Four things that actually matter
- Trains on your content — crawl and documents, not a script you write by hand
- Hands over to a person, visibly, on every screen
- Captures leads with the conversation attached
- Reports what it could not answer
The fourth is the one nobody asks about and the one that keeps improving your website for years. Ask to see it before you buy anything.
What you can ignore at small scale
- Elaborate conversation flow builders — a well-trained bot needs few
- Deep enterprise integrations you will not configure
- Sentiment dashboards with no action attached
- Voice, unless you have a specific reason
- Anything requiring a dedicated administrator
Questions for any vendor
| Question | What a good answer sounds like |
|---|---|
| How does it learn our business? | Crawl, documents, description |
| What does it do when it does not know? | Says so, offers a person |
| Can we see unanswered questions? | Yes, as a list you can export |
| What happens to conversation data? | A clear retention answer |
| How long to set up? | Hours, not weeks |
Try before you commit
Any chatbot worth using will let you train it on your own site and test it before you pay. Ask your twenty real questions and see what happens.
A vendor who will only demonstrate on their own content is showing you their content, not your outcome.
Cost should scale with use
Pricing that starts free or very low and grows with message volume suits a small business. Large fixed platform fees rarely do.
Check what happens when you exceed a limit — whether it stops, queues or charges, and whether you are told.