Adding an AI Assistant to Your Business Website

Start with a useful question

Before adding AI to a website, identify the customer questions you repeatedly answer on the phone, in the shop or by email. Opening hours, service descriptions and the next step for requesting a quote may be better served by clear pages or an FAQ.

An assistant becomes worth considering when there is enough approved information to help customers and someone can maintain that information. Begin with a narrow task and an explicit route to a person.

Do not promise perfect accuracy

Generated answers can be incorrect even when the assistant receives approved reference material. Retrieval, instructions and output validation can help control a workflow; they do not guarantee that every answer is true.

NIST’s generative AI risk profile includes confidently inaccurate output among the risks to manage. Build a review process around the consequences of a wrong answer: a wrong opening hour costs you a customer, and a wrong price costs you the job.

Set boundaries customers can understand

Decide which questions the assistant may answer, which documents it may use, and when it must hand off. Prices, availability and commitments should follow your approved business rules. Do not let a generated answer create an unreviewed offer.

Tell your customers what it is and what it is not. An assistant that says clearly “I am not sure, let me get you someone who can confirm” is doing its job; one that invents a price to keep the conversation going is doing yours harm.

If the task is sending a reminder or forwarding a form, a rule-based automation may be simpler than an AI conversation. Compare the maintenance, recurring cost and failure handling before choosing.

Test before and after launch

Use a documented set of common questions, ambiguous requests and questions outside the assistant’s scope. Check the handoff to a person and review examples of inaccurate answers. Repeat those checks when the business information or model changes.

For a first project, agree one workflow, the information it can access, the fallback and the recurring tool costs. Expand only after the initial version has proved useful.