Will a chatbot replace our support team?

No. It takes over the recurring questions and takes down the remaining requests with contact details. The individual cases in which someone has to weigh things up and decide stay with your team, which then has time for them again.

Can a visitor speak to a person with you?

On every plan, the bot passes the conversation to you when a visitor asks for a person, is annoyed, or wants a binding commitment. From the Medium plan, you can add the option for a member of staff to take over live in the same window as well, provided they have marked themselves as available in the portal.

What happens at night and at weekends?

The bot keeps answering from the knowledge provided and takes down requests with contact details. Anything that needs a person is waiting in the portal, in order, on the next working day, instead of disappearing as a missed call.

Do we need dedicated staff for the bot?

No, but a little time: the knowledge has to be written down once and then kept up to date now and then. What belongs in it is explained on the page [What belongs in your chatbot's knowledge](/en/chatbot-knowledge).

Guide

Chatbot or live chat?

Both sit in the same small window in the bottom corner, and that is exactly what misleads people: a chatbot and a live chat are two different tools with different strengths. Choose the wrong one and you either have a window where nobody answers, or staff typing out answers to questions a machine could handle.

This page compares the two honestly, says when a live chat is the better choice, and explains how the two can be combined.

Which is which?

Live chat: A person from your team answers in the window, live and during your working hours. The answers are as good as the person behind them, and availability is as good as your rota.
Chatbot: Software answers in the window, around the clock. With an AI chatbot like ours, the answers come from the knowledge you provide; their quality therefore depends on that knowledge, not on how anyone is feeling that day.

The question is rarely ‘which tool is better’ but ‘who should answer, and when’. At night and at weekends, realistically only the software can answer; in a complicated individual case, only a person can.

The comparison, point by point

	Live chat	AI chatbot
Availability	Your working hours, when someone is at their desk	Around the clock, weekends included
Response time	Minutes, depending on workload	Seconds
Staffing	Ongoing: every hour of chat is an hour of work	A one-off effort: setting up the knowledge
Complicated individual cases	Strength: asking follow-up questions, weighing things up, deciding	Limit: takes the case down and passes it on, does not decide
The same questions again and again	Wears the team down and costs working time	Strength: the hundredth answer is as good as the first
Languages	Whatever your team speaks	From Medium, interface language chosen from 20 languages

Swipe sideways to see the whole table.

When a live chat is the better choice

To be honest: there are cases in which we would not sell you a chatbot.

Almost all your enquiries are complicated individual cases in which a person has to weigh things up and decide.
You already have support staffed at all times, and waiting times are short.
Your website hardly gets any recurring questions; there is simply nothing a bot could take over.

The reverse also holds: if your team answers the same questions about prices, opening hours and procedures every week, you are paying people for work a machine can take over, and the interesting cases are left waiting in the queue.

The combination: bot first, a person when needed

The question ‘chatbot or live chat’ has a third answer, and in practice it is usually the right one: the bot answers the recurring questions, and as soon as a person is needed, a person steps in. This is how it works with us:

If a visitor asks for a person, is annoyed, reports something that has gone wrong, or wants a binding commitment, the bot passes the conversation to the business, tells the visitor it has done so, and files it in the customer portal. That applies on every plan.

From the Medium plan, you can add the option for a member of staff to take over the conversation in the same window and write to the visitor directly while they are still there. From that moment the bot stays silent. This is only offered when someone is marked as available in the portal; otherwise it stays with a callback.

Common questions about the comparison

Will a chatbot replace our support team?: No. It takes over the recurring questions and takes down the remaining requests with contact details. The individual cases in which someone has to weigh things up and decide stay with your team, which then has time for them again.
Can a visitor speak to a person with you?: On every plan, the bot passes the conversation to you when a visitor asks for a person, is annoyed, or wants a binding commitment. From the Medium plan, you can add the option for a member of staff to take over live in the same window as well, provided they have marked themselves as available in the portal.
What happens at night and at weekends?: The bot keeps answering from the knowledge provided and takes down requests with contact details. Anything that needs a person is waiting in the portal, in order, on the next working day, instead of disappearing as a missed call.
Do we need dedicated staff for the bot?: No, but a little time: the knowledge has to be written down once and then kept up to date now and then. What belongs in it is explained on the page What belongs in your chatbot's knowledge.

Not sure what suits your business?

Tell us which questions reach you and how your team answers them today. We will tell you honestly whether a bot is worth it for you. We reply within 24 hours, in person.

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Last checked: 4 October 2026