Live chat Assistant: the guide
Live chat Assistant answers your customers on your website and by chat link, from answers you've checked, and hands over to your team when it should.
Who it’s for
- Small and medium businesses whose customers ask the same questions every day
- Trades, clinics, salons, shops and services with a website or a Facebook Page
- Owners who want enquiries answered after hours without hiring
Customers ask about prices, hours, bookings and policies at all hours, and every unanswered chat is a lead that goes somewhere else.
Why businesses use it
- Answers in seconds, day and night, from only what you've checked
- Says when it doesn't know and passes the chat to a person, so it never makes things up
- Takes contact details and arranges call backs, so after-hours enquiries become leads
- Replies in the customer's language, and you read every chat in English
- Gets better each week from customers' thumbs up and down
- A fixed monthly price with a set number of chats, shown in dollars
What it does
- Answers customers
- On your website with a chat button, and anywhere else with a chat link and QR code. Facebook Messenger and Instagram are coming.
- Hands over to a person
- When a customer asks for a person, is unhappy, or asks something it can't answer. Your team gets an email and a suggested reply.
- Takes details and arranges call backs
- It asks for a name, email and phone, and records what the customer wanted.
- Keeps to your rules
- Words it must never say and rules in plain English are checked on every reply before it's sent.
- Reviews and reports
- A regular review suggests changes from real chats; reports show volumes, busy times, how chats ended and what people ask most.
How it works
It learns your business
You add documents and your website. It reads them and writes short notes by section into your AI Brain for you to check.
You talk to it to train it
It asks about what's missing from each category, in plain questions you can answer by typing or with your keyboard's microphone. It writes up each answer as notes, and you keep, change or drop each one.
You check its answers
It suggests the 20 to 30 questions customers ask most, each with an answer and where it came from. Only answers marked ready reach customers.
It's tested, then published
Every publish is tested against your checked answers and safety checks. A failed safety check stops the change going live.
Customers chat
Each reply records the answer it used. Customers rate replies, and anyone can ask for a person at any time.
Your team steps in
Chats that need a person come first in Conversations, with a suggested reply. Once someone replies, Live chat stays out of that chat.
It improves
In a review you accept or decline suggested changes and publish the next version.
Setting it up, about 45 minutes
Documents
Add price lists, policies and opening hours, and read your website.
Questions
Check the suggested questions and answers and mark each ready.
Actions
Choose who it hands over to, and whether it takes details or arranges call backs.
Style
Pick your brand colour, how it sounds, and your business hours.
Try it
Ask it your own questions. Nothing is sent or booked.
Go live
Publish, then add the chat button to your website or share the chat link.
How it uses the AI Brain
Every Buildloop assistant works off your AI Brain and brings what it learns back to it, so the more it knows about your business the more accurate it is, and each assistant you add makes the others stronger.
Your AI Brain keeps what it knows about your business in categories you can open, check and add to, with what's missing shown: About the business, Products and services, Pricing, Payments, Opening hours, Contact details, Locations and service areas, Booking and ordering, Delivery and collection, Returns, refunds and warranty, Terms and policies, Common questions, Other.
It reads
- Documents and website pages marked for customers
- Notes you've checked, at the level you chose (customers, staff or owners)
- Contact details you've allowed it to give out
It adds
- Notes on each source, sorted into your AI Brain's categories with what's missing shown, to check
- Notes from what you tell it when you talk to it, saved only once you keep them
- What customers asked and which answers they used, for the review
What it connects to
- Your website
- Optional. The chat button, added with one line of code and checked for you.
- Chat link and QR code
- Optional. For emails, invoices, signs and your Google Business Profile.
- Facebook Messenger and Instagram
- Optional, coming. Answering your Page's messages; waits on Meta approving Buildloop's app.
- Google Calendar
- Optional, coming. Booking calls; each booking waits for your approval.
What a person approves
- A booking in your calendar waits for a person's approval until you let it book on its own
- Suggested replies to a handed-over chat are sent only when someone presses Send
- Changes from a review go live only when you accept them and publish
Price
NZ$99 + GST a month, including 150 chats a month, then NZ$0.50 + GST for each chat after that. Cancel any time. Every account also has the AI Brain, NZ$49 + GST a month, once for all its assistants.
What it doesn’t do
- It answers only from checked answers and documents marked for customers
- It doesn't take payments or make promises about price or dates beyond what you've written
- Replies in te reo Māori and Samoan wait until a speaker has checked them; for now it replies in English and says so
- WhatsApp and SMS are not built yet
Your data
- Your business's data is stored in Sydney, Australia
- Chats are read by the AI model to write replies, and are never used to train it
- Contact details it finds are held back until you allow each one
- The chat always says it's an AI assistant
Questions
What counts as a chat?
One customer conversation it replied in. A new chat starts after 24 hours of quiet. Your own tests and Try it never count.
What if it doesn't know the answer?
It says so, then hands the chat to your team or takes the customer's details, whichever you chose.
Do I need a developer?
No. You paste one line of code into your site or your site builder's custom-code box, and it checks it's there. Or use the chat link without a website.
Can I cancel?
Yes, any time, from Usage and billing. It stops at the end of the month you've paid for.