A chatbot, or
another person.

For answering repeat website enquiries, yes, by a wide margin — our entry plan is R299 a month against any salary at all. But that is the wrong comparison to make on its own. A chatbot does not replace a person; it removes the part of a person’s day that is the same forty times a week, which is a different claim.

No, and we would not sell it to you on that basis. It answers the after-hours enquiries nobody was there for, the same five questions your staff answer every day, and it takes a message when it cannot help. The person is still the one who handles the difficult call, the walk-in and the customer who is upset.

Work at 22:00 on a Sunday, answer forty people at once, never forget a price, and reply in a language your staff may not speak. What a person does that it cannot: read a room, take responsibility, and handle the thing that has gone genuinely wrong.

It hands over. It takes the enquiry, captures the contact details and puts it in front of a person rather than guessing. A chatbot that invents an answer is worse than no chatbot, and any supplier who will not tell you what theirs does when it does not know is telling you something.

Yes. If a supplier tells you otherwise, they are selling you a headcount saving they cannot deliver and you will be the one explaining it afterwards.