"Photo ekak ewanna" is one of the most common messages a Sri Lankan shop receives. People buy clothes and jewellery with their eyes, and a price without a picture rarely closes.
How it should work
The photo arrives with the reply as its caption, so the customer sees the item and the price together rather than a bare image they have to ask about.
The failure that matters
Sending the wrong photo is worse than sending nothing. A customer who is shown a saree when they asked about a sarong does not think "close enough" — they think this shop does not know its own stock.
This is not hypothetical. It is exactly what happened in our first live demo, and the cause was mundane: a catalogue image that had been added without anyone looking at it properly. The photo file was valid, the product name was right, and the picture was wrong.
What prevents it
- 1The agent may only send an image attached to a product that is actually in the catalogue — never one it found elsewhere.
- 2It may only send a photo for the product currently being discussed, not a similar-sounding one.
- 3If no photo exists, it should say so and offer to check with the shop, rather than substituting something close.
- 4Somebody should look at every catalogue photo once. A wrong image passes every automated check ever written.
That last point is unglamorous and is the one that actually saves you. Photos are the only part of a catalogue a computer cannot verify for you.
Photos the other way
Customers also send photos — a screenshot of something they saw, or a picture of an item they want to match. A good agent looks at the image and responds to it rather than pretending it cannot see an attachment.