Website chatbot: decide what it may do before you install it

Pick the job before the widget, because answering, qualifying, booking and escalating are four different purchases. When a visitor asks a vet clinic whether it sees rabbits, answering takes your services list. Someone wants an HVAC quote, so qualifying means collecting the address, the system type and a phone number. A salon client picks a Friday slot, and booking it needs a live calendar link. A tenant reports a leak, and a person must take over with the details intact. Quick replies count. In a study of 1.25 million leads at larger US firms around 2010, firms that tried to reach a web inquiry within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it⁸.

Answer

Qualify

Book

Escalate

Each page brings a different visitor, so one sitewide greeting wastes chat. A homepage visitor is still looking and wants to know if you serve their area. A service page visitor wants specifics, like whether a law firm handles wills. A pricing page visitor is close to deciding and needs to know what is included. A contact page visitor already chose to reach you, so show the phone number and a short form. Many people still prefer to talk: phone beat chat 44% to 17% as the preferred way to solve an issue in a 2019 Gartner survey about larger companies⁹. Help pages draw people with a problem. Test each page on a phone, since 91% of US adults own a smartphone¹⁰.

Homepage

Service or product page

Pricing page

Contact page

Help content

Staffing settles this more than features do. AI chat can reply at any hour. That helps because 81% of employed people work on an average weekday, so many customers may only be free after hours, though the time-use data do not show when people contact businesses¹⁴. Bots handle plain factual questions well: in a 567-person scenario study, chatbots beat human staff on satisfaction for functional questions, while people won on experiential ones¹². Staffed live chat brings judgment and warmth, at the cost of payroll and set hours. Text chat also helps the roughly 15% of American adults who report some trouble hearing¹⁵. AI first with a handoff aims for both. A live chat nobody answers is worse than none.

Always-on AI

Staffed live chat

AI-first with handoff

Give every item an owner before launch. Load the widget script so it does not slow the page, and allow its domains in your Content Security Policy. Make the chat window work with a keyboard and a screen reader. The Justice Department says businesses open to the public must make what they offer online accessible, and points to WCAG as helpful guidance while leaving the method to you¹⁷. WCAG 2.2 is the standard to test against⁴. More than one in four US adults has some type of disability¹⁶. Keep knowledge current. Test calendar actions against the real calendar. Send handoffs where someone looks daily. If you have UK visitors, cookie consent rules are stricter there⁵. This is not legal advice.

Widget script and performance

Knowledge sources

Calendar or CRM action

Handoff destination

Privacy and consent

Maintenance owner

Answer first, then decide if an offer belongs. A visitor asking a moving company about weekend rates may welcome a note about packing help. A customer reporting a failed repair to an auto shop does not want a pitch, so put complaints, faults and billing disputes off limits. Offer only what you approved, because the business answers for what its bot says: a Canadian small-claims tribunal held Air Canada liable after its chatbot gave a wrong refund policy¹¹. One no means stop. Never let the bot pass as human. California bars online bots that mislead people about being bots to drive a sale¹⁸, and Utah requires disclosure of generative AI when a consumer clearly asks¹⁹. This is not legal advice.

Need before offer

Approved offer only

Context exclusions

One no means stop

Run one sample month through every plan, say 5,000 messages, because the units do not line up. A message allowance counts each message, so long chats use it faster. A conversation plan counts sessions; if a chat averages ten messages, 5,000 messages is about 500 conversations, as long as the vendor counts a conversation the way you do. A seat plan charges per staff login and ignores traffic. An outcome plan charges when the AI resolves something, so the vendor's definition of resolved decides the bill. A bundled plan tucks chat inside a bigger subscription. Ask each vendor what counts as one unit and what happens when you run out. Estimate from real chat logs, not page visits.

Message allowance

Conversation

Seat

Outcome

Bundled plan

Public capabilities

First AI Employee website chat answers visitors' questions about the business, qualifies inquiries and collects contact details². It checks a connected calendar and confirms a booking only when the booking succeeds; if it cannot finish, it collects the details instead. It is a managed website assistant for questions, lead qualification and booking. That suits a plumber or a moving company whose site gets steady questions and quote requests.

Current plans

Chat comes in three monthly plans, Essential, Growth and Scale, priced by message volume¹. Paid chat plans have no free trial. Every receptionist plan also includes a free website-chat tier of 1,000 answered messages a month, which you switch on in the dashboard¹. Check the official pricing page for the current price of each plan before you buy.

Material limits

Know the limits before you buy. Google review replies are not available yet². It is not a help desk, ticketing system, shared inbox or human live chat, so complaints that need case tracking belong elsewhere. Ask which calendars it connects to, since booking depends on that link. With no free trial on chat, plan your own test: write your top 20 visitor questions and check every answer in the first week.