What does an AI website chatbot do?
An AI chatbot is a chat window on your website that answers customers’ questions based on your own materials: your offer, price list, FAQ, terms and product descriptions. It works around the clock, replies instantly and in the customer’s language. When a question goes beyond the materials, it hands the conversation to you or collects contact details.
What I set up in every chatbot
- Answers only from your materials, with a note on where they come from.
- An honest “I don’t know”: when information is missing, the chatbot does not guess but suggests getting in touch.
- Disclosure that it is an AI: the chatbot introduces itself as an AI assistant in the first message (EU AI Act, Article 50, since 2 August 2026, see the European Commission AI Act Service Desk).
- Handover to a human: an enquiry with name and email lands in your inbox or CRM.
- Conversation review: you see what customers ask about and what is missing from your website.
What a chatbot is good for, and what it is not
| Good for | Better handled differently |
|---|---|
| questions about your offer, prices, availability, directions | decisions that need human approval (discounts, complaints) |
| collecting the first details of a quote request | legal or medical advice |
| answers in several languages | knowledge from hundreds of internal documents (that is an AI knowledge base) |
Chatbot or AI knowledge base?
A website chatbot is for customers and draws on a handful of pages of material. An AI knowledge base is for your team and searches many documents: procedures, contracts, manuals, with control over who can see what. If the chatbot needs to complete a task, such as booking a slot, I connect it to an AI agent.
How I set up a chatbot
- Call (15 minutes, free): we agree which questions it should answer.
- Materials: I gather content from your website and documents, and we fill in the gaps.
- Testing: I check the answers on real customer questions before the chatbot goes live.
- Support: I update the materials, review conversations and improve answers.
Updated: · Tomasz Kamiński