A chatbot on your website that understands what your customers are asking, doesn't get stuck in loops when it doesn't understand something, and even boosts your sales. The new generation of AI chatbots is here. We asked Karsten Marijnissen, Field CTO at Incentro, what the difference is between a traditional chatbot and an AI agent, which businesses would benefit from this, and what's needed to get started.
You: "I have a question about my order"
Chatbot: "Do you have a question about your payment?"
You: "No, about my order"
Chatbot: "Do you have a question about an invoice?"
You: "No, I want to speak to an employee"
Chatbot: "Have I answered your question?"
You: throws laptop out the window
We've all been there: arguing with a frustrating chatbot, that just doesn't understand what you mean. When it doesn't understand you, it simply repeats the same question again and leaves you even angrier than before you reached out. And you still usually don't have an answer to your question and have to call customer service anyway. Do you have a webshop with a traditional chatbot? Chances are your customers are dealing with this frustration too.
But what if we told you there's a new generation of AI agents that actually understand what your customers mean? That don't just respond to a question according to a script, but actually think along and solve problems.
Intelligence instead of scripts
The biggest difference between the traditional, 'dumb' chatbot and a smart AI chatbot is the input. By now we all know how it works with AI: garbage in, garbage out. The input of a traditional chatbot is a pre-programmed workflow. Does the customer ask something that's not in the scenario? Then it gets stuck and just repeats the first question of the conversation again.
An AI chatbot, on the other hand, uses modern language models to better understand the question and is fed with all available data within your company. "An AI chatbot can work much more with natural language," explains Karsten. "It can look into enormous amounts of business data, search faster, reason, and is therefore more versatile."
Personal and proactive
This new generation of chatbots also adapts to your communication style - formal when the customer is formal, informal when they communicate casually. But also with dialect words or a typo, this chatbot understands exactly what someone means.
And does the customer put product A in their shopping cart? Then the AI chatbot immediately suggests adding matching product B as well. This way, the chatbot becomes a proactive sales assistant instead of just a question answerer.
More than just answering questions
But AI chatbots aren't limited to just better answering questions about products or order status. They're easily deployable as digital assistants and actively help with complex tasks that go far beyond a simple Q&A conversation. Think for example of technical webshops where customers get lost between compatibility issues of parts.
"For large and complex websites, you can deploy your chatbot as an assistant that looks along with the visitor," says Karsten. "Instead of your customer having to search everywhere themselves, you're actually offering them a helper that gets them to the right answer much faster." An AI chatbot knows, for example, that a certain hose doesn't fit on a specific machine and warns the customer before they make the wrong purchase. These assistants also analyze content behind the scenes and present exactly what the customer needs in seconds.
Business knowledge that doesn't disappear
To perform all these tasks flawlessly, the input needs to be good. The best AI chatbots therefore know your business inside and out. And not only all the products in the warehouse are in the AI chatbot's brain, but knowledge of internal matters must also be in order. They're trained with specific knowledge, processes, and expertise that normally only exists in the heads of experienced employees. With an AI chatbot, all this knowledge becomes accessible to everyone in your organization who gets access.
"Especially in larger companies, where a lot of knowledge sits in the heads of the most experienced people, this is always a ticking time bomb," warns Karsten. "If that person leaves or gets sick, you're in trouble because it's not stored anywhere." The AI chatbot preserves this knowledge and makes it reusable. Your entire team gets access to the same deep knowledge, available 24 hours a day.
Start small, think big
And for those who think implementing an AI chatbot is a huge task: you don't have to immediately overhaul your entire organization. Start by automating a department where a lot of routine work happens or where customers often ask the same questions. Marketing, support, or internal processes are ideal starting points where you'll quickly see results when you put an AI chatbot behind them.
"My best advice would be: start especially with small, internal processes," advises Karsten. "Learn as an organization how to work with AI-tools. And when you're used to it internally and there's sufficient input in the AI tool, then deploy it for your customers. AI assistants don't replace your team, but take over the routine work. This way your people can focus on strategic thinking, developing creative solutions, and real human interaction."
Conclusion
Need help?
Lost in the AI jungle? We get it. New tools pop up everyday and not all of them are equally safe or suitable for your business. That's why we work with a number of established partners to build AI chatbots and AI agents for our customers.
In our whitepaper 'Agentic AI', we tell you everything you need to know before getting started with AI agents. Otherwise, our Field CTO Karsten Marijnissen would be happy to tell you more about it in a no-obligation meeting.
