AI agent or chatbot? How to choose for your business
· 1 min read
A chatbot answers questions. An agent completes tasks. That single difference decides your budget, your risk and your return.
When a chatbot is enough
If people mostly ask the same questions and the answers live in a handful of documents, a retrieval-based assistant with citations is usually enough. It is fast to build, cheap to run and easy to test.
When you need an agent
You need an agent when the outcome is an action: a ticket created, a record updated, an appointment booked, an invoice sent. Agents call your systems through permissioned tools, so the work is finished instead of described.
Four questions to ask first
- What is the outcome, and how will we measure it?
- Which systems does the agent need to read from and write to?
- Which actions are irreversible and need a human approval step?
- What does a wrong answer cost us?
Start small
Pick one workflow, build an evaluation set from real cases, and pilot it with a small group. Measure before you scale. That is how we approach every engagement at Datalytics AI.
Want to talk it through? Book a free consultation.