Short answer
A chatbot is software that holds a conversation with a person, usually in a chat window, answering questions in text. Older chatbots follow scripted menus and keywords; AI chatbots use a large language model to understand free-form questions and write their own replies.- Short for
- Chat robot: software that converses with people
- Main types
- Rule-based, AI (language model) chatbots, and AI agents that act
- Where you meet one
- Website chat widgets, messaging apps, help centers and assistants
- Common jobs
- Answering FAQs, tracking orders, booking, collecting details
- Answers from
- A script, a knowledge base, or live business data
- Key limit
- Most chatbots can answer but cannot change anything in your systems
The word chatbot covers everything from a 1990s phone-tree menu in a chat box to ChatGPT. What they share is the interface: a person types (or speaks) and software replies. What separates them is how the reply is produced and whether the software can do anything beyond replying.
How chatbots work
Every chatbot runs the same loop: read the message, work out what the person wants, produce a reply.
- Rule-based chatbots match keywords or button choices to scripted answers. "Track order" leads to a fixed message with a tracking link. Anything off-script gets "Sorry, I didn't understand."
- AI chatbots send the message to a large language model (LLM), often with articles from a knowledge base attached, and the model writes a reply in its own words. They handle free-form questions and follow-ups, but they can sound confident and still be wrong.
- AI agents add tools. Besides writing a reply, they can look up a customer's order, check a policy and take an action, such as changing a shipping address, within limits a team sets.
Types of chatbots
The practical way to tell chatbots apart is by what they answer from and what they are allowed to do.
| Type | Answers from | Can it act? |
|---|---|---|
| Rule-based (menu or keyword) | a fixed script | no |
| AI chatbot | a language model plus a knowledge base | no |
| AI agent | live business data, knowledge and rules | yes, within set limits |
Common uses
- Customer service: a store's chat widget answering "What is your return policy?" from its help center.
- Order tracking: a chatbot asking for an order number and replying with the carrier status.
- General assistants: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, which answer almost anything but know nothing about your store unless connected to it.
- Messaging: a business account on WhatsApp or Messenger that answers opening hours and bookings.
- Internal help: an IT or HR bot answering employee questions from company documents.
Sample conversations for each kind are in chatbot examples.
Where chatbots fall short in customer service
Most of a store's support queue is requests, not questions: change my address, cancel the duplicate order, refund the broken item. A chatbot that can only answer explains how cancellation works and then hands the customer to a person, or loops.
The habit to reject is judging a support chatbot by deflection, the share of customers it kept away from the team. A customer who was deflected while their address is still wrong is a problem postponed. The useful measure is resolution: was the request actually done?
Where Aide fits
Aide is an AI agent for customer service rather than a scripted chatbot. In Aide Chat on a website or Shopify store, the Aide AI Agent answers from the store's own knowledge and products, and for shoppers who prove the order is theirs it can cancel, change the shipping address or start a return, with refunds waiting for the team by default. Each topic is set to AI Agent, Drafts or None, so the team decides how far it goes.