AI chatbot for a website: when it helps and when it annoys

Your website gets visitors at nine at night, long after the service desk has closed, and a vendor says a chatbot will answer them. Maybe. A chatbot helps when visitors arrive with plain questions that have one-sentence answers, at hours when nobody is there, and it passes the rest to a person quickly. It annoys when it stands between the visitor and your phone number, repeats itself, or answers questions that need judgement. The clearest way to see the difference is to read two conversations.

What does a chat that annoys look like?

Imagine, as an invented example, a service centre in Latur that repairs washing machines and mixers and sells spare parts. Its first chatbot opened with a pop-up before the page had loaded. This was a typical exchange.

Bot: Hi! How can I help you today? Visitor: Do you have a door seal for a front-loading machine? Bot: Great question! Could you tell me your name and email? Visitor: I want to know if you have the part. Bot: I'd be happy to help. Which service are you interested in? Visitor: (closes chat, looks for the phone number)

Three faults, all common. It asked for contact details before giving anything. It could not answer a question about stock, because nobody had given it the stock. And it covered the "Call us" button on a phone screen, so the visitor had to hunt for the number.

What does one that helps look like?

After a rewrite, the same visitor gets this at the same hour.

Bot: I can answer common questions about timings, areas we cover and booking a repair. For stock, prices and anything else, I will pass you to a person. Visitor: Do you have a door seal for a front-loading machine? Bot: Stock changes daily, so I cannot confirm it here. If you tell me the brand and model, I will send the question to the shop and someone will reply on WhatsApp when we open at 9. For something urgent, call this number. Visitor: [types brand and model] Bot: Thank you. Sent to the shop with your number. Shall we also note your area for a repair visit?

It said what it could do in its opening line, refused to guess about stock, took the brand and model the shop needs, and promised only what a human would do. It still lost some visitors: a few left at the first message, because they wanted the part that minute.

Which situations favour a chatbot?

Four earn its place.

Questions repeat and the answers are short. Timings, areas covered, whether you repair a given brand, parking. A bot answers these at ten at night without waking anyone.

Visitors come after hours. A homestay, a coaching class, a repair shop that shuts at six. A chat that takes name, number and need gives the morning's caller a head start.

The enquiry needs several details before anybody can help. Brand, model, fault, area. A chat asks one at a time, which suits a phone screen better than a long form.

The team is small and the phone is busy. The bot takes the simple questions so people can take the hard ones.

Which situations make it a bad idea?

It annoys when the price depends on measurements and the bot keeps asking questions it cannot use. It annoys when the question is urgent or emotional, such as a delayed order or a complaint, because a bot's reply reads as a brush-off. And it annoys when it opens before the visitor has read anything, cannot be closed, or opens again on every page.

Language matters too. If a visitor types in Marathi or Hindi and the bot answers only in English, the visitor leaves.

Do not install one at all if your visitors are few and most buy by phone: put the number and a call button first on the page. The same goes if your customers are walk-ins, where your Google listing is the better fix. Our notes on where to put click-to-call and WhatsApp buttons cover that.

How do I test a bot with a stranger?

Hand a stranger your site on a phone and say nothing. Watch what they do when the chat opens. If they hunt for the close button, the bot is in the way.

Then read the last month of calls, messages and form entries and list the questions that repeat. If five questions cover most of them, a chatbot is a reasonable trial. If the list is long and varied, spend the money on a person's time.

What must the handover do?

Handover is where many chatbots fail, so design it first.

State the limit in the opening line, as in the second conversation above. Offer the person early, not after three failed tries. Pass the whole conversation on, with name, number and question at the top, so the visitor never types it twice. Say who replies and when, in words you can keep: "the shop replies when it opens at 9" is better than "soon", and someone must then do it.

Our post on what to ask visitors and when to hand over goes through the questions.

What must it never do?

Never invent a policy, a price, a date or a promise. Never claim to be a person. Never collect more than the visitor must give to be helped, since a phone number is enough to start. And never replace the phone number on the page.

In regulated trades such as clinics, finance and insurance, keep the bot to timings, locations and booking requests. Questions about treatment, returns or eligibility belong with a qualified person, and the rules on what you may say differ by state and body, so ask your own adviser.

Run a short trial, then judge it

Keep the old contact routes in place, switch the bot on, and read every conversation at the end. Count how many ended in a captured number, how many ended with a visitor leaving after the first message, and which questions it could not answer. Those three counts tell you whether to keep it.

Before you buy anything, open your own site on a phone at ten tonight and see whether a stranger could find your number in five seconds. Website chat and chatbot lead capture is the service for this job, the marketing hub covers the other ways enquiries arrive, and to describe your site and visitors, tell us what you need.