What a chatbot does
A chatbot answers questions. Take a dental practice: "Do you also do whitening?", "Are you open on Saturdays?", "How do I get there by bus?". It answers from what you give it, such as website texts, price list and FAQ, and then sends the visitor to appointment booking or the contact form. Nothing more. That is exactly what makes it easy to control.
What an AI agent can do in addition
An agent receives a task and works through it in several steps. Take a trade business: an inquiry for a new bathroom arrives by email. The agent reads it, looks up similar past jobs, creates a draft quote and enters the customer in the CRM. What it may and may not do is something you define beforehand.
Side by side
- Chatbot: provides information in conversation. Agent: completes a task in several steps.
- Chatbot: mostly just reads. Agent: accesses your systems and is sometimes also allowed to create or change things there.
- Chatbot: less risk, quicker to set up. Agent: saves more work, but you need to clarify beforehand who approves what.
Decision guide
Rule of thumb: if your team keeps answering the same questions by phone and email, a chatbot is usually enough. An agent is worthwhile if someone at your company regularly clicks through the same process, gathers data from two or three programs and follows fixed rules while doing so.
Limits of both approaches
Language models make mistakes. And when they do, the wrong answer sounds just as convincing as the right one. That is why, before launch, we test with real questions from your everyday work, give the system only verified sources and have a human approve critical steps. This applies to both chatbots and agents.