This job is a chat bot on your website that answers visitors from your own pages. It is a Tech job that takes an afternoon: an hour to install a chat widget and feed it your site, and the rest to check its first fifty answers before anyone sees it. The AI you already pay for does not sit on your site itself, but it does the hard parts of this job. It writes the answer sheet the bot learns from, the instructions that keep it honest, and the fifty test questions. Then it grades the bot's answers against your pages, so you are not reading every reply cold.
- Shape
- Tech
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Tech
A Tech job is one where the work is setting something up correctly, and then it runs. Most of the risk sits in the setup. A chat bot is a good example, because installing it is quick and getting it right is not.
There are two pieces. The first is the widget: the chat bubble in the corner of your site and the tool behind it. Your website platform may have one built in, or you may add a separate chat tool by pasting a short snippet into your site's settings. Most of these tools let you point them at your website address, upload a document, or both. We do not recommend a particular tool here, because the right one depends on your platform, and their features and prices change often. Check what your platform already offers before you add anything. If you are not sure, ask the AI you already pay for: "Our website runs on [your platform]. What chat widget options can read our pages and follow written instructions, and where do I find them?"
The second piece is what the bot reads and how it is told to behave. That is where the AI you already pay for earns its keep. A bot fed only your website will answer from whatever your pages say, including the old ones. A bot with no instructions will try to be helpful about things you never wrote down. The answer sheet and the instructions fix both.
The test is the part people skip. A bot that answers a visitor wrong speaks as your business, at any hour, with no one watching. Fifty questions read before launch is the cheapest insurance this job has.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. Most of them are already on your site or in your sent mail.
- The pages the bot will read, by name. Your home page, services, about, FAQ, contact and any pricing page. Paste the text, or give the AI the page addresses if it can read web pages.
- The pages it should never read. Old blog posts, past promotions, draft pages, a price list you no longer honor. Name them so you remember to leave them out of the widget too.
- Your hours, service area and how to reach a person. Exact hours, the towns or zip codes you cover, your phone number and the contact page address.
- The questions people actually ask. Open your inbox and your contact form submissions and copy twenty real questions, with names and details removed. Add the five questions you answer most often on the phone.
- What you do not do. The services people ask about that you turn down, the areas you do not cover, the jobs too small or too large. This is the input most owners forget, and it prevents the most bad answers.
- What you will not say online. Prices you only give after a visit, timelines you will not promise, advice you only give in person.
- When a person should take over. A complaint, an emergency, a question about an existing order, anything involving money already paid.
- How you sound. Two or three replies you sent to customers that you were happy with.
What comes back
You run three short prompts in the AI you already pay for, then one test pass with the bot itself.
First, the answer sheet. Paste this, then your inputs underneath.
You are writing the answer sheet for a chat bot on our small business website.
The bot will answer visitors using only our pages and this sheet.
From our pages and notes below, write a plain question-and-answer document:
1. Every common question, with a short answer taken from what we wrote.
2. A section called "What we do not do", one line each.
3. A section called "What we do not answer online", with the line the bot should say instead.
4. A section called "Hand off to a person", listing when the bot should give our phone number or contact page.
Rules:
- Use only facts from our pages and notes. Do not add services, prices, hours or guarantees.
- Where our pages disagree with each other, list the conflict at the end instead of choosing.
- Write in our voice, using the sample replies below.
Our pages and notes:
[paste pages, hours, area, real questions, what we do not do,
what we will not say online, hand-off cases and sample replies]Read the conflicts list at the end first. Those are places your own website contradicts itself, and the bot could have given visitors either answer. Fix the page, not just the sheet.
Second, the instructions. Most chat tools have a box for them, sometimes called a prompt, a persona or guidance.
Write the instructions for our website chat bot, under 200 words.
It must:
- Answer only from our website and answer sheet.
- Say plainly when it does not know, then give our phone number and contact page.
- Never quote a price, date or guarantee that is not in the answer sheet.
- Hand off to a person for complaints, emergencies, existing orders and payments.
- Keep answers to three sentences or fewer.
- Never ask for health, legal, financial or card details.
Use our business name, phone number and contact page address below.
[paste name, phone, contact page address]Third, the test set.
Write 50 questions a visitor might type into our website chat, in plain customer language.
Include: 25 common questions from our real list, 10 questions about things we do not do,
5 questions about prices or dates we do not give online, 5 hand-off cases,
and 5 off-topic or awkward questions.
Number them and label each group.
Use the answer sheet and our real questions below.
