Is an AI chatbot worth it for a small business?
Worth it when it is wired to your real information and allowed to say "I'll get a human": it answers the questions that fill your inbox at 10pm. Worthless and occasionally harmful when it improvises, because a bot that invents your refund policy costs more than it saves.
The longer answer
In practice.
The version that works
Grounded in your actual prices, availability, policies and documents; honest
about uncertainty; escalating anything delicate to a person with the conversation
attached. On those terms it genuinely deflects the repetitive majority and
captures the after-hours lead.
The version to refuse
A generic widget pointed at your homepage, improvising answers in a
confident tone. The failure mode is not "unhelpful"; it is a customer holding a
screenshot of a policy you never had.
The economics
Count the repetitive questions per week and what interrupting a human for
each costs. Past a handful a day the grounded version pays quickly; below that,
a better FAQ page is the honest recommendation, and I make it, per
AI development.
Same rabbit hole