AI · Chatbot
A chatbot makes sense when it answers the questions that come back every day: what it costs, when you can do it, whether you cover the customer’s area, what is happening with an order. I build assistants based only on your company’s knowledge, meaning your price list, scope of services and terms, not on what the model knows about the world. A matter that goes beyond this scope reaches you with its full context instead of ending with an invented answer.
Scope of work
An assistant has four basic uses in a business. All of them deal with questions whose answers are already in your materials, but nobody has time to repeat them for the hundredth time.
The assistant answers questions about prices, the scope of your services, lead times, the area you cover, delivery and returns. It sits in a corner of your website and handles what now arrives through the contact form and waits in your inbox after hours. If your shop allows it, it also checks an order’s status from the order number and email address.
The same assistant can reply to messages on WhatsApp on your company number. In some industries, this is the only channel customers use and the only one where a reply after two hours is already too late. Here I set a narrower scope of questions than on the website, because conversations are quicker and shorter.
I build the knowledge base from what you already have: your price list, descriptions of your services, frequently asked questions, terms of business and product documentation. The assistant answers from these sources and has a built-in reply, “I don’t know, I’m passing this on”, for anything they do not cover.
Before launch, you agree with me when a conversation goes to a person, for example for an unusual request, a complaint, a request for an exception to the price list or two failed attempts at the same question. The conversation then reaches you with its history, and the customer learns when a person will get back to them.
Process
Most of the work on an assistant comes down to where it gets its answers. Switching on the chat window is the simplest part of the project and takes the least time.
I start with your price list, the descriptions of your services, your terms and your past correspondence with customers. The correspondence is the most valuable part, because it shows what customers ask and what interests them. Sample threads without customer data are enough, just the questions and the answers.
While the knowledge base comes together, there are almost always points where the company has no single answer. This is the right moment to agree one. The assistant needs it anyway, and along the way you sort out something that everyone has explained to customers in their own way until now.
Before launch, I run a few dozen questions from your inbox through the assistant and show you the answers. This is where every point at which the model gets lost comes to light, together with what needs correcting. As a rule, this step needs the most attention.
After launch, I review the conversations to see what fails most often, where the assistant needs more precise instructions and what is missing from the knowledge base. The first weeks bring the most corrections. After that, the reviews become less frequent and shorter, but they do not stop, because your company’s knowledge keeps changing.
Data
A chatbot processes personal data, so I treat data protection as part of the project rather than a note added to the privacy policy at the end. These are the four rules I set up by default in every project.
I choose the model provider so that the data goes to a region in the EU. When the type of data and work requires a data processing agreement, or the contract with your company provides for one, I sign it under Art. 28 GDPR, or Art. 28 UK GDPR for companies in the UK. If the tool that makes sense in a particular case runs outside the EU, I tell you before you decide, together with the consequences, instead of hiding it in an appendix to the contract.
The chatbot does not ask for data it does not need to answer. An order number and an email address are enough to check an order’s status, so it does not collect a phone number or a home address along the way. I keep conversation logs for a period agreed with you and delete them afterwards.
The chat window and the first message show clearly that AI is answering, with no pretending to be an employee and no made-up name next to a smiling photo. In the EU, the AI Act has required this since August 2026, and I add the label to every assistant I build.
The chatbot does not collect health information, identity document details or payment details. I do not ask for them in any conversation scenario, and the log can be cleaned of such entries. If a conversation heads that way, the assistant passes it to a channel suited to it. This setting is permanent, and I do not change it.
I prepare the wording for the privacy policy and the notice next to the chat window while I set up the assistant. Approving them stays with you, because you are the data controller and responsible for what these documents say. If your website already has a cookie banner, the assistant fits into its existing categories instead of giving visitors a second window to close.
Benefits
An assistant built on your company’s knowledge gives customers a faster first reply, takes repetitive work off your team and answers predictably. Each of these three effects follows from how I build and maintain the knowledge base.
