How to Choose an AI Chatbot for Your Business: 7 Questions Before You Pay
The promises are identical. The checks are not
Every chatbot platform promises "AI that sells 24/7". You can tell a working product from a pretty landing page in half an hour — if you know what to check. Here are seven questions to ask before paying.
1. Does it actually speak Uzbek?
Don't trust the "uz" flag in the site header — verify it. Write a question in Uzbek into the demo chat and see whether the answer comes back in Uzbek and actually addresses the question. While you're at it, open the Uzbek version of the vendor's own website: if half the page stays in Russian after switching, the bot is "translated" about as well.
2. How does it know my prices?
Ask how your catalog, prices, and terms get into the bot. The right answer is a knowledge base: you upload a price list, a document, or a link to your site, and the agent answers from them. If instead you're offered to "configure scripts" for every question — that's a button-menu bot from the last decade, no matter how much "AI" is in the name.
3. What does it do when it doesn't know?
The most important question. Ask the demo something that's definitely not in the knowledge base — the price of a product that doesn't exist, say. An honest agent will say it needs to check with a colleague and call a human. A bad one will confidently invent a price — and you will be the one apologizing to the customer afterwards.
4. How does a conversation reach a human?
The bot closes the routine, but people buy from people. Check whether an operator can take over a conversation, whether they see its history, and whether they're notified immediately — or whether the customer waits until someone happens to look at a dashboard.
5. Where do the leads go?
A conversation without a lead is just traffic. Ask whether the customer's name and phone land in a CRM automatically, from the first message, and which CRMs are supported. Without that integration, leads will live in chats and get lost exactly where they got lost before the bot.
6. Are the channels connected officially?
For Telegram — through BotFather; for Instagram and WhatsApp — only the official Meta API. If a service asks for your Instagram login and password, run: that's the direct route to losing the account along with its entire audience.
7. What does it really cost?
Open the pricing page and find three numbers: the monthly price, the message limit, and the price of the next tier. If there are no prices on the site and everything is "discussed with a manager", the final number will depend on how you look — and growth will cost more than entry.
Half an hour that saves months
All seven checks fit into one evening, with no calls and no sales decks. Replyra passes them in the open: the demo chat on our site answers in Uzbek and Russian, plans and limits are published, leads land in the built-in CRM or in Bitrix24 and amoCRM, and the agent honestly calls a human when it doesn't know the answer. Start your checklist with us — then ask the other vendors the same seven questions.