Create a chatbot

To create a chatbot you first decide what it has to solve and where it's going to live (your website, WhatsApp, Telegram) and then you choose how to build it: with a platform that doesn't require coding, with a service that already includes AI or by programming it yourself. A chatbot is a program that talks automatically with your customers or users, at any time of day.

What's confusing is that "chatbot" covers two very different things. The classic ones work with buttons and fixed answers: they're predictable, but they fall short as soon as someone asks something off-script. AI-powered ones understand questions written in the user's own way, but they can make up answers if you don't give them your business's information properly. In both cases, what takes the most work isn't setting it up, but preparing the content it's going to use, deciding what it does when it doesn't know something and how it hands the conversation over to a person.

How I built mine, what failed and what it replies when it doesn't know the answer I explain in "My first chatbot". If you're thinking of putting one in your business, start there, and keep handy a list of the ten questions your customers ask you most: it'll be your best starting point, with or without AI.