AI chatbot development services for after-hours inquiries
AI chatbot development services for businesses where whoever responds first wins the job. The bot answers your common questions, qualifies whether the work is a fit, and books it.
It states that it is not a person, and hands over to one when it should.
- Three to four weeks
- Most of it spent writing the answers with you.
- Answers from your material
- It does not invent prices you do not offer.
- Every conversation logged
- You can read exactly what it told people.
The value is in the hours nobody is answering
People look for a plumber at 9pm and a roofer on Sunday, because that is when they notice the problem. If the only route to you is a phone call in business hours, most of them contact someone else before Monday.
The version that works is narrow: it answers the questions you actually get, decides whether the job is one you want, books it if so, and stops if not. In a market where response speed decides the job, that is worth real money.
The version that does not work is a general-purpose model pointed at your website and told to be helpful. That is the one that invents a price.
If you are not sure a bot is the right answer, AI consulting is a short piece of work that says so before you build anything. A bot is only as good as where it sends the booking, which is CRM integration. And if nobody is reaching the site at all, start with SEO instead.
It is built from your answers, not a generic script
The first session produces a list of every question you are asked repeatedly and the correct answer to each. It takes about two hours and is useful even if you never build the bot, because most businesses have never written it down.
We then set the boundaries: what it may quote, what it must hand over, and what it should never attempt. The bot is only as good as that document, which is why we write it with you rather than infer it from your website.
What our AI chatbot development services produce
Four jobs. The fourth is not optional.
Answering the questions you get every week
The questions that make up most inquiriesDo you cover my area, how soon can someone come, do you charge for a quote, do you take card, are you licensed. Written down, that list is usually twenty or thirty questions covering most of what you are asked.
The bot is built from your answers rather than a generic script. It only says what you told it, which is what stops it inventing a price you do not offer.
Qualifying the job
Before it reaches your teamWhat kind of work, where, how soon, and whether it is a job you take. A bot that books everything creates work, because someone then has to cancel it.
When it is not a fit it says so and points the person somewhere useful, which stops a poorly matched inquiry becoming a negative review.
Booking, or handing over to a person
Calendar and escalationFor a job it understands, it books directly into your calendar and sends the confirmation. For anything else — a complaint, an unusual request, a question it has no answer for — it stops and hands over rather than improvising.
The handover carries the full conversation, so the person picking it up does not have to ask everything again.
Disclosure and logging
Non-negotiableIt states up front that it is not a person. Being caught pretending costs more trust than the bot saves, and in some states disclosure is a legal requirement.
Every conversation is logged and readable, so you can see what it told people. The first month of those logs is also an accurate list of what your customers want to know.
The scope, written down before you pay
Scope goes in the agreement before any money changes hands. It is written out in full below.
In the build
- Your answers written down and agreed
- Qualifying rules for the work you do and do not take
- Booking into your calendar, with confirmation
- Handover to a person, carrying the conversation
- Conversation logs you can read
After launch
- Answers corrected as you spot gaps
- Logs reviewed monthly for recurring questions
- Running costs billed to your own account
- Connected to your CRM so leads land with the rest
- You can switch it off at any time
Not included
- A bot that pretends to be a person
- A general model allowed to answer anything about your business
- Using your customers' conversations to train a model
- Replacing the person who answers the phone
Tell us the five questions you are asked most and we will tell you whether a bot is worth it.
Three things you can check yourself
- Ask to see the logs
- Any firm selling a bot should be able to show you what one said to real people.
- Ask what it will refuse to answer
- A vendor without a written list has not designed the failure cases.
- Ask about the data setting
- Whether your conversations train a model. We will show you where that is disabled.
Questions we get on the first call
What do AI chatbot development services cost?
Fixed price to build and connect, quoted after we see the questions you need answered, plus the running cost of the model. That running cost is usually tens of dollars a month rather than hundreds. Starting figures are on the pricing page, and the calculation worth doing is how many extra booked jobs a month would cover it.
Will it embarrass us?
Not if it answers from your material rather than generating freely. Ours work from the answers you supplied, stop when they are out of scope, and hand over to a person. The problem cases are general-purpose models deployed on a website with no boundaries.
Will it make up a price?
No. It quotes what you told it and says a person will confirm anything else. Invented answers come from bots configured to be helpful about everything rather than explicit about their limits.
Do we still need someone answering the phone?
Yes. This covers the hours when nobody is available, and the people who prefer to type rather than call. A large share of after-hours inquiries never call back the next day, and that is the gap it fills.
How long does it take to build?
Three to four weeks. Most of that is writing the answers with you and testing edge cases rather than writing code.
Does it use our customer data to train an AI?
No. Your conversations are used to answer your customers and nothing else, and that is written into the agreement. We will show you the setting that enforces it.
What if it gets something wrong?
You see it in the logs and we correct the answer. It will occasionally get something wrong, as a new employee would. The useful questions are how quickly you find out and how easily it is fixed.
Related: AI overview · AI consulting · CRM integration · Websites
Disclosure is not only good manners — several states now require it. California's bot disclosure law is the one most often cited, and more are following.
Tell us what people ask you at 9pm and we will tell you whether a bot should answer it
A written reply within one business day, including when the answer is that it should not.