[paste the answer sheet and the twenty-five real questions]Install the widget, load your chosen pages and the answer sheet, paste the instructions, and keep the bot switched off for visitors. Most tools have a preview or test window. Ask it all fifty questions there and copy the answers into one document.
Last, the grading pass. Paste the answer sheet, the fifty questions and the bot's fifty answers back into the AI you already pay for.
Grade each of these 50 chat bot answers against our answer sheet.
For each one, mark it right, wrong, invented or should have handed off, with one line why.
List every answer that states a fact not found in the answer sheet.
Then list the changes to the answer sheet or instructions that would fix the wrong ones.What comes back is a short list of failures and the edits that fix them. Make the edits, ask the failed questions again, and repeat until the list is empty or holds only things you are happy with.
How to judge it
A good bot is short, a little boring and quick to say "call us." A bad one is easy to spot in the fifty answers. Hold the launch when you see any of these.
- It invents a service. Asked about something you do not do, it says yes or "we can help with that." Add the service to "What we do not do" and ask again.
- It quotes a number you never published. A price, a time frame, a discount, a warranty length. Any number not in the answer sheet is a fail, even if it happens to be close.
- It gets your hours or area wrong. Usually this means it read an old page. Remove that page from what the widget reads.
- It will not let go. Asked about a complaint or an emergency, it keeps chatting instead of giving your number.
- It answers off-topic questions. Recipes, homework, opinions on the news. Your bot answers questions about your business and nothing else.
- It sounds like software. "Thank you for your inquiry, how may we assist you today" in every reply. Ask for shorter answers in your own words.
- It asks for details you cannot protect. Any request for a card number, a diagnosis or account details is a fail, whatever the reason.
A second quick check: ask the same question three different ways. A bot that gives three different answers is guessing. Tighten the answer sheet until it gives the same one.
What stays with you
The AI writes and grades, and the widget answers. Four things are still yours.
The facts. The bot can only repeat what your pages and answer sheet say. If your hours change and the page does not, the bot will tell visitors the old hours with full confidence. Every time a fact changes, update the page and the answer sheet together.
The promises. Whatever the bot tells a visitor is your business telling them. Decide in advance what it may never say: prices, guarantees, arrival times, anything a customer could hold you to. Keep those out of the answer sheet, and keep checking for them.
The hand-off. A bot that says "call us" is only useful if someone answers. Make sure the phone number is staffed, the contact form reaches a person, and the inbox it feeds is one you actually read. If the tool emails you chat transcripts, read them for the first few weeks. They show you what your website fails to say, which is worth fixing on the page itself.
The switch. You decide when it goes live, and you can switch it off. If your business handles health, legal or financial matters, talk to whoever advises you on compliance before a bot answers anyone. A clear FAQ page may serve you better than a bot, and our note on how FAQ-style content helps you show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity explains why the same answers help you in search too.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, used only to show the method.
Say you run a small pool cleaning company with two trucks. Your inbox fills with the same questions: do you cover this town, do you do one-time cleans, can you fix a pump, how much a month.
You build the answer sheet from your services page, your FAQ and twenty questions from your inbox. Under "What we do not do", you write: pump and heater repair, commercial pools, homes outside your three towns. Under "What we do not answer online", you write: monthly price, because it depends on the pool, with the line "We price after a quick look; call us or send the contact form and we will reply within a day." Under "Hand off to a person", you write: green water, a missed visit, a billing question.
The conflicts list catches one thing. An old spring promotion page still says you cover a fourth town. You delete that page.
The fifty test answers turn up three fails. Asked "can you fix my pump", the bot says it can help. Asked about a missed visit, it apologizes at length and never gives your number. Asked about a town you dropped, it says yes, because the widget still held its earlier copy of the page you deleted. You add pumps to the not-do list, tighten the hand-off rule, remove the page from the widget, and ask the three again. All three hold, and you switch it on.
Bot or FAQ page
A bot is not always the right answer. This is how to choose.
| Your situation | Better fit |
|---|---|
| Many visitors ask the same factual questions before contacting you | A chat bot, with an answer sheet |
| Most visitors call, or your work needs a conversation first | A clear FAQ page and a short contact form |
| Your answers change weekly (stock, schedules, availability) | A FAQ page you update, until you can keep a bot current |
| You are regulated and answers carry legal weight | A FAQ page reviewed by your adviser, no bot for now |
| No one can answer the phone or inbox within a day | Fix that first; a bot that hands off to no one helps nobody |
If the bot keeps answering questions your pages should already answer, the fix is often on the page. Our website copy job and objection handling job cover that work. When this one is done, the full list of DIY marketing jobs has the next one.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
