AI website chat for UK small businesses. Half nine at night, yours answered.
Somebody on your website at night is deciding between you and two others, and the only thing separating you is whether anybody is there. Carrie answers on the page, takes the job, and it is on your phone before they have closed the tab. No form to fill in and nobody left waiting.
The job that would have gone to whoever answered first is the one you get instead.
What is website chat?
Website chat is somebody answering questions on your website while you are out working. A visitor types what they want to know, gets a straight answer on the page, and the job lands on your phone.
Three different things get sold under that name, and only one of them answers a question at half nine at night.
- A person typing. It works well while somebody is sitting there free to type. In the evening nobody is, so the box goes quiet and the visitor goes back to the search results.
- A form wearing a chat bubble. Leave your name and number and we will come back to you. It asks before it answers, which is the wrong way round.
- Carrie. She answers first and asks second, on a Sunday, at half nine at night, and while you are on a job. She is never the one who is busy.
So the question is not whether you have chat on your site. It is whether the person reading it tonight gets an answer or a form.
What the whole receptionist covers →How does website live chat work?
Somebody asks a question on your site. Carrie answers it, gets what she needs, and the job is on your phone. They never leave the page.
A visitor arrives with a question
Usually a short one. Do you come out to my village? Do you do this sort of job? Do you charge to come and look? Unanswered, that person is back in the search results.
Carrie answers it there and then
In your words, about your business, on the page they are already reading. Then she asks what the job is and how to reach them, which is the part a form usually loses.
You get a job, not a chat log
Name, number, what they want, and the page they were reading when they asked. You ring back knowing what they were looking at, before anybody else has replied.
What it looks like
Half nine on a Wednesday night. A woman in Bures has three tabs open, all local, all about the same job. Two of them have a contact form and a phone number that will be answered tomorrow. She has one question: do you come out that far. She is not going to ring anybody at this hour to ask it.
She types it into the chat on your site. Do you come out as far as Bures?
The answer comes straight back. Yes, Bures is well inside the area we cover, and there is no charge for coming to look. What is the job, and what is the best number for you?
She gives her name and number without being asked twice, and the other two tabs get closed. You ring her at eight the next morning and it is already yours to lose.
What people ask about website chat
Fourteen, and some of them are the ones you would ask as the owner rather than as the customer.
How is it different from a contact form?
A form asks somebody to fill in every box before they know whether you can even help them. Chat answers the question first and asks for the details afterwards. That is the right way round, and it is why chat catches people a form loses.
The form stays on the site. Some people prefer it, and there is no reason to make anybody choose.
How does she know enough to answer?
She is set up with your services, your area, your hours and your prices where you publish them. So she answers the question rather than saying please contact us.
Where she does not know, she takes a message and the question arrives with the job. You answer it once and she has it from then on.
Which trades and local services is it for?
Any business whose website gets visitors in the evening. It earns the most where somebody has a question they want answered before they will ring. Do you cover my area? Do you do this particular job? Do you charge to come out?
How does it behave on the page?
It sits quietly in the corner and opens when somebody wants it, so the page stays theirs to read.
Will it slow my website down?
No, and this matters more than it sounds, because how fast a page loads is something Google actually measures. It is part of the site we build rather than a third party's script bolted on top, which is where the weight usually comes from.
Does it need a cookie banner?
Website chat does not add a cookie banner. It is part of the site rather than somebody else's tracking script, so no advertising cookies drop as somebody arrives. That is the thing the rules are about.
Whatever your site already does about consent carries on unchanged. See the cookie policy for how ours is set up.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, and it is built for a phone first. It does not cover the screen, it does not sit on top of your phone number, and it does not stop somebody reading the page.
Can she quote a price in the chat?
She can repeat a price you already publish, because that is your number and it is already on your site. She does not price an individual job, because that needs somebody who has seen it.
Can I take over and type myself?
Yes. If you are sat there and want to answer somebody yourself, you can, and she steps out of it. She is there so you do not have to, and the choice stays yours.
What if she is asked something she does not know?
She says she will get an answer and takes their details, and the question arrives with the job. You come back to somebody knowing what they asked rather than starting again.
Do I get to see the conversations?
Yes, all of them, including the ones that did not turn into a job. Those are worth reading: the questions people ask on your website are the questions your next page should answer.
What about people mucking about?
They get short answers and never reach your job list. You are not sorting through nonsense to find real enquiries.
What does it cost to run?
The setup and the monthly are on the price list. There is no per-message charge to pass on with this one, because nothing is being sent through a phone network.
Is my data safe and is it GDPR compliant?
The conversations and the details people give are yours. They sit in your own database on your own project, never pooled with anybody else's, never sold, and never used to sell anything. If you leave, you take them and we delete our copy.
Everything is encrypted on the way and at rest, and what is collected and why is set out in the privacy notice.
Where do the answers in your chat box do the most work?
On the page as well, in text, under a heading shaped like the question somebody actually asked. A chat window is drawn after the page has loaded and it is opened by a visitor who clicks it. Same words, two places, and the page version is the one an assistant can quote.
- Whatever the chat answers all day is a ready-made list of headings, in the customer's own words. She earns her keep twice: once in the window, once on the page.
- A page that says nothing until a script runs is a page that may be filed as empty. Microsoft's own guidance is that content it cannot reliably render may not be picked up for the answers Copilot writes.
- This is ordinary search work rather than a separate product, which is Google's own position in its guide for site owners. There is nothing extra to buy.
Where else does she answer?
The website is one of seven. She answers on every one of them, in the same voice, and it all lands in the same place.
Phone answering
The phone picked up on the first ring when your hands are full.
Text messages
The ones that come in at nine at night asking if you do this.
Where they send you a photograph or a video of the problem.
The enquiry that arrives at midnight with three pictures on it.
Facebook Messenger
Messages off your Facebook page, answered like the rest.
Instagram messages
The DM that follows somebody seeing a job you posted.
Your Google listing
It sends you calls, not messages. Google switched that button off in 2024.
All seven together
What the AI receptionist is, and what the whole thing covers.
Who is reading your site tonight?
Somebody is, and they have a question. Answer it and the job is yours in the morning.
Twenty minutes with Chad. Nothing to pay and nothing to sign. The whole receptionist, and all seven channels, are on the AI receptionist page.