What is an AI chatbot?
An AI chatbot is a program that holds a written conversation with your customers. It reads what they type, works out what they are asking, looks up the answer and writes a reply in plain language. The "AI" part is a language model: the same kind of technology behind well-known AI assistants, which lets the chatbot cope with typos, slang, follow-up questions and messages that mix two languages.
For a business, the useful version is not a general-purpose assistant that can talk about anything. It is a chatbot that knows your prices, your opening hours, your return rule and your product range, and stays on those topics. That is the kind of AI chatbot Gydr is: an AI customer service agent that answers questions, collects details and hands over to people, rather than one that acts on its own in your systems.
How is an AI chatbot different from a rule-based bot or live chat?
Most businesses compare three options. A rule-based chatbot follows a flow you draw by hand: buttons, keywords and fixed answers. It is predictable, but any question outside the flow hits a dead end. Live chat puts a person on every conversation: the best answers, but only while someone is at the desk. An AI chatbot sits between the two, answering the routine questions around the clock and passing the rest to your team.
| Feature | Rule-based chatbot | Live chat only | AI chatbot (Gydr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it understands questions | Keywords and buttons you set up | A person reads every message | Reads free-form messages, including follow-ups |
| When it answers | Any time, within the flow | Only when someone is online | Any time, from your knowledge |
| Questions it wasn't set up for | Dead end or a fallback menu | Handled by the person | Says it doesn't know, or offers a person |
| Set-up work | Drawing and maintaining every flow | Hiring and scheduling staff | Loading your FAQs, products and documents |
| Languages | One flow per language | Whatever your staff speak | Replies in the customer's language |
How does Gydr's AI chatbot work?
Gydr works from what you teach it. You add your knowledge, write a few instructions in plain words, and connect the places your customers message you. Behind every Gydr chatbot is Axon, the AI engine that decides what to look up, writes the reply and checks it before it goes out.
- 1You load your knowledge. Gydr has four kinds: FAQs (questions and answers), products (with prices, images and links), documents (PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets and more) and locations (your branches with addresses and opening hours). You can type them in, import a CSV, upload files, or let the website crawler pull them from your own site.
- 2A customer asks a question. Gydr works out what they want and searches the knowledge you attached to that chatbot, and only that knowledge.
- 3Gydr writes a reply from what it found, in the customer's language and in the tone you chose, from nine personality presets such as Professional, Friendly or Concise.
- 4Before the reply is sent, Gydr checks it against the knowledge it found. When the search turns up nothing that answers the question, the chatbot says it doesn't have that information instead of guessing.
- 5If the customer needs a person, Gydr offers one and passes the chat to your help desk, or files a ticket, with the conversation so far attached.
What can it do beyond answering questions?
Answering is most of the work, but a few other jobs come up on almost every business's list. Each of these is part of Gydr today:
- Recommend products from your catalogue, showing the name, price, image and a link, and only products that are really in your list.
- Collect details inside the chat with Data Forms: a lead's name and phone number, a booking request, a warranty claim. Every set of answers lands as a row you can view and export.
- Find your nearest branch and its opening hours from your locations list.
- Connect to your store: the Shopify and WooCommerce plugins let the chatbot search live products, and on WooCommerce answer "Where is my order?" for signed-in shoppers.
- Show you what customers ask: every conversation is in your dashboard, with the most-asked topics, ratings and a way to report a reply that was wrong.
Where does a Gydr chatbot answer?
You build one chatbot and connect it wherever your customers already message you. The same knowledge and the same tone apply everywhere, so there is nothing to copy between apps.
Live today: your website (an embedded chat, a floating chat bubble, a shareable link or a QR code), WhatsApp on your own WhatsApp Business number, Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct messages and Telegram. WordPress sites can add it with the Gydr Widget plugin. TikTok is on the roadmap and not available yet.
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
Gydr has four plans: Free, Starter, Growth and Scale, plus a custom plan for organisations that need their own terms. Every plan, Free included, lets you build as many chatbots, skills and knowledge bases as you need and connect every channel. What changes between plans is the number of monthly credits (the AI usage your chatbots spend), how long chat history is kept, and a few features: your own chatbot branding from Starter, and White Label and bringing your own AI model from Growth.
To start the Free plan you verify a payment method; the card is not charged. See the pricing page for each plan's credits and current prices.
How do you choose an AI chatbot platform?
Most demos look good. These questions show how a chatbot will behave on a busy Tuesday with real customers:
- Does it answer only from your information, and what does it do when it doesn't know?
- Does it work on the channels your customers use most, not just your website?
- Can it reply in the languages your customers write in, including mixed-language messages?
- Can it hand over to the help desk your team already uses, and does it check someone is available first?
- Can you see every conversation, and fix a wrong answer yourself?
- Can you start free and see it working on your own questions before you pay?
- Is it honest about what is not built yet?
How do you get started with Gydr?
A first version can be answering on your website in an afternoon. No coding is needed: the website chat is one line you paste into your site, or a link you share.
- 1Create a free account at console.gydr.ai.
- 2Add your knowledge: import your FAQs and products, upload a document, or crawl your website.
- 3Create a chatbot, pick a personality and write a few instructions in your own words.
- 4Test it on the built-in test page with the questions your customers really ask, and fix any gap in your knowledge.
- 5Connect your website, then WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or Telegram.
- 6Optionally connect your help desk so the hard questions reach your team.
Common questions
It is a program that chats with your customers in writing, understands questions asked in everyday language and replies like a helpful staff member. A business AI chatbot such as Gydr answers from your own information rather than from the whole internet.
Yes. Gydr's Free plan includes monthly credits and every channel. You verify a payment method when you sign up, but the card is not charged on the Free plan.
Gydr is built to stay with your data: each reply is checked against your knowledge before it is sent, and when there is no answer the chatbot says so. No AI is perfect, so you can read every conversation and report a wrong reply from your dashboard.
It can take the routine questions off your team's plate, but it is built to work with people, not instead of them. When a customer asks for a person, gets frustrated or the answers keep missing, Gydr offers to hand over to your team.
No. You build the chatbot in the dashboard, and putting it on your website is one line of code you paste, or a link you share. WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Telegram are connected from the dashboard.
The terms overlap. An AI customer service agent usually means a chatbot that can answer, look things up and hand over. Gydr does those things; it does not take actions such as issuing refunds or taking payments. Requests like those are collected as details for your team or passed to a person.