PIPELINEGuide
How long does an AI chatbot take? Realistic timeline
An AI chatbot project is not a weekend task, but not a six-month project either. What happens in what order, where bottlenecks typically occur, and how to shorten the timeline.
An AI chatbot takes 2 to 4 weeks in practice. The biggest time factor is almost never the implementation itself, but how quickly content, access, and decisions come from your side.
01 — Timeframe
How long it takes
- Typical duration
- 2 to 4 weeks
- Price
- Individual based on effort
The timeline starts after approval of the quote. Lead time for initial meeting and quote: typically one to two weeks. We provide a fixed price after this initial meeting.
02 — Process
The steps in detail
Review content
We gather what you already have: website copy, offers, FAQs, email threads. This becomes the knowledge base.
Define response behavior
What may the bot answer, where must it redirect, what tone fits you. This is documented in writing, not guessed.
Test run with real questions
We feed the bot the 50 most common inquiries from your day-to-day and correct until the answers are right.
Go live and refine
After launch, we see where answers are missing in real conversations — and add them.
03 — Bottlenecks
What typically causes delays
- Content and deliveries. By far the most common cause of delay. Text, images, price lists, access credentials — what's missing blocks progress.
- Decisions. When it's unclear who approves, the project waits. A named contact person with decision-making authority noticeably shortens the timeline.
- Access to third-party systems. Getting access to inventory management, phone systems, or CRM regularly takes longer than the integration itself.
- Endless review rounds. Two correction rounds are normal, five are a sign that the goal wasn't clear at the start.
04 — Scope
What's included
- Preparing your content (website, price lists, PDFs, FAQ) into a searchable knowledge base
- Answer logic with source binding — the bot doesn't make things up, it answers from your documents
- Escalation to a human as soon as the question falls outside the knowledge base
- Lead capture with name, request, and contact method directly to your inbox or CRM
- Design matching your website's look, light and dark mode
- AI Act-compliant disclosure that this is an AI system
05 — Questions
Frequently asked questions
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.
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.
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.
What if the bot answers a question incorrectly?
You see every conversation. Incorrect answers are refined by making the knowledge base more precise. This happens a few times in the first weeks, then rarely after that.
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.
06 — Next
Related pages
- AI chatbot — Overview
- AI chatbot — how it works
- AI chatbot — Requirements
- AI chatbot — Integration
- AI chatbot — where to start
- AI chatbot — Team and acceptance
- AI chatbot — AI disclosure
- AI chatbot — Real-world examples
- WhatsApp chatbot
- AI phone assistant
- Customer support automation
- All guides
AI chatbot by region
Next step
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