Website chat agent
The one in the corner of this page is the product.
Not a video of one, not a screenshot from a good day. Ask it what we charge for the audit, or something we have never published, and watch what it does with both. Then the prices below will mean something.
Go on, try to catch it out
It answers from what Fathom has actually written down, which is the same material our phone line answers from. Ask it something we have published and it will tell you. Ask it something we have not, and it will say so and hand you to a person rather than producing a confident sentence with nothing behind it.
That second behaviour is the one worth testing, and it is the one most of these things get wrong.
It also will not quote a price we have not decided. Ask it what a website costs and it will tell you that gets scoped on a call, because that is true and because a number invented in a chat window is a number somebody expects to be honoured.
Or use the button in the bottom corner of any page on this site. It is the same agent everywhere.
Website chat agent
$500 to $1,500 setup
$150 a month after that
One thing moves it inside that range: whether your knowledge base already exists.
$500 when we already run your phone agent. Same knowledge base, second surface. Charging a full setup twice for work you have already paid for would be charging twice for one thing.
$1,500 when we build your knowledge base from nothing, because nothing about how your business actually operates has been written down in a form anything can read.
The middle is most businesses: the material exists, spread across a website, a price list and a few things only you know, and it has to be organised before an agent can answer from it.
You are not buying a chat window. You are buying what it knows.
The window is the easy half and every version of this has one. What decides whether it earns anything is whether the thing behind it knows what you charge to come out, which suburbs you cover, what happens on a first visit, and which jobs you turn down.
We build that once, and it answers on your website and on your phone line.
So a change to your Saturday hours is one edit, and the chat and the phone both stop telling people the old ones. A tool that only lives on your website cannot do that at any price, because it has no connection to your phone line and never will.
And when somebody in the chat is ready to book or wants a quote, it is standing in the same system as the rest of what we run for you, so what happens next is work that actually gets done rather than a transcript emailed to somebody.
What it will not do
It will not answer what it does not know. It says so and hands the visitor a phone number and a form. You can test this on the agent above in about twenty seconds, which is why it is stated here rather than buried.
It will not state a price you have not set. Not even a ballpark, and not even when pushed. Where a service is scoped, it says it is scoped.
It will not replace a person for the conversations that need one. Somebody upset, somebody with a complicated situation, somebody who asks for a human: all three go to a human. A chat agent that fights a visitor for control of the conversation costs more than it saves.
It does not answer your phone. That is the phone agent, which is a different product with its own prices, and the two share the knowledge base rather than the surface.
When not to buy this
If almost nobody visits your website. A chat agent shortens a path for people already on the site. When the traffic is not there, this is a well-built thing nobody meets, and the money belongs wherever people actually reach you.
If your callers are the problem. An unanswered phone loses a customer who was ready to buy right now, and that is the more expensive leak by a distance. Fix the phone first and add this after.
If nobody on your side can answer questions about how you operate. This is built from what your business knows, and if those answers cannot be got out of somebody for a few hours, the agent will be confidently vague, which is worse than having none.
Questions
What decides where I land in the $500 to $1,500 range?
Whether your knowledge base already exists. If we run your phone agent, it does, and this is $500 for a second surface reading the same material. If nothing about your business has ever been written down in a form an agent can read, that writing is most of the work and it is $1,500. Most businesses are somewhere in between: the material exists across a website, a price list and somebody's head, and it has to be organised before an agent can answer from it.
Is there a limit on conversations?
Not one we have set, and we are not going to invent a number to put on this page. We set the allowance with the first client against their real traffic and then it becomes the standard. Until then it is $150 a month and a conversation about your volume if it turns out to be unusual.
What happens when somebody asks it something it does not know?
It says so and hands them to a person, with the phone number and the contact form. It does not guess, and it does not invent a price. You can test that on this page right now by asking it something we have not published, which is a better answer than us describing the behaviour.
Will it quote my prices to strangers?
Only the ones you tell it to. What it can say about money is exactly what you have decided it can say, and where you would rather a number came from a conversation, it says that instead and takes their details. Ours is set up that way for the services we scope per client.
Do I need the phone agent as well?
No, and plenty of businesses start here because their customers write rather than call. What is true is that the two together are cheaper than either one twice, because the expensive part is turning what your business knows into something an agent can read, and that gets done once.
How long does setup take?
It depends almost entirely on how fast questions about your business get answered, which is your side rather than ours. The build is short. Getting a straight answer on what you charge to come out to the far side of the county is what takes the calendar time, and it is the same answer the phone agent needs.
Ask ours before you buy yours.
It is the same build your visitors would get, reading a different business. If it answers you well, that is the product, and if it does not, you have saved yourself a conversation.
$500 to $1,500 setup, then $150 a month. Cheapest when it runs alongside the phone agent, because they read the same knowledge base.