Chatbot development: what to know

What the job involves, what changes the price, and what to ask a pro.

What chatbot development is

A developer builds a chatbot for your website or messaging channels, designing the conversation flows and connecting it to your information so it can answer common questions. You need it when visitors ask the same questions again and again, or when you want people to get fast answers outside business hours.

Signs you need it

  • Your team answers the same questions by email or phone every day
  • Visitors leave the site because they cannot find an answer quickly
  • You want answers available outside business hours
  • Customers ask about bookings, prices or policies that are in your documents
  • You want leads or bookings to start in a chat instead of a form

What the pro does

  • Reviews the common questions, the answers you have and the actions the bot should take
  • Designs the conversation flows and the handoff to a person when needed
  • Connects the bot to your information, such as your help pages or a knowledge base
  • Tests the bot with real questions, including questions it should not answer
  • Launches the bot, sets up the reports and trains you to update its answers

What changes the price

Every job is different, so we do not publish prices. These are the things that move the quote up or down.

  • The number of topics and the number of conversation flows
  • The amount of information the bot must learn from
  • The channels it runs on, such as a website, messaging or social platforms
  • Whether the bot must connect to bookings, payments or your own systems
  • Whether the bot is answered by a human handoff and how that works
  • Whether monitoring and ongoing updates are included

What a written quote should spell out

  • The topics and flows built, listed one by one
  • The channels and any service used to run the bot, with the terms
  • The information sources the bot uses and how they are updated
  • Testing done and the test questions covered
  • Support and how answers are updated after launch

Questions to ask before you hire

  • Which service runs the bot, and who owns the account?
  • How will the bot tell me when it cannot answer?
  • How is customer information stored and protected?
  • Can I update the answers myself after launch?
  • What happens if the bot gives a wrong answer?
  • Can you show me a bot you built and how it performed?

Red flags

  • Promises a bot that can answer any question without testing
  • Keeps the bot account or the data under its own name only
  • Will not show how the handoff to a person works
  • Stores customer messages with no explanation of who can see them

What you can do yourself

Write down the questions you get most often and the answers you give, and keep your help pages and policies up to date, since the bot will use them. Do not put customer personal data in the bot's training text. Hire a developer to design the flows, connect the bot and test it.

Licenses and permits

A license is usually not required for chatbot development. Chat data may be covered by privacy rules that vary by state, so check with your state or local licensing agency and ask the developer how it handles customer messages.

Chatbot development questions

Can a chatbot replace my staff?

It can handle common questions, but it should pass harder questions to a person. Ask the developer how the handoff works before you decide.

Will the bot answer questions correctly?

It will answer what it is trained on. Test it with real questions and keep its answers up to date, since wrong answers can hurt customers.

Who can see the messages people send?

Ask the developer and the service that runs the bot. Your privacy notice should say what is stored and why.

Pro reviewers

Pros who offer chatbot development remotely can improve this guide, like Wikipedia. We check every edit before it goes live. Every approved edit is credited in the edit history and on the pro's profile.

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How guide reviews work

How it works

  1. 1. Describe the job

    Pick the service, add your ZIP and a sentence about what is going on.

  2. 2. Pick the pros you want

    See screened pros who serve your ZIP and choose who you want to hear from.

  3. 3. They reach out

    They contact you the way you chose: phone, email or in-app messages.

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