AI Chatbot for Your Website: What It Can Do, What It Costs and What You Need to Know

Many of the enquiries that come to you by phone or email are always the same: What does it cost? How long does it take? Do you also come to me? An AI chatbot on your website can answer exactly these questions immediately – even in the evenings and at weekends, when potential customers are doing their research in peace.

What's different from earlier chatbots?

Older chatbots worked with rigid decision trees: the visitor clicked through preset answers and often ended up in a dead end. Modern AI chatbots understand freely formulated questions and respond in natural language. The key is that they are limited to your content: services, prices, processes, service area, frequently asked questions. This way they answer appropriately to your business, rather than guessing.

When a chatbot is worth it

• Answer frequently asked questions: Opening hours, process, rough price ranges, requirements.
• Pre-qualify enquiries: The bot asks questions to understand what it's about and directs to the right service or appointment.
• Book appointments: Instead of "Call us", it leads directly to online appointment booking.
• Hand over to a human: For complex matters, it offers a callback – with the conversation history so far, so nobody has to explain everything twice.

You can try this on our own website: our AI assistant sits in the bottom left.

Where the limits lie

A chatbot does not replace advice. It should not make binding commitments, promise individual prices, and should honestly say when it doesn't know something. Good chatbots are configured so they prefer to hand over to you rather than make something up. Equally important: it should not ask for sensitive data such as health or banking information.

What the law requires

• Transparency: Visitors must recognise that they are talking to an AI. The European AI Regulation (AIAR) explicitly requires this labelling for chatbots.
• Data protection: Chat messages are transmitted to the AI provider. You need a data processing agreement, a provider that doesn't use the data for training, and a section in your privacy policy.
• Storage: Only store chat histories if there is a reason – for example, for a requested callback.

What does an AI chatbot cost?

The costs depend on how much the bot should be able to do: a pure question-and-answer solution based on your website content is significantly cheaper than a bot with integration to calendar, CRM or inventory management. As an extension to a website, an AI chatbot with us is roughly between €790 and €1,990; there are also ongoing costs for AI usage, which depend on the number of conversations and are usually manageable for small businesses. Our project calculator provides an initial estimate for your project.

How to get started

1. Collect the ten questions you answer most frequently.
2. Decide what the bot should do when it reaches its limits – callback, appointment or email.
3. Test it with real questions before it goes live, and watch over the first few weeks to see where it struggles.

If you want to know whether a chatbot is worth it for your business, we'll discuss it in a free initial consultation – you'll find more about our solutions under AI automation.