Chatbot, live chat or contact form: which one your website needs.

A contact form

Your team answers, whenever someone gets to it. The visitor writes once and waits, so the form should say how soon you reply, right next to the send button, and you have to keep to it. A good form asks for a name, a way to reply and what they need, plus a choice of service if that changes who answers. Nothing more.

It takes the least staff time of the three. Someone reads and replies in batches, between other work, and every enquiry arrives in writing. The cost is speed: a visitor comparing several businesses may book with whoever answers first.

Live chat

A person answers in real time, but only while someone is watching. Outside those hours it turns into a message form, and a chat that says "online" with nobody behind it is worse than no chat at all.

It takes the most staff time. Someone has to keep the window open for every hour it shows as available and drop other work when a chat starts, because visitors expect an answer almost at once. Chats also tend to arrive when you are busiest, such as Saturday morning in a salon.

It is worth it when a quick answer from a person often decides a sale and someone sits at a desk all day anyway, such as a busy online store whose team answers questions about sizes and delivery.

An AI chatbot

A chatbot answers at once, at any hour, from information you approve, such as your services, prices, opening hours and policies. When the answer is not there, it says so and offers a person. It can also take an enquiry or a booking request and pass it to your team with what was said.

Its staff time comes mostly before launch: collecting the questions customers really ask and testing the answers. After that, someone reads conversations now and then, fixes answers at their source and picks up the handovers.

In health, legal or financial work it never advises on someone's own situation. It collects the details and hands over to a person.

When a simple form is the right answer

If enquiries arrive slowly and each one needs a careful look before anyone can answer, a good form is enough. A chatbot there would mostly answer questions nobody asks. A form also fits work that starts with photos or documents, such as a quote for a roof repair: people attach what you need, and you reply once you have looked.

The same goes for a new business that does not yet know what customers ask. Start with a short form and a clear page of answers, read what comes in, and add a chatbot when the same questions keep arriving.

How they work together

They combine well. A chatbot answers the repeated questions at any hour, hands over to live chat while someone is on duty and takes the details for an email reply when nobody is. A customer service chatbot for a small team usually works this way.

Keep the form for people who would rather write. Send all three to one place, so an enquiry from the chatbot looks the same in your inbox as one from the form, and nothing waits in a second inbox nobody checks.

Mistakes that cost enquiries

• A chat window that opens by itself and covers the booking button on a phone. Let visitors open it when they want it.
• A chatbot that hides that it is automated. Say so in the chat window, in plain words.
• A chatbot that asks for an email address before it answers anything. Answer first, and ask for details when there is a reason to.
• A form that shows no message after sending, so people send it twice or wonder whether it worked.

Each of these is quick to fix and loses enquiries for as long as it stays.

How to choose

Read through the last few months of enquiries. If most are the same questions, a chatbot will save your team the most time. If most need a person to judge, put the effort into a short form and fast replies. Check when they arrive, too: if many come in the evening or at weekends, live chat cannot cover them, while a chatbot or a good form can.

Choose live chat only if you can staff it for every hour it shows as open. See AI chatbots for how we build and test one, and what a chatbot should hand over for where it should stop.