Project · Block Moulds UK Ltd

Block Moulds UK Ltd (formerly trading as MWR Fab Ltd) manufactures precast concrete block moulds from their facility in Cumbria. Their customers are construction contractors, civils contractors and architects who need specific mould types for specific projects — often at short notice.

The architecture

Block Moulds' chatbot is built on a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture. The LLM (in this case OpenAI's GPT-4) is given access to a structured knowledge base derived directly from the WooCommerce product catalogue and a curated FAQ document.

When a contractor asks 'do you make a 150mm slot block in retaining wall finish', the LLM doesn't try to remember from training data — it queries the knowledge base, retrieves the relevant product entries, and answers based on what it found. If the knowledge base has the answer, the chatbot gives a direct, accurate response. If it doesn't, the chatbot says so and captures the question.

The chatbot frontend is a small custom WordPress plugin embedded on the Block Moulds site. The plugin handles conversation state, conversation logging in custom WordPress database tables, integration with Twilio for SMS, and the connection to the OpenAI API. All on Block Moulds' own hosting and infrastructure — no third-party chatbot SaaS dashboard.

How the SMS routing works

The SMS routing is one of the features that makes the Block Moulds chatbot more than a glorified FAQ widget.

When the chatbot identifies a qualified quote enquiry — bespoke mould request, large volume, custom specification, time-sensitive project — it captures the contractor's name, phone number, project context and key requirements. It then composes a structured SMS via Twilio and sends it to a designated sales team mobile number.

The SMS is concise and actionable: 'New quote enquiry: John Smith, 07xxx xxx xxx. 50no. 150mm slot blocks, retaining wall, delivery to Cockermouth by 14 March. Full transcript: link.' The salesperson can ring the contractor immediately or open the full transcript via a link.

Out of hours, the SMS still lands. Whether the sales team responds at 11pm or 8am the next morning is their judgement call — but the lead is captured, the customer knows someone will follow up, and the opportunity isn't lost.

The knowledge base that powers it

The chatbot's accuracy is only as good as its knowledge base. For Block Moulds, the knowledge base is built from two sources.

Primary source: WooCommerce product catalogue. Product names, dimensions, finishes, lead times, stock availability and pricing bands are pulled directly from the live catalogue at every conversation. When the product team adds a new mould or updates stock, the chatbot picks it up immediately — no separate sync process to remember.

Secondary source: curated FAQ document. Maintained by the sales team in a Google Doc. Covers questions that aren't strictly product-related: typical delivery times, payment terms, custom mould lead times, the design service, transport considerations, returns policy. The chatbot reads the latest version of the Google Doc at every conversation.

When new questions come up that aren't well-answered, they get added to the FAQ. The conversation logs surface common questions the chatbot couldn't answer — so the knowledge base gets steadily better month on month.

Brand safety — what the chatbot will not do

A chatbot for a serious B2B business needs to be cautious, not creative.

The Block Moulds chatbot is engineered with explicit guardrails:

No invented prices. If a specific price isn't in the knowledge base, the chatbot doesn't speculate. It captures the enquiry and routes it to the sales team for proper quoting.

No invented lead times. Lead times depend on workshop scheduling, materials availability and order book status — none of which the chatbot can know in real time. So for anything beyond standard catalogue items, the chatbot says delivery time needs confirmation from the sales team.

No competitor commentary. The chatbot won't comment on other suppliers, won't compare prices, won't speculate about quality differences. It stays focused on what Block Moulds offers.

No promises Block Moulds hasn't authorised. Custom finishes, bespoke designs, special transport arrangements — all routed to humans for proper authorisation.

The result is a chatbot that handles the simple enquiries well and gets out of the way of the complex ones. Customers trust it more because it's transparent about what it doesn't know.

What we won't claim

AI chatbots are genuinely useful but they aren't magic. Some honest caveats from real production experience:

The chatbot will sometimes misread the intent of an unusual question. We tune the prompts based on conversation logs each month, and the system gets noticeably better — but in the early weeks of any deployment, some conversations are awkward. Sales team review of edge cases is part of the launch process.

Some customers prefer to speak to a human. The chatbot has an explicit 'I want to talk to a person' fallback that routes the conversation to email or callback request. We don't push customers through an AI gauntlet against their wishes.

The chatbot is only as good as the underlying knowledge base. If your products, pricing or processes aren't documented well, the chatbot will struggle. The first week of any chatbot project is usually structuring the knowledge base properly — that work pays back over years of better answers.

And: a chatbot is not a replacement for a sales team. It is a force multiplier for one. The Block Moulds deployment works because there's a sales team behind it that actually responds to the leads it generates.

What this proves

The Block Moulds chatbot is a demonstration that AI chatbots are well-suited to B2B businesses with structured product catalogues and qualified-lead workflows.

The pattern works particularly well when: the product or service has a finite catalogue that can be documented; there are standard questions customers ask that don't require human judgement; the qualifying questions for a quote can be specified in advance; the sales team prefers warm leads over cold cold-call follow-up; and the cost of a missed out-of-hours enquiry is high relative to the cost of an AI chatbot deployment.

That description fits a lot of UK businesses. Specialist manufacturing, building supplies, technical services, professional B2B services, equipment hire, plant and machinery suppliers, civils contractors, electrical wholesale — wherever there's a catalogue of products or services and qualifying questions to ask before quoting.

If that describes your business, an AI chatbot like the one Block Moulds runs is worth a conversation. The architecture transfers; the specifics adapt to your context.

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