What a business-trained chatbot can answer, and when it should hand over
A chatbot trained on your business answers only from information you've approved. Anything outside that, and anyone who asks for a person, goes to your team.
What does “trained on your business” mean?
Usually nobody retrains anything: the bot answers from your approved information and nothing else.
It's handed your FAQ, product list and returns policy. When a customer asks something, it finds the relevant bits and writes a reply from them.
So you control what it knows. Change the delivery charge in the document it reads, and the next customer gets the new figure.
What can a business chatbot answer?
The questions you've already written the answers to.
Products and services
What you offer, what it includes, sizes, options, availability.
Timings and places
Opening hours, delivery areas, where to find you.
Policies
Delivery, returns, cancellations and payment options, word for word as you've written them.
Order status
If it's connected to your order system, “where's my order?” gets answered in seconds.
Bookings
Appointments, calls or table bookings, straight into your calendar.
When should a chatbot hand over to a person?
Whenever it isn't sure, and whenever the customer asks for one.
- The question is outside the information it was given.
- It isn't sure. Saying so is the right answer.
- Someone is upset, or wants a refund.
- It's really a question for a doctor or a lawyer.
- The customer asks for a person, at any point, even if the bot could have answered.
A good handover sends the whole conversation to your team, by email, WhatsApp or the CRM, so nobody types their question twice.
What does a good chatbot answer look like?
One that admits what it doesn't know. A made-up bakery gets asked: “Do you deliver to Thane on Sundays?”
Good
“Yes, we deliver to Thane on Sundays, in the afternoon slots.” It's right because Sunday delivery to Thane is written down in what it was given.
Bad
“Sure, we deliver anywhere in the city, any day.” That's a guess, and now a customer in Thane is expecting a cake that may not come.
Honest
“I'm not sure about Sundays in Thane. Shall I ask the team and reply on WhatsApp?” Aim for this whenever the answer isn't written down.
How do I keep a chatbot's answers right?
Test it on real questions before launch, then read a sample of its chats every month.
- Collect real questions from WhatsApp, email and calls, in the words customers used.
- Add the awkward ones: typos, Hinglish, two questions in one, and things you don't offer.
- Check every answer is right, admits when it doesn't know, and hands over when it should.
- Fix the information it draws on rather than patching one answer, then test again.
- Once it's live, read the chats it handed over and add answers for what it couldn't handle.
- Update the information the day your products, timings or policies change.
- Make sure it says it's a bot, every time.
Do I need an AI assistant or a simple FAQ widget?
An FAQ widget is enough if customers mostly ask about opening hours and delivery.
An FAQ widget
A set list of questions with a written answer under each. It's cheap and it can't invent anything.
An assistant
Copes with typos and Hinglish, holds a conversation and can plug into bookings or orders. Worth it when the questions vary, or when enough arrive after hours that someone is answering from home.
Meet Chalu
Chalu, the chatbot on this site, is hand-built with no AI model behind him.
That's why he runs in your browser and costs nothing to keep. Ask him something he doesn't know and you'll see the handover happen.
The assistants we build for clients can use a language model, so they cope with far more varied questions than he does.
If the same questions keep coming in
Export a week of your chats from WhatsApp, Instagram or email and send them over. We'll mark which ones a bot could have answered from your own FAQ, and which needed a person.