Bilkalek: how AI agents answer the phone for an online herb store
Over 3,000 calls in three weeks, 83–89% of orders confirmed, and one lesson we didn't expect: sometimes it's better not to call everyone. The Bilkalek case, with real numbers.
Bilkalek sells herbal teas, capsules and supplements online. There is no shop you can walk into — there is a phone that rings, and thousands of orders every month.
We have worked with Bilkalek since spring 2026. The first voice agents picked up the phone on 20 April. Since then they take orders, confirm website orders and remind people about parcels waiting at a courier office.
This article is about what worked, what didn't, and what we would tell any online store thinking about the same thing. With numbers we measured, not numbers we promised.
The numbers in short
- 3,061 conversations in the first three weeks of September: 1,117 inbound calls, 1,486 confirmation calls and 458 reminders about uncollected parcels.
- Between 83% and 89% of the people who answer confirm their order — measured on different days in August and September.
- 43% of inbound calls end with an order on the day we analysed in detail (32 of 75), compared with 37% with the old greeting.
- 2 people out of 75 asked to speak to a human.
Agent 1: takes orders over the phone
Many Bilkalek customers don't order on the website. They call — they want to ask something before they buy, or they would rather say their address than type it.
The inbound agent handles the whole conversation:
- Product and quantity — with the bundle price, not the single price multiplied by three. It knows the amount above which delivery is free, and says so.
- Office or address — it checks the Econt office the caller names against the real list of offices and suggests the nearest ones if there is no match. It also accepts Speedy and Pigeon offices.
- Product questions — answered from the store's catalogue, not from general knowledge.
- Large quantities — for 5 or more items it hands over to a colleague, who calls back with an offer.
- Existing orders — it finds the caller's orders and can cancel one on request. If someone wants a change, it is recorded on the same order instead of creating a second one.
- Complaints — logged as a "case" for the team, together with the call recording.
When someone says "I want to talk to a person", the agent doesn't argue. It takes a message and a colleague calls back.
"Digital assistant" — and it doesn't scare people off
At the start of the call the agent says it is a digital assistant. We worried that people would hang up. We measured it: the share of calls where the caller stays silent or hangs up straight away stayed the same — 16% before and after.
People don't want to be fooled. They want their order taken.
Agent 2: confirms website orders
The second agent calls people who ordered on the website, during working hours. It reads back what they ordered and the total including delivery — because being surprised by the amount at the door is a common reason for refusing a parcel.
During the call it can confirm or cancel the order, ask for a missing courier office, change a quantity or postpone the delivery. It also catches duplicate orders — when someone ordered the same thing twice because they weren't sure the first one went through.
Between 83% and 89% of the people who answer confirm. The rest either cancel — and the goods don't travel for nothing — or ask for a change, which is recorded before the shipping label is printed.
The lesson we didn't expect: don't call everyone
This is where the case gets interesting.
Bilkalek's warehouse is fast — labels for new orders are printed almost immediately. If every order waits for a call, the warehouse waits for the agent. With thousands of orders a month, that slows delivery down for everyone, including the people who would have collected their parcel anyway.
So the owner decided: the agent calls only when there is a reason. In the order system, a team member presses one button — "Call: office", "delayed", "stock", "quantity" — and the agent has exactly that conversation.
One of the most common reasons is the courier office. Customers type it by hand — "near the station", "Econt on Levski", "in the centre". Between 15 September and 3 October, 584 of 2,861 orders (about 20%) had an office or town the system couldn't recognise with certainty. When a person fixes them, it typically takes around 2 hours from the order to the fix. With the button, the agent calls right away, asks, and records the answer.
The takeaway for any store: confirmation is not "call everyone or no one". Call where the risk is real.
Agent 3: reminds people about parcels waiting at an office
A parcel that sits at a courier office with nobody collecting it is the most expensive kind of refusal: the goods have travelled, delivery has been paid, and a few days later it goes back — paid again.
The third agent calls people whose parcel has been waiting at an Econt, Speedy or Pigeon office for about three working days. It calls in two windows during the day, to catch people both before and after work. If the person says they don't want it, the agent first reminds them what they ordered. If they say they never ordered anything, the agent apologises and doesn't call again.
The outcome — "will collect" or "refuses" — is recorded next to the order.
Everything ends up in one place
None of these calls lives on its own. The recording, the transcript and the outcome sit next to the order in Bilkalek's system — a custom ERP we built for them. We describe it in a separate article.
What we would tell any online store
- Start with inbound calls. That's where the money is easiest to see: every answered call is an order that would otherwise go elsewhere.
- Don't call everyone. Call where the order is risky — an unclear office, a duplicate order, a parcel that is waiting.
- Say the total with delivery. A surprise at the door is a refusal that could have been avoided.
- Let the agent say it's an agent. It costs nothing and saves awkward moments.
- Measure from day one. Without numbers you can't tell whether the agent helps — or just sounds good.
If you run an online store and want to hear how such an agent would sound with your products, see how the AI phone agent works or what we do for online stores. We build a demo with your catalogue — you call it and try it yourself.
Octupo — AI voice agents for businesses in Bulgaria contact@octupo.com