The assistant replies straight away, in the evening and at weekends too, to questions within the agreed scope about prices, dates, the area you cover or order status. Matters that need your decision wait for you with a ready summary of the conversation, and the customer is told when a person will get back to them.
Repetitive questions stop taking up hours. The people who used to write the same answer for the hundredth time get time for more important work, such as unusual requests, sales and customer relationships. During the project, I measure the number of messages before and after, so you see the effect in numbers rather than impressions.
The assistant uses only your materials and answers anything outside them with “I don’t know, I’m passing this on”. Conversations stay in a log that I review after launch, so week by week the knowledge base becomes more accurate, and so do the answers.
Starting the rollout
Switching on the chat window is quick. The rest of the time goes on preparing the materials the assistant answers from, which is why this list is mostly about content rather than access.
If you have not written down answers to the most common questions, send me ten to twenty example threads from recent weeks, without customer data, just the questions and the answers. They usually contain everything I need for the first version of the knowledge base.
Other services
The assistant answers your customers, while automation takes recurring work off the people inside the company. Both use data from your systems, pass it through a model and work within limits set before launch.
Recurring tasks without manual work: typical enquiries, product descriptions, reports from data, routing of requests. Start with a pilot on one process.
Custom plugins and connections between WordPress and other systems such as CRM, stock management or applicant tracking, with data import and synchronisation. Quote after a short brief.
The full picture of my AI services, with the limits of a rollout and how I work with models myself, is on the AI for businesses page. An assistant that checks order status needs a connection to the shop, so in practice it is also an integration of the kind I describe under WordPress plugins and API integrations. A website with such an addition should be under WordPress maintenance, so that a plugin update does not break the website or the chatbot.
FAQ
Questions that come up before the decision to launch: customer service, where the answers come from and the data that passes through the chat.
No, and that is not what I offer your business. The assistant takes over questions that come back in the same form, about the price of a standard service, dates, the area you cover or order status. Anything outside the agreed scope goes to a person together with the conversation history, so nobody starts from scratch. What I can promise is fewer repetitive messages and a faster first reply, not that nobody needs to reply any more.
Only from the materials you give it: your price list, descriptions of your services, terms of business, a list of the most common questions and product documentation. Its answers come from these sources, and for anything else it has a built-in response, “I don’t know, I’m passing this on”. It does not answer from the model’s general knowledge of the world, because that is the shortest route to an invented price or date. The knowledge base is updated whenever your price list or the scope of your services changes.
A chatbot processes personal data. When the type of data and work requires a data processing agreement, or the contract with your company provides for one, I sign it under Art. 28 GDPR, or Art. 28 UK GDPR for companies in the UK. I choose the provider so that the data is processed in the European Union. The assistant asks only for what it needs to answer, which for an order status check means the order number and email address. It does not collect health information, identity documents or payment details and passes such conversations to another channel. I delete conversation logs after the agreed period. The visitor sees clearly that AI is answering, which the EU AI Act has required since August 2026. I prepare the text of the notice for users, and approving it stays with you, because you are the data controller.
You see it in the conversation log, which I review regularly after launch and which you can access from the first day. I treat a wrong answer like a bug report and check whether something was missing from the knowledge base, whether the question fell outside the scope or whether the threshold for handing over is set too high. Corrections in the first two weeks after launch, up to six hours of work in total, are part of the project. I assume at every launch that such cases will happen and plan time for them.
No. I build the assistant into the website you already have, with a separate plugin on WordPress or a single script on a static website. It needs no rebuild of the website and no change of hosting. If another chat window is already running on your website, I replace it with the assistant, because two chat windows at once only confuse visitors. For WhatsApp, you need a company number and a business account, and I guide you through the setup.
Yes. I work remotely with companies in the UK and the EU, among them a chain of tattoo and piercing studios in the UK and education organisations in Belgium. You deal with me directly, in English. I am available by email, WhatsApp, phone and video call, Monday to Friday, 9:00–17:00 Central European Time (8:00–16:00 UK time).
