What is the chatbot for?
Start there, because the wrong answer to that question makes every other choice wrong. For most small businesses the honest answer is: answer the questions my website gets asked, capture the lead, book the appointment, and do it at the hours nobody is here. Harvard Business Review’s audit of 2,241 companies found only 37% replying to a web enquiry within an hour and 23% never replying; the ones inside the hour qualified the lead about seven times as often 1. A chatbot’s job is to put every enquiry inside the hour.
The seven questions
| Question | The answer to look for |
|---|---|
| 1. What is it trained on? | Your own pages, price list and FAQs, not a generic model that guesses |
| 2. Which languages? | English and Afrikaans, detected from what the customer writes; others best-effort |
| 3. Does it book and take payment? | Into your calendar; a deposit through a South African gateway |
| 4. What happens when it is wrong? | It refuses what it does not know and hands over to a person with the history |
| 5. What currency and what contract? | Rands, month to month, no notice period |
| 6. How long to go live? | Minutes, not weeks, with one line of code |
| 7. Can you see and edit its answers? | From a dashboard, without a developer |
Why does training matter most?
Because a chatbot that answers from the open internet will say something confident and wrong about your business, and it will say it to a customer. A chatbot trained only on your content can only answer from your content; when it does not know, it says so and books a person. That constraint is the feature. It is what makes the thing safe to leave alone at 02:00.
What about the overseas platforms?
They price in dollars, bill per seat, assume English and leave the training to you. Some are excellent for a company with a support team and a developer. For a plumber in Sasolburg or a guesthouse in Knysna the fit is poor: the customer writes in Afrikaans, pays in rands, and there is nobody to spend a week on the setup.
Is this a fad?
Gartner’s 2022 survey found 54% of customer-service organisations already using a chatbot or other conversational AI, and predicted chatbots would be the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organisations by 2027 2. Its 2025 survey expects self-service and live chat to overtake phone and email by the same year 3. The question for a small business has moved from whether to which.
How does DoubleDown AI answer the seven?
Trained on your site, price list and FAQs; English and Afrikaans, other languages best-effort; takes booking requests for your team to confirm; refuses what it does not know and hands over with the history; priced in rands from R299 a month plus R250 setup, month to month; live in about 30 minutes with one line of code; every answer editable from your dashboard. The free trial is fifty messages over seven days, no card, and it is the honest way to check the answers against your own site. Details on the website chatbot page.
Questions people ask
Do I need a developer to install it?
No. One line of code on your site, or our WordPress plugin or Wix app. If someone else looks after your website, the dashboard gives you a message to send them.
Can I change what it says?
Yes, from the dashboard, without code. Every answer it gives comes from content you can see and edit.
Is there a contract?
No. Month to month, cancel any time. The setup fee is paid once.
Sources
- Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads”, Harvard Business Review, March 2011 (audit of 2,241 US companies)
- Gartner, “Gartner Predicts Chatbots Will Become a Primary Customer Service Channel Within Five Years”, press release, 27 July 2022
- Gartner, “Self-Service and Live Chat Will Surpass Traditional Channels as Top Customer Service Technologies by 2027”, press release, 27 August 2025