How to add an AI chatbot to your business website.

Start with the jobs, not the tool

Write down the three to five things the chatbot should do. Most businesses need some of these: answer repeated questions, take enquiries or booking requests, send visitors to the right person and hand over when it should.

A short list keeps the chatbot honest. Each job becomes something you can test: did it answer correctly, did it collect the right details, did it hand over at the right moment.

Collect the questions people really ask

Go through your inbox, phone notes and messages from the last few months and copy the questions customers asked, in their own words. Thirty real questions are worth more than a long brainstorm.

Group them: opening hours and location, services and prices, booking and availability, policies, problems. The groups show you which information the chatbot needs.

Decide what it may answer from

A business chatbot should answer from information you approve: your website pages, price list, policies and a short document of answers for the questions your site does not cover.

Point it at pages you already keep up to date. When your opening hours or prices change, the chatbot changes with them.

When the answer is not in the approved information, the chatbot should say so and offer a person. That one rule prevents most of the problems people fear from AI.

Plan the handover

Decide when a conversation goes to a person and how: an email to the right inbox, a message in your team chat or a call-back request. Include what was said so far, so nobody asks the customer again.

Some topics should always go to a person: complaints, refunds, anything medical, legal or financial about the visitor's own situation, and anything urgent.

Connect it to where the work happens

A booking request should land where your team works: the booking system, the CRM, a shared inbox or a spreadsheet. Check the API of each tool before you promise an integration.

Start simple. A clean email summary is often enough for the first month; deeper integrations can follow once you see what visitors ask for.

Settle data and costs up front

Decide which AI provider processes the conversations, where they are stored, for how long and who can read them. Ask only for the details a request needs, and update your privacy notice.

AI providers charge per conversation. Estimate the monthly cost from your traffic and set a daily limit, so a spike or a bot cannot run up a bill.

Test with real questions before launch

Run your collected questions through it, plus a few awkward ones: something off topic, something it should refuse, an urgent case. Fix the sources or the rules until the answers are right.

Ask someone who did not build it to try to break it. They find the gaps faster than you.

Read the conversations after launch

For the first weeks, read the conversations every few days. They show the questions your website does not answer yet, and where the chatbot hands over too late or too early.

Fix the sources rather than single answers. A clearer page helps the chatbot, your visitors and your search results at the same time.

The assistant in the corner of this site is built this way. See the AI chatbots service for how we build one for a business.