What an AI assistant on your site can and cannot do

Every second enquiry we get about AI-assistant websites starts with the same worry: will it make things up. The honest answer is that a badly scoped assistant will, and a well scoped one will not, because it is not allowed to. This is the scope we build to. Read it before you buy one from anyone.

What it answers from

The assistant is not a general chatbot with your logo on it. It answers from a fixed set of material that you control:

• The pages of your website, as published.
• Your price list, with the date it was last updated.
• Your policies: cancellations, delivery areas, opening hours, payment methods, what you do and do not do.
• A short list of questions and answers you write for the cases the pages do not cover.

When a visitor asks “do you deliver to Paro”, the assistant finds the delivery policy in that material and answers from it. If the material does not mention Paro, it does not guess. It says the delivery area is not listed and offers to connect the visitor to a person.

This is the single rule that makes the difference between useful and dangerous. The assistant may only say what your content says. Everything else is a handover.

When it hands over to a person

Some conversations should not end with a robot. The assistant recognises these and moves the visitor to WhatsApp, email or a phone number, with a short summary of what was asked so nobody has to repeat themselves.

The handover cases we build in by default:

• The answer is not in the content.
• The visitor is asking for a price on something custom.
• The visitor wants to complain.
• The visitor asks the same thing twice, which usually means the first answer missed.
• The visitor asks for a person.

In Bhutan the handover destination is almost always WhatsApp, because that is where the business actually reads messages. The assistant opens the chat with the visitor’s question already drafted. Outside working hours, Bhutan Time, it says when someone will reply and does not pretend anyone is there.

The assistant’s job is to be right at 2 a.m., and to know when to say “ask a human at 9”.

What it must never do

We write these as hard rules in the assistant’s instructions, and we test them before launch by trying to break them.

Never invent a price. If the price list says “from Nu. 4,500 a night” it can say that. It cannot round, estimate, or offer a discount. Prices are the fastest way to lose a customer’s trust and the easiest thing for a model to get wrong.

Never confirm what it cannot see. Bookings, stock, delivery slots and appointment times live in systems the assistant may not be connected to. Unless it is, the answer is “I can pass this to the team to confirm”, not “yes, that is available”.

Never take payment details. No card numbers, no mBoB screenshots, no bank details typed into a chat. Payment happens on a payment page or in person. The assistant explains how to pay; it does not collect.

Never pretend to be human. It has a name if you want, but it is labelled as an assistant and answers “are you a real person” truthfully.

Never give legal, medical or financial advice. A clinic’s assistant can state opening hours and which services are offered. It does not diagnose. A consultancy’s assistant can explain what a service includes. It does not advise on a specific case.

Never remember more than it needs. Conversations are not used to train anything, are kept only as long as you need them for follow-up, and never include anything the visitor did not type themselves.

What it can do well

Within that scope, the useful list is long. In our experience the questions a small business site gets are repetitive, and repetition is exactly what the assistant is for.

Most of these are questions the business already answers ten times a day on WhatsApp. Moving them to the site means the WhatsApp that remains is the useful kind.

What it costs

There are three numbers, and a quote should show all three.

The build. Our AI-assistant sites start at Nu. 35,000 (2026 starting price). That includes the site itself, the assistant, the content preparation, the handover rules and the testing. A site that already exists and only needs the assistant added is quoted separately, and is less.

Hosting. Same as any site: from Nu. 3,500 a year. The assistant does not need special hosting.

Running cost. Each conversation uses a language model, which is billed per use by the model provider. For a small business site this is, in our experience, a few hundred ngultrum a month. We set a monthly cap so a busy month or a bored visitor cannot run up a bill, and we show you the usage.

Anyone quoting a flat price with no running cost is either absorbing it, which is fine as long as the contract says so, or has not thought about it.

Whether you need one

You probably do if you get the same five questions every day, if enquiries arrive at hours nobody is awake, or if a good share of your customers are abroad and do not use WhatsApp. Hotels, tour operators, clinics and anything with a price list and a booking calendar fit.

You probably do not if the site is a brochure with a phone number and the phone works. An assistant on a five-page site with no policies and no prices has nothing to answer from, and we will say so on the call rather than sell you one.

If you are unsure, send us the last twenty questions your business was asked on WhatsApp. If the assistant could answer fifteen of them from your existing content, it is worth building. If it could answer three, it is not yet.