How do you get a chatbot on your website: build it, buy one or hire someone?
There are three routes: turn on a chat tool your website platform already offers, buy a chatbot product, or hire someone to build one for your business. The first two are often quicker to start. A custom build tends to fit when the chatbot must work with your own tools or follow your rules closely. Whichever you choose, the work that matters is yours: approved answers, a handoff to a person and a plain statement that it is automated.
The three routes
| Your platform's chat tool | A bought chatbot product | A custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A chat feature inside the system that runs your website | A separate service you add to your site | A chatbot made for your business by a person or team |
| Often suits | A simple site with a few repeat questions | A business that wants more control without a build | Special rules, your own tools to connect, or text and voice as well |
| What you do | Switch it on, write the answers, test | Choose, set up, load your information, test | Describe the job, supply information, approve the answers, test |
| Check first | Whether your plan includes it, and where conversations are kept | Whether you can export conversations and settings, and what canceling does | Who owns the work and the accounts, and who maintains it |
What you bring, whichever route you take
- Approved answers: your services, hours, areas and policies in plain words, kept current.
- Limits: a list of topics it must pass to a person, such as pricing it cannot see, bookings it cannot confirm and anything that needs judgment.
- A place for leads: check before you choose that the route can send each inquiry it takes to your lead list with its source, not only keep it inside the chat.
- Someone to read its conversations each week at first and fix what is wrong.
- The account in your name, so you can switch it off yourself.
Before it goes live
- Test it on real questions from past emails and calls before launch and again after changes. The related answer on stopping an AI assistant from making things up has the full steps.
- Check the handoff: a visitor should always be able to reach a person, by phone or form, when it is unsure or they ask.
- Say it is automated, in a line at the start. The related answer on telling customers you use AI covers disclosure.
- If it collects contact details, the related answer on whether a small business should use a chatbot lists what to tell visitors; call or text only with the person's consent.
- Open it on a phone and a laptop before it is live, and check that it does not cover the page or a button.
When to hire someone
Hiring tends to make sense when the chatbot must look up bookings, follow detailed rules or share records with your other tools, or when you have no time to set one up and test it. Ascent Vision builds chatbots, so read this with that in mind. The related answer on what decides the cost of an AI chatbot or automation covers what drives a quote, and the related answer on whether to use a chatbot at all decides if you need one.
Related answers
- Should a small business use a chatbot on its website?
- How do you stop an AI assistant from making things up?
- Do you have to tell customers when you use AI to answer or write to them?
- What decides what an AI chatbot or automation costs?
AI assistants and chatbots
A good assistant answers the question a customer asks at nine at night, in your words, from your information, and brings in a person when it should. We build that, and we test it on your real questions before a customer sees it.