A chatbot answers questions inside a conversation; an AI agent completes a whole job by taking action, not just replying. The practical difference: a chatbot can tell a customer the warranty policy, but an agent can look up their specific order, check its warranty status, and issue the replacement — without a person doing the lookup in between. If a request needs only an answer, a chatbot is the right tool. If it needs an action taken inside your systems, it needs an agent.
What each one actually does
A chatbot is a conversational interface — its job ends when it has produced a helpful reply. It's a great fit for FAQ-style questions, first-line support triage, or catalog Q&A where the answer is the whole outcome.
An agent is software that completes a workflow: it reads an incoming request, retrieves whatever data it needs from your systems, takes the action (generates a quotation, updates a record, sends a confirmation), and escalates to a human only when it hits a case outside its scope. The reply is a side effect, not the goal.
How to tell which one a workflow needs
Ask what happens after the answer is given. If nothing — the conversation genuinely ends there — a chatbot is enough, and it's simpler and cheaper to build and maintain. If a human normally does something next (updates a system, generates a document, routes a request), that next step is exactly what an agent should absorb.
Volume and repetition matter too. Workflows that are high-volume and rule-heavy — dealer support, order intake, document processing — are where an agent's ability to take the same correct action hundreds of times a day actually pays for itself.
Where most businesses should actually start
Not with a general-purpose agent that tries to do everything — with one agent, on one specific workflow, wired into the tools already used for it. A dealer-support agent that reads incoming queries, checks the catalog, and answers or escalates is a concrete, measurable pilot. A generic 'AI assistant for the company' is not — it has no clear success metric and nowhere obvious to plug in.
Custom AI Agents
Purpose-built agents that run your specific workflows end to end — not a chatbot bolted onto your website.
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