Guide

What do you need for an AI chatbot? The requirements

Before an AI chatbot even makes sense, a few things need to be in place in your business. What those are — and which supposed requirements actually aren't.

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Quote upon request2 to 4 weeksStatus 2026

In short

For an AI chatbot, a business needs three things: a concrete, named workflow that currently costs time or orders, existing content or data to work with, and someone who is authorized to make decisions. Technical knowledge is explicitly not required.

01 — Requirements

What you need for an AI chatbot

A clearly defined trigger. Not “we should do something with AI,” but a process that demonstrably costs time or orders today.
Existing content or data. An AI chatbot works with what's already there. The more complete your starting point, the shorter the setup.
Access to the systems involved. Whoever manages the credentials needs to be involved from the start — this is, in our experience, the most common cause of delays.
One decision-making contact person. One, not three.
Willingness to refine after launch. The first weeks in real operation show what was missing in the concept. That's normal and accounted for.

02 — Participation

What we need from you

A contact person who can make decisions — not just forward them.
Access to the affected systems, in time and not on launch day.
Real examples from daily business — the messier, the more useful for testing.
Two to four hours for coordination, distributed over the project duration.
An answer to the question of what success means. Without it, nothing can be assessed afterward.

03 — Fit

When it's worth it

The process in question occurs at least weekly.
It follows rules you can write down — even if there are exceptions.
Today it's manual work that no one enjoys doing.
There's one person who decides, not three who need to coordinate.
You can name what would tell you it worked.

04 — Questions

Frequently asked questions

Does this also work on a WordPress site?

Yes. The integration is a single code snippet in the footer and works the same on WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Wix, TYPO3, or a custom-built site.

Does this even pay off for us?

The calculation is simple: requests per week times processing time times hourly rate. With twenty repeat questions per week and seven minutes each, that's a good two hours of work — every week. We calculate this with your real numbers before the quote.

What happens to our customers' data?

The conversations run through servers in the EU, no training is done with your data, and we write the appropriate section for your privacy policy. On request, chat logs are automatically deleted after a set period.

Doesn't an AI chatbot just make up answers?

A free-running language model does. That's why we build the bot so it only answers from a verified knowledge base and provides the source. If it finds nothing, it says so and redirects — that's the most important part of the configuration.

Can we turn the bot off again?

Anytime, with one click. The snippet remains, the bot is gone. There's no minimum term that binds you.

Do we have to label the chatbot as AI?

Yes. Since August 2026, the transparency requirements of Article 50 of the EU AI Act apply: Anyone communicating directly with an AI system must be able to recognize it. We build the labeling in as standard, it costs nothing extra.

How much work does this create for us?

At the start, about two to three hours for gathering content and one alignment round. After that, nothing regular — unless you want to add new topics, which works through a simple document.

05 — Next

AI chatbot by region

Next step

Initial assessment, no obligation.

Briefly describe what you need. You'll get an honest answer about what's realistic and what it will roughly cost.

Send inquiry ↗ office@pipeline-solutions.at OR +43 681 207 64 203