Guide
AI chatbots for trade websites
A chat assistant on a website can either catch enquiries you would otherwise miss or drive people away in irritation. The difference is not the technology, it is what you let it do and how quickly it hands over to a person.
What it is genuinely good at
Answering the same five questions you get every week. Do you cover my area, what are your hours, do you do that type of job, how soon could you come.
It works because those questions arrive at all hours and none of them need you.
What it should never do
Quote a price for a job it has not seen. Promise a date you have not agreed. Pretend to be you. Trap someone in a loop when they want a human.
A bad assistant is worse than none because the visitor leaves annoyed rather than just leaving.
Make handing over easy
There should be an obvious route to your phone number at every point, and anything it cannot answer should turn into an enquiry that reaches you with the conversation attached.
The measure of a good one is how cleanly it gives up.
Be honest with visitors
Say it is an assistant. People are fine with that. What they are not fine with is finding out afterwards they were talking to software.
The same goes for what it knows. Feed it your real services, areas and hours so it is not inventing answers.
Is it worth it for you
If you get a steady trickle of evening and weekend visits, probably yes. If your site gets a handful of visitors a week, fix the visibility first and come back to this later.
Common questions
Will a chatbot replace answering the phone?
No, and it should not try. It handles the simple questions and passes everything else to you.
Can it give quotes?
It should not. Prices depend on seeing the job, and a wrong figure from a bot causes real trouble.
Where to go next
Want us to sort this for you?
We build the site for free and look after the hosting, the updates and the local SEO for €59.99 a month on a 12 month minimum. Have a chat with us and see if it suits.
More guides like this
- Does a Small Trade Business Need a CRMSometimes yes, often not yet. Here is how to tell which you are.
- Automating the Admin in a Trade BusinessGet the evening paperwork down. Start with the jobs you repeat every week.
- Spreadsheets Versus Proper SoftwareSpreadsheets are underrated. They are also where a lot of businesses get stuck.