Chatbots are not AI agents
The terms get used interchangeably, but they describe fundamentally different things. Understanding the difference saves you from buying the wrong solution.
What a chatbot does
A chatbot sits on your website and responds to visitor questions. It follows decision trees or uses a language model to generate answers from your knowledge base. It is reactive: someone asks a question, it answers. When it cannot answer, it escalates to a human.
Chatbots are good for deflecting simple support queries and answering FAQs. They are not good at doing work.
What an AI agent does
An AI agent operates autonomously on a schedule. It does not wait for someone to ask it something. It proactively monitors, processes, and reports on your operations.
Examples of what agents do that chatbots cannot:
- Triage your inbox three times a day and deliver a prioritised summary
- Track outstanding follow-ups across your CRM and flag items that have gone quiet
- Deliver a morning briefing covering today's priorities, yesterday's open items, and overnight notifications
- Monitor competitor pricing and alert you to changes
- Score and qualify inbound leads based on your ideal customer criteria
When you need a chatbot
If your primary goal is reducing support ticket volume by answering common questions on your website, a chatbot is the right tool. There are good options available from £30 to £200/mo.
When you need an AI agent
If your problem is operational: too much time spent on repetitive tasks, things falling through the cracks, no visibility into what is outstanding, then you need an agent. An agent works behind the scenes on your operations, not on your website.
Can I have both?
Yes. Some businesses deploy a website chatbot for visitor support and a separate AI agent for internal operations. They solve different problems.