An AI chatbot for small business
An AI chatbot for small business is mostly a tired-question machine. Yours answers the forty people a week who want to know your hours, what you charge for, whether you take walk-ins and whether you come out to their suburb. It is awake at 11pm, and it never sighs.
Get a free preview of your siteFree preview. No obligation.What an AI chatbot for small business actually does
It answers questions in plain language. Opening hours. What you offer. Whether you take walk-ins. How long a job usually takes. Whether you come out that far.
It replies to an enquiry the moment it lands, rather than whenever you next get your hands free. That is usually the whole difference between someone booking with you and booking with whoever answered first.
And it takes bookings while you are closed, which is when a lot of people sit on the couch and finally decide to sort something out.
A contact form, or this
- Collects a message and then waits for you.
- Answers nothing. Whether you cover their suburb is still a mystery to them.
- Needs you for every enquiry, including the one about parking.
- At 10pm on a Sunday it just sits there.
- Replies while the person is still on the page.
- Handles the easy ones outright, from what you told it.
- Only involves you when it genuinely needs you.
- Awake on a Sunday night, because that is when people decide things.
It only knows what you tell it
This is the part most people get wrong, and it is the most important thing on this page. A chatbot that makes things up is worse than no chatbot, because now your own website is confidently telling a customer something untrue, and they will believe it. It is your website.
So this one works from what you give us. Your services, your hours, your policies, your answers, in your words. We would rather it says it is not sure forty times than invent one answer that merely sounds right.
We have done this before, in a job where guessing would be worse. StickIt, which we built, reads a photographed receipt and categorises it against ATO rules, ready for an end-of-year report. Different job, same rule: be useful about what you know and honest about what you do not.
What happens when it does not know
A handover that works beats a bot that pretends, so we build the handover first.
- 01It says soNo waffle, no confident nonsense. It tells the person it cannot answer that one and that someone who can will.
- 02It hands overThe conversation comes to you with everything already said attached, so nobody is made to type it all out a second time.
- 03You answer onceYou reply, we fold your answer into what the chat knows, and that question is handled on its own from then on.
What you get
There is a working one on our homepage. Scroll to the AI features section and the conversation plays out as you go, opening with the question everyone opens with, which is how much does this cost.
- A chat built into your site, answering your real questions in your own words.
- Answers written from what you tell us, with a plain admission when it does not know.
- A handover that carries the whole conversation across to you.
- Enquiries followed up the moment they arrive instead of the next time you check your phone.
- Bookings taken while you are closed.
- Changes made whenever your hours, services or policies do.
The things people ask
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
There is no fixed price, because no two sites need the same things. We quote on what yours actually needs once we have talked about it. Before any of that, we build you a free preview so you can see the work before you decide anything. No obligation, nothing to pay.
Will it make things up about my business?
It is built to work from what you give it and to hand over to a human when it does not know. We will not promise you a machine that is never wrong, because nobody honestly can. What we will promise is that it is built to say so rather than guess, and that a confident wrong answer on your own website is the one thing we design hardest against.
Will people know they are talking to a bot?
Yes, and that is on purpose. It does not pretend to be you or to be someone called Sarah from the front desk. People are far more forgiving of a chat that is upfront about what it is and quick to fetch a human.
Do I need a new website to have one?
Not always. It is simplest when we build the site too, because the chat and the booking flow end up working together. If you already have a site, we will look at it and tell you honestly whether adding this is sensible or whether you are better off sorting the site out first.
Can it actually take a booking, or just talk about one?
It can take one, where your booking system allows it. The chat collects what the booking needs, puts it through, and you get the same notification you would from any other booking. For anything unusual it stops and passes it to you rather than wedging a tricky job into a tidy form.
What if I change my hours or stop offering something?
You tell us and we update it, the same as any other change to your site. It only knows what it has been given, which is the point, so keeping it current is a small ongoing job rather than something that silently rots.
Other things we do
And other people we do them for.
See it answering for you
Tell us about your business in thirty minutes and we will design you a free preview of your new site. No obligation, nothing to pay.
Get my free preview