How to Get an AI Assistant Built for Your Business in New Zealand

More New Zealand business owners are asking the same question. Could AI take some of the admin off my plate, and how would I get that done? The answer is simpler than most people expect. You do not need to understand AI, hire a developer or change the software you already use. You need to know your business, which you already do.

There are two ways to get an AI assistant working for you. You can choose a ready-made one, which we set up with you, or you can have one built around how your business works. This article walks through both.

Option one: a ready-made assistant

A ready-made assistant does one common job that most businesses share, like answering customer questions on your website or chasing unpaid invoices. You choose it, connect it to the tools you already use, tell it about your business, and switch it on, without waiting for a build.

You pay a monthly price and can cancel any time. With Buildloop there is a one-off set-up and configuration fee, depending on how much your business needs, agreed after a short call. Every account also has the AI control centre, NZ$49 a month. It holds what your business knows, so each assistant starts out knowing your prices and policies. Each assistant's price is on our Pricing page.

Option two: a custom assistant

When the job is specific to how you work, a ready-made tool will not fit. That is when a custom build makes sense. With Buildloop it runs in four steps.

First, a free discovery chat: about eight minutes of plain-English questions about how your week runs. You get some first ideas for what to hand over, emailed to you. They are a starting point, not a quote. Second, we meet with you to talk through what would be most valuable, then scope the work and send a written proposal with a firm, fixed price, from NZ$5k, and the monthly cost of running it. Third, we build in short loops with you, so you see it working early and often. Most first builds ship in weeks, not months. Fourth, we train your team to use it.

What to have ready

You do not need a technical brief. It helps to know which job eats the most of your time, which software that job touches (your accounting system, your email, your website), and what a good result looks like to you. If you are not sure where to start, the discovery chat is designed to work that out with you.

What to look for in whoever builds it

Ask where your data will be stored, and whether a person approves anything that sends, pays or commits. Ask whether the price is fixed before work starts. Ask what happens when the AI is unsure: it should say so and hand over to a person, not guess.