as app credit if the customer prefers. Cap: $40 per order. Delivery and service fees stay.
- Record fault. Tag the claim restaurant-fault (packing) or courier-fault (handoff) and send restaurant-fault claims to the merchant team by webhook. A person approves any merchant adjustment.
- Escalate on negative sentiment after the remedy, a threatened chargeback, legal threats or a health department complaint.
Example conversation (in-app chat, names invented)
Customer: My order came without the garlic naan, and the lassi is mango, not sweet.
Agent: Sorry about that, Priya. Order 4821 from Spice Route was delivered 12 minutes ago; the naan and sweet lassi come to $9.13 with tax. I've added that as credit you can use now, or I can refund your card ending 4417 instead. I've also told Spice Route so they can check their packing.
Under the cap and the photo threshold, so Agent resolved it and tagged it restaurant-fault.
What guardrails does a food delivery AI agent need?
Agent can move money and change live orders, so cap both, and keep health, safety and decisions about people's income with your team.
What Agent must never do
- Tell a customer a dish is safe for their allergy. It quotes the restaurant's published allergen information and nothing else. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Food Standards Agency best-practice guidance (not a legal requirement) says written allergen information should be available before ordering and again on delivery.
- Comment on symptoms after a meal. A reported reaction or suspected food poisoning goes to a person immediately, with emergency services named first if the symptoms sound serious.
- Restrict, suspend or deactivate a courier or a restaurant. People make those calls. In the EU, the Platform Work Directive, which member states must transpose by December 2026, requires that any decision to restrict, suspend or end a platform worker's account be taken by a human being.
- Refund or credit above its cap, refund to a different payment method, or waive fees your policy does not allow.
- Accuse a customer of abuse or refuse a refund with no route to a person, or share a courier's phone number, surname or location after delivery.
What triggers a handoff
Keywords your safety lead owns (allergy, reaction, hospital, sick, tampered, glass, crash, injured, police, threat, harassed), negative sentiment, legal language, a threatened chargeback or health department complaint, account flags such as repeat claims or top-tier members, and restaurant partners with a named account manager. The claims team gets the order and everything Agent tried.
Data handling
Every procedure step runs through a connector whose permissions you grant and can revoke, so you can give Agent a courier's ETA without raw location history, and refund rights without access to payouts. Aftersales' GDPR DPA and US hosting details are on the security page. Your business stays responsible for local delivery rules, such as New York City's licensing, fee cap and tip disclosure requirements for third-party delivery apps.
Which channels should a food delivery app automate first?
Start with in-app chat, where Agent already knows which order the customer means.
- SMS. For customers who ordered on the web, and for couriers who need a two-line answer at the curb.
- Phone. Couriers on a bike and kitchen staff mid-service often call instead of typing. On Growth and Scale, calls land in the same Inbox with per-brand numbers, so each city keeps its own line.
- WhatsApp. Add it in markets where customers and couriers already message that way.
- Email. Refund confirmations, restaurant statements and longer disputes.
Delay alerts should still come from your order system as push notifications. Agent answers the questions they prompt, so "where is my food?" rarely needs a person.
What systems does a food delivery AI agent connect to?
Your order and dispatch platform is the core. Aftersales connects to it, and to your courier and merchant back ends, through the Aftersales API or webhooks. Confirm specific connectors on a call.
- Order and dispatch platform: lookup, ETA, cancellation, address changes, redelivery.
- Courier back end: delivery history and pay statements. Grant read access to account status, never write access.
- Merchant back end or POS integration: menu availability, store pause and missed orders.
- Payments: Stripe for refunds if you process cards with it; other processors and your credits wallet through the API.
- Risk data: claim history and any risk score you already calculate.
- Salesforce: restaurant partner accounts, if your merchant team works there.
- Slack and Jira: outage alerts to city ops and POS bugs to engineering.
- Knowledge: refund and lateness policies, courier FAQs, merchant guides and city rules in one Knowledge source.
What does an AI agent cost a food delivery app?
For the delivery app below: $10,035.00 a month on annual billing, about $0.67 per conversation.
Assumptions (Example):
- A delivery app in four cities.
- 15,000 conversations a month: roughly 70% customers, 20% couriers and 10% restaurants.
- Agent resolves 62% (9,300), lower than the 71% median Aftersales reports after 90 days, because safety reports, risk reviews and courier account questions always go to people.
- 12 support agents on Growth, annual billing. Four city managers, a finance approver and a safety lead approve on free Lite seats.
| Item | Calculation | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Growth seats | 12 × $69 | $828.00 |
| Agent resolutions | 9,300 × $0.99 | $9,207.00 |
| Lite seats (6 managers and approvers) | Free; Growth includes 20 | $0.00 |
| Handed-off conversations | No charge | $0.00 |
| Total | $10,035.00 |
Annual list prices as of October 2026; seats cost 20% more on monthly billing. The Copilot add-on ($29 per rep a month, annual) is not included.
A rainy Friday adds $0.99 per resolved conversation, not more seats. If your team prefers to stay in Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud or Freshdesk, Agent on its own works inside that tool and is billed per resolution, with a minimum monthly commitment. Plan details are on the pricing page.
How should a delivery app phase in an AI agent over 30 days?
Go live in order of risk and time of day: read-only answers first, money second, peak hours last.
- Days 1 to 7: connect the order platform read-only, load Knowledge, and get sign-off from support, finance and your safety lead on refund caps, the claim-history rule and the keyword list.
- Days 8 to 14: test on last month's tickets with personal details removed, then go live on in-app chat for order status and cancellations during weekday afternoons.
- Days 15 to 21: switch on refunds and credits within the caps, add the courier drop-off procedure on SMS and phone, and turn on Monitors (Growth and up) to grade each conversation.
- Days 22 to 30: run Agent through a Friday and Saturday dinner peak with a person watching the handoff queue, add the restaurant procedures, then review results in Insights.
Count resolutions honestly with our resolution rate guide, and borrow order-status wording from our WISMO guide.