Should AI answer your customer chats? Which questions to hand over, and which need a person
At 10 pm, a clinic admin answers a dozen messages about this month's promo price. The one message asking whether a face should still be red after a laser treatment gets answered the next morning. That's the case for letting AI answer some chats, and not others.
Key points
- Most chats to shops and clinics are a handful of repeat questions, such as prices, opening hours, parking and how to book, which AI can answer.
- AI is only as accurate as the information the business gives it. When prices or promotions change, that information has to change too.
- Questions about symptoms after a treatment, complaints and price negotiations should go to a person, even if AI could answer them.
- When AI hands a chat to a person, it should say so plainly, and the person taking over should see the earlier messages so the customer doesn't repeat themselves.
- Start by collecting the 20 most common questions from last month's chats, writing correct answers, and deciding which topics must be handed over.
Tuesday, 10 pm. The admin at a skin clinic is working through the chats that have piled up since early evening. Sixty-odd messages, most asking the same things. How much is this month's laser promo? What time do you close? Is there parking?
She answers the price questions one by one, because they're quick. Copy, paste, send.
In the middle of them sits one message: "I had the laser yesterday and my face is still red today. Is that normal?" It came in at 8 pm. The customer has been checking the mirror all evening. Someone replies the next morning.
Nobody ignored her. The most important question of the night just had to wait in line behind questions a machine could have answered.
Most of a day's chats are the same few questions
Scroll back through a month of your business's chats and count how many kinds of question there really are. Most places find it comes down to a few: price, hours, location, parking, how to book, how to prepare before coming in.
These already have a right answer, and the answer doesn't change with who's asking. Work like that is what AI does well. It doesn't get tired, doesn't forget, and answers at 2 am the same way it does at 2 pm.
What's left, questions where the answer depends on who's asking, what's happening to them and how they feel, is a much smaller share. But it's the share customers remember when they decide whether you looked after them.
The questions AI can comfortably answer for you
Fixed information. Listed prices, opening hours, address, directions, parking, payment options. AI answers instantly and the same way every time, which beats three admins each wording it differently.
Booking and rescheduling. Which days are open, picking a time, confirming. If the business already has a booking system, AI can walk customers right up to booking without waiting for anyone.
Standard advice the business has already written. What to avoid before a treatment, how early to arrive. If the clinic has guidance written by its doctors or nurses, AI can pass that on, but it shouldn't make up advice of its own.
All of this comes with one condition. AI is only as right as the information you give it. Leave an old price in there and it will quote the old price with total confidence.
The questions a person should answer, even when AI could
AI today can answer almost anything. The issue isn't whether it can. It's that some questions it shouldn't.
Symptoms after a treatment. Redness, swelling, stinging, a rash. Someone who knows what they're looking at needs to see a photo or ask more. AI might reassure the customer that it's normal when it may not be, or alarm them for no reason. Neither should happen in a clinic's chat.
Complaints. An unhappy customer wants to know a real person has heard them. However well AI writes an apology, a customer who realises it's automated gets angrier.
Negotiations and special cases. Asking for a discount or instalments, a regular wanting an expired promo, whether it's safe during pregnancy, an allergy to a particular medicine. Someone has to make the call, and someone has to stand behind the answer.
Businesses that use AI well don't have it answer as much as possible. They make sure it knows where to stop.
The handoff from AI to a person is where customers decide if you care
Most customers don't mind talking to AI as long as the answers are quick and right. What frustrates them is asking something important and having AI keep trying to answer, or being passed to a person and having to explain everything again from the start.
A good handoff does two things. AI tells the customer plainly that a person will answer this one, and the person taking over can see the whole conversation, so they can pick it up straight away.
What to watch out for before letting AI answer chats
Out-of-date information is the first risk. An expired promo, a price that's gone up, holiday opening hours. Every time something changes, someone has to be responsible for updating what the AI works from, or customers will turn up at the counter holding a screenshot of the chat.
Don't let AI promise what the business doesn't. Lines like "guaranteed results from the first session". Health and beauty businesses in particular need to be careful about claims on results. If you're unsure what you're allowed to say, ask someone who knows the law or the relevant regulator.
Tell customers they're talking to an automated assistant. There's no need to pretend it's a person. Most customers don't mind, but they feel let down if they find out later they were talking to a machine all along.
Be careful with personal details customers send. Face photos, treatment history, phone numbers. That information isn't only yours. Before choosing which AI reads your chats, know where the data goes. More in what to share with AI and what to keep out.
Start with the 20 questions customers ask most
You don't need to start by having AI answer everything. Open last month's chats, write down the 20 questions that come up most, and write the correct answer to each. That file is the heart of the whole thing. The AI will only be as good as that file is detailed.
Then make a second list: topics that should go straight to a person. Symptoms after treatment, words like unhappy or refund, asking to speak to the doctor. This list matters as much as the first. For how the person taking over can turn a chat into a booking, see when customers go quiet: chat replies that close sales.
Clinics and shops that work with woowey can have a chat bot on LINE, with answers our team sets up from the business's real information. Chats that need a person sit in the same inbox as messages from the website, so the admin sees everything in one place instead of switching between apps.
Next Tuesday at 10 pm, the promo price questions are answered the moment customers finish typing. The message about a red face is at the top of the admin's screen, and someone replies before the customer puts the phone down.
Frequently asked questions
Should I let AI answer customer chats?
Yes for repeat questions with fixed answers, like prices, hours and bookings. Hand over to a person for anything that needs judgement or care, such as symptoms after a service, complaints and price negotiations.
Can an AI chat bot give wrong answers?
Yes, especially when the information it was given is old or incomplete. It will quote an expired price or promotion confidently, so someone needs to update its information whenever something changes.
Should I tell customers they're chatting with AI?
Yes. Most customers don't mind if the answers are fast and correct, but they feel misled if they find out later they were talking to an automated system.
How much can a clinic rely on AI for chat replies?
Use it for general information like prices, hours and bookings, and to pass on advice already written by the clinic's doctors or nurses. Questions about symptoms or side effects should be answered by clinic staff.
What do I need to prepare for a LINE chat bot?
A list of common questions with correct answers, and a list of topics that must go straight to a person. Those two lists decide how well the bot works.
The woowey team
We build websites and systems for businesses
We build websites, booking systems, online stores and back offices for Thai businesses, then look after them every month. What we write here comes from what we see working with real shops.
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