Chat assistants
AI chat assistants that answer from your documents
A useful chat assistant answers the questions your customers actually ask, from your own prices, policies and documents, and hands over to a person the moment it is out of its depth. The ones that damage a business are the ones left to improvise.
- Answers from your content
- Hands over cleanly
- Logged so you can check it
The difference between a useful assistant and a liability
A chat assistant is only as good as what it is allowed to answer from. Pointed at your published prices, your delivery policy, your opening hours and your product documentation, it will answer the routine questions accurately at eleven at night. Left to improvise, it will confidently invent a policy you do not have, and you will find out when a customer holds you to it.
So the build is mostly about constraint rather than cleverness. We ground it in your own material, we make it say when it does not know, and we give it a clean route to a person. That is far less impressive in a demonstration and far more useful in practice.
The second design decision is what it is for. An assistant meant to deflect support questions is a different thing from one meant to qualify sales enquiries, and trying to do both usually produces something that does neither well.
This sits inside our wider work on AI automation.
How we build one
- Grounded in your own documents, prices and policies rather than general knowledge about your industry
- Told plainly to say when it does not know, instead of producing a plausible answer
- A handover to a person that carries the conversation with it, so the customer does not start again
- Scoped to a defined job, whether that is answering support questions or qualifying enquiries
- Conversation logs you can read, so you can see what it is actually saying to your customers
- Guardrails on the subjects it will not discuss, agreed with you before it goes live
- A review cycle, because the questions people ask change and the source material has to keep up
Where it earns its place, and where it does not
It works well where there is a genuine volume of repeated, answerable questions: opening hours, delivery, availability, specification, what a service includes, where an order is. Businesses with real out-of-hours enquiry volume get the most from it, because the alternative is nobody answering at all.
It works badly as a barrier. If most of your enquiries need a conversation, putting an assistant in front of the phone number annoys people and costs you work. In that case the honest answer is that the money is better spent elsewhere.
- Good: high volume of repeated factual questions
- Good: enquiries arriving outside working hours
- Poor: complex sales that need a human conversation
Start with the questions, not the technology
Before anything is built, we go through what people actually ask you, in what volume, and how many of those have a factual answer that exists somewhere in writing.
That list decides whether an assistant is worth having and what it should be allowed to say. It also occasionally shows that the real fix is a better answers page, which is cheaper and works for search as well.
Get in touch
Talk to us about ai chat assistants
A few lines is enough. We will tell you straight whether we can help, what it would cost and how quickly we can be there. No hard sell, and no follow-up sequence if you decide against it.
- We reply within one working day
- A straight answer, including when it is no
- Free process review available, before any money changes hands
Would rather just ring? 01623 354250, Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm.
Frequently asked questions
If the answer is not here, ask us. You will get a straight one, from someone who does the work.
Mon–Fri, 9am–5:30pm
Will it make things up about my business?
Not if it is built properly. It answers from your own documents and prices rather than general knowledge, it is told to say when it does not know, and every conversation is logged so you can see what it is telling people. An assistant left to improvise is the risk, and that is a build decision rather than a property of the technology.
How much does an AI chat assistant cost?
There is a build cost and a running cost, and both are quoted before you commit. The running cost depends on volume and is usually modest for a small business. We would rather show you the arithmetic than quote a monthly figure that turns out to depend on traffic.
Can it hand over to a real person?
Yes, and it should. The handover carries the conversation so far, so the customer is not asked to repeat themselves, which is the failure that makes people hate chat widgets.
What about customer data and privacy?
We agree up front what the assistant sees and what is retained, keep the logs where you can access them, and avoid putting personal data into it where the job does not require it. That gets written down rather than assumed.
Do we need one?
Many businesses do not, and we will say so. If your enquiry volume is low or your sales need a conversation, the money is better spent on the website answering the questions properly. The review will tell you which case you are in.