Chatbot
Definition
AI-driven software that simulates human conversation to provide customer support, lead generation, and engagement. Popular chatbot tools include Drift and Intercom.
Example Use Case
A local gym's website has a chatbot that answers questions about membership plans and schedules tours.
A chatbot handles the conversations a website receives around the clock, without staffing a team for every timezone. Its value is concentrated in well-defined tasks: answering routine questions about pricing or availability, qualifying visitors before a sales conversation, and booking appointments.
Scope is what separates a useful bot from an irritating one. A narrow bot that reliably answers twenty common questions outperforms a broad one that improvises. The critical design decision is escalation — how quickly and how obviously a visitor can reach a human when the bot cannot help. A bot with no clear exit frustrates precisely the high-intent visitors worth keeping.
Rule-based and AI-driven bots suit different jobs. Deterministic flows are predictable for compliance-sensitive answers; language-model-driven bots handle open-ended phrasing but require guardrails to avoid inventing policy.
