In this guide · 8 sections
What a website AI assistant can and can't do
| Good at | Not good at (or risky) |
|---|---|
| Answering FAQs: hours, location, services, prices you've published | Anything not in your content, where it may guess |
| Explaining policies: bookings, deposits, refunds, delivery | Giving medical, legal or financial advice |
| Collecting a name, number and question for a follow-up | Making binding offers, discounts or exceptions |
| Answering in more than one language | Handling angry complaints that need a person |
| Pointing people to the right page, booking link or WhatsApp | Checking live stock, account balances or bookings unless connected to those systems |
Think of it as a well-briefed front-desk assistant who knows your website by heart and hands anything unusual to you. It doesn't replace your judgement, and it shouldn't pretend to.
What it costs
There are three kinds of cost, and quotes often mention only the first:
- Set-up: preparing your content (FAQ, price list, policies), configuring the assistant, writing its rules, testing and adding it to your site.
- Usage: the AI model charges per amount of text processed. For a small business website with a modest number of chats, this is usually a few dollars a month, but it grows with traffic and with long conversations.
- Platform: if you use a chatbot product rather than a custom set-up, it has its own monthly subscription, often priced by number of conversations or seats.
Ask any provider who owns the account, who pays the usage bill, what happens to the chat history, and whether you can switch the assistant off or move it.
Before paying for anything, read your last 50 enquiries. If most are the same ten questions and the answers are already on your site, an AI assistant will probably save you time. If most need a quote or a judgement call, a good contact form and fast WhatsApp replies may serve you better.
Stopping wrong answers: guardrails that matter
AI models can produce confident, wrong answers. For a business that is a real risk: a customer who is told the wrong price or a refund rule you don't offer will hold you to it. Set the assistant up so that:
- It answers only from your approved content, such as your website, FAQ and price list, and says "I'm not sure, let me pass this to the team" when the answer isn't there.
- It stays on topic, politely declining questions unrelated to your business.
- It never invents prices, discounts, availability or promises. If a price isn't published, it collects the enquiry instead.
- It hands over to a person on WhatsApp or email for complaints, bookings it can't confirm, and anything sensitive.
- It is clearly labelled as an automated assistant, so customers know they aren't chatting with a staff member.
- Someone reviews the chat logs in the first weeks and fixes gaps in the content.
Test it hard before launch: ask about things you don't offer, try to get a discount, ask for medical or legal advice, and ask in another language.
PDPA and AI: what applies
The PDPA applies to personal data collected through a chatbot just as it does to a contact form. If the assistant asks for names, phone numbers or details about a customer's situation:
- Tell people what you collect and why in a short notice in the chat window, with a link to your privacy policy.
- Collect only what you need to follow up. Don't ask for NRIC numbers or sensitive health details in a chat.
- Know where the data goes: the chatbot platform, the AI provider and your inbox or CRM. List them in your privacy policy, including any overseas transfer.
- Protect and delete it: limit who can see chat logs, and set a retention period.
- Check the AI provider's terms on whether your chats are used to train its models, and choose settings or plans that exclude your data where possible.
The PDPC has published Advisory Guidelines on Use of Personal Data in Generative AI (July 2026), alongside its earlier guidelines on personal data in AI recommendation and decision systems (March 2024). If your assistant goes beyond answering FAQs, for example recommending products based on customer data, read them. Our website privacy policy guide covers the notice side.
Setting one up, step by step
- Collect your content: FAQ, services and prices, opening hours, booking and refund policies, delivery areas. Fix anything out of date first; the assistant will repeat it.
- Write the rules: what it may answer, what it must hand over, how it should sound, and the languages it should use.
- Choose the hand-over: WhatsApp click-to-chat, email, or a lead form that sends the conversation summary to your inbox.
- Add the privacy notice and a link to your privacy policy in the chat window.
- Test with real questions from your inbox, plus awkward ones designed to trip it up.
- Launch on your site and review logs weekly for the first month, adding missing answers to your content.
- Measure: number of chats, leads captured, questions it couldn't answer, and time saved on repeat enquiries.
AI chat, WhatsApp, or both?
Many Singapore customers would rather message on WhatsApp than use a website chat. A sensible set-up uses the AI assistant on your site to answer simple questions instantly, then hands warm leads to WhatsApp for a person to close. If you want to send automatic booking confirmations or reminders on WhatsApp, that uses the WhatsApp Business API, which has its own costs and approval process; see our guide to WhatsApp Business API costs in Singapore.
For clinics and salons, pairing the assistant with an online booking system lets it point people straight to available slots instead of collecting details for a call-back. See our guide to online booking systems for clinics and salons.
Do it yourself or get help?
Off-the-shelf chatbot tools let you upload your FAQ and paste a widget into your site in an afternoon. The work that makes it trustworthy is the content, the rules and the testing.
Our AI Website Assistant (S$790, 7 days) is trained on your website, FAQ and documents, captures leads to your inbox, hands over to WhatsApp or email, works in English plus one more language, includes guard-rails so it only answers about your business, and comes with a usage report after 30 days. AI usage fees are billed to you, usually a few dollars a month. To send automatic WhatsApp updates as well, add WhatsApp Notifications (S$590).
Frequently asked questions
There is a set-up cost (content, rules, testing and installation), AI usage fees that are usually a few dollars a month for a small business site, and sometimes a monthly platform subscription. IT Sorted's AI Website Assistant is S$790 to set up, with usage fees billed to you.
Yes, if it isn't restricted. Set it to answer only from your approved content, to say when it doesn't know, never to invent prices or promises, and to hand complex questions to a person. Test it with awkward questions before launch.
Yes. If the chatbot collects personal data such as names and phone numbers, you must tell people why, get consent, protect the data and delete it when no longer needed. List the chatbot and AI providers in your privacy policy.
Modern AI models handle many languages, including Chinese and Malay. Test the answers in each language you plan to support, and keep your source content accurate, because the assistant translates from it.
For most small businesses it takes over repeat questions and out-of-hours enquiries, not the work of closing sales or handling complaints. It frees staff time and makes sure no enquiry goes unanswered overnight.