AI chat for a small business
The useful question is not whether an AI can answer your customers, because it can. It is what the thing costs per month, which messages it actually covers, and where the enquiry ends up once it has been answered at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night.
What happens after someone messages
Most answers stop at the first box.
It arrives from
The three in indigo are the ones nobody else mentions.
Then it is
Answered
Straight away, at 11pm, on a Sunday
Saved as a lead
With the whole conversation attached
Put in a pipeline stage
So you can see who is waiting on you
What it costs
We looked at the ten pages Google returns for this question in the UK. Not one of them puts a price in a heading, six carry no pound sign anywhere at all, and one quotes only in dollars.So here is ours first, before anything else.
Hey Susan is £149 a month, published, no setup fee, with a three day trial that starts when it answers its first message.We build it, so treat this as an interested party being specific rather than a neutral survey.Other tools cost less and do less. Some cost more.
The comparison worth making is not against other software. It is against the alternative you are genuinely weighing, which is usually a few hours a week of somebody answering messages, or the enquiries you currently lose because nobody did.Work out what one missed job is worth to you.If it is more than a month of this, the arithmetic is not difficult.
Which messages it actually answers
Every page on that first results page says "multi-channel". None of them says which channels.Your customers are not only messaging your website. They are in your Instagram DMs, on WhatsApp, and in Messenger, and those are the ones that get missed on a Saturday.
Susan covers all four. A single script tag puts it on the site, whatever the site was built with, and the same assistant picks up the social inboxes.That is the part to check on any tool you look at, ours included: not whether it says multi-channel, but which four things it names.
Where the lead goes afterwards
This is the question nobody answers, and it is the one that decides whether any of it was worth it.Four of those ten pages headline lead capture. One mentions a CRM. None say what happens next.
A captured lead in a tool you never open is the same as a missed one, with an invoice attached. What matters is that the conversation is saved against a person, that the person sits at a stage you can see, and that you know who is waiting on you.
That is the honest structural difference between an assistant like this and a conventional CRM, and it needs no superlative.A CRM stores the conversations after they happen.An assistant is inside them while they do.
What happens when it gets one wrong
Of the ten pages ranking for this in the UK, not one has a heading about the assistant being wrong, and only one mentions it in passing. Every page assumes the thing is right.It will not always be.
So the questions to ask, of us or of anyone: what does it do when it does not know, does it hand over to a human or invent something, can you read back exactly what it told a customer, and can you correct it without waiting on support.
An assistant that says "I will get someone to confirm that" is worth more than one that is confidently wrong once a week.Confidence is the failure mode, not ignorance.
Common questions
How much does an AI chatbot cost for a small business in the UK?
Ours is £149 a month with no setup fee and a three day trial, and we say that plainly because we sell it. Across the ten pages currently ranking for this question in the UK, none puts a price in a heading, six contain no pound figure anywhere, and one quotes in dollars only, so straight comparison is harder than it should be. When you do compare, check what the price includes rather than the headline: how many conversations, whether social channels cost extra, whether the CRM is included or a separate product, and whether removing the vendor branding is a paid upgrade.
Can it answer Instagram and WhatsApp messages too, or only my website?
It depends entirely on the tool, and this is the thing to pin down before you buy. Most tools that advertise multi-channel mean the website widget plus an email fallback. Susan answers website chat, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp and Messenger from the same assistant, which matters because social messages are the ones that arrive at the weekend and sit unread. Ask any vendor to name the exact channels rather than accepting the phrase, because "multi-channel" on its own means nothing.
What happens when the AI does not know the answer?
The honest answer for any tool is that it will happen, and the difference between good and bad is what it does next. A well set up assistant says it will get a person to confirm, captures the question, and flags it to you rather than guessing. A badly set up one answers confidently and wrongly, which is worse than not answering at all because the customer believes it. Ask to see a transcript of a conversation where the assistant did not know something, and treat reluctance to show you one as the answer.
Am I tied into a contract?
With ours, no: it is monthly and you cancel when you like, and the trial only starts when the assistant answers its first message rather than the day you sign up. This is worth checking carefully elsewhere, because none of the ten pages ranking for this question headlines contract terms at all and only two mention them in passing. Before you commit to anything, find out the notice period, whether there is a minimum term, and what happens to your conversation history and captured leads if you leave.