Chatbot.

A classic chatbot follows flows that someone has written in advance. The customer clicks buttons or types a word the bot recognises, and gets a pre-written answer back.

It works well for a handful of predictable questions, but gets stuck when the customer phrases things in a way nobody planned for. Today the word is also used for AI assistants, which makes it hard to know what a provider is actually offering.

Always ask whether a chatbot answers from pre-written flows or with a language model from your material, and whether it can fetch details from your systems. The guide to the difference goes through it point by point.