# Chatbot

> VI: https://5ac.vn/wiki/chatbot/ · EN: https://5ac.vn/en/wiki/chatbot/ · lang: en · spec_as_of 2026-10-19 (spec no formal spec) · cluster C2

Software that carries on automated conversations with customers by text or voice: it answers when asked and stops at the chat window — the line to an AI agent is proactivity.

---
## Definition

A chatbot is software that holds automated conversations with people by text or voice, most often at the first touchpoint of customer care: answering FAQs, taking in requests, handing off to a human when the script runs out. Two generations run side by side. Scripted chatbots are hand-built decision trees — ask A, get B — cheap and predictable. AI chatbots put a language model behind the reply, drawing answers from a knowledge base and tolerating unusual phrasing. The line between chatbot and AI agent is proactivity: a chatbot waits to be asked; an agent watches a goal and acts. The agent's own definition and operating layers belong to the AI Agent entry — this one stops at the bot.

## Mechanism

Chatbots earn their keep where questions are frequent and narrow. The numbers 5ac publishes: a basic chatbot costs $29/month against $500–1,000/month for the human equivalent — overall a 50–95% cost cut — and after eighteen months of price war, categories like chatbots, basic content generation and data extraction approach zero cost at low volume. Tidio's Lyro AI is the worked example: it handles common questions out of the box, with visual flow builders for custom paths, from $29/month. The ceiling is structural: answering is not doing. Updating an order status, closing a ticket or writing to a CRM is an action, and actions need permissions and their own logs. 5ac's agentic-CRM piece draws exactly this line: a CRM with a chatbot bolts an automated reply window onto the old workflow; an agentic CRM gives each agent a role, a permission boundary, an input, an output and an audit trail.

## Application context

In the 30-day plan from 5ac's SMB guides, a customer-service FAQ chatbot sits in the top-priority tier — week one or two: the cheapest move, the easiest to measure (share of conversations the bot closes without a human), the least invasive to data. Cheap and early is not the same as a dead end: an SMB that lets a bot answer customers today buys a 6–12 month lead over competitors who wait. Know the ceiling so the next step is the right one: when the bot can answer everything but finish nothing, that is where the agent conversation begins.

## Sources fetched

- [Best AI for Small Business 2026: Honest Platform Comparison](/en/blog/best-ai-for-smb/) — chatbot pricing tiers, first-week priorities — accessed 2026-10-19
- [AI for Small Business 2026: Tools, Costs & a 30-Day Plan](/en/blog/ai-for-smb/) — reactive assistant vs proactive agent, Tidio Lyro, price compression to $29 — accessed 2026-10-19
- [Agentic CRM: The Future of Customer Service for Vietnamese SMBs in the AI Agent Era](/en/blog/agentic-crm-future-customer-service-smb-vietnam/