Not every AI project takes months. For a standard SA SME deploying a first chatbot, the realistic timeline is seven days. Here is exactly what happens in each one.
Day 1 — Discovery (2 hours)
Sit down with whoever runs your business. Answer three questions: what task eats the most time, what question gets asked the most, what lead do we lose most often? This becomes the AI's job description.
Day 2 — Knowledge dump (half a day)
Gather every document that explains how your business works: pricing, FAQs, services, policies, brochures, email templates. Upload to the AI platform. This is 70% of the training right here.
Day 3 — Configuration (1 day)
Set the AI's personality (tone, formality, language). Set its guardrails (what it must never do). Configure integrations: WhatsApp Business API, your website, your calendar, your CRM. This is where a partner like us earns the fee — the technical plumbing.
Day 4 — Testing (half a day)
You and your team hammer the AI with the 20 most common real customer questions. Fix any weak answer by feeding the bot a better answer. Rinse and repeat until it's 90%+ accurate.
Day 5 — Soft launch (half a day)
Roll out to 10–20% of traffic. Monitor conversations live. Fix any surprises in real-time. If the bot struggles, escalate those conversation types to humans and retrain overnight.
Day 6 — Full launch (2 hours)
Open to 100% of traffic. Embed the widget on your site. Announce the WhatsApp number to your customer base. Monitor dashboards.
Day 7 — Review and optimise (2 hours)
Pull the week's conversation data. What questions did the AI handle well? Which did it fumble? Retrain on the fumbles. From here, it's weekly maintenance rather than project work.
What this plan won't fit
Multi-country deployments, deep ERP integrations, voice AI, or regulated industries with specific compliance requirements. For those, budget 2–8 weeks. But for a standard SME chatbot — 7 days is realistic. We do it every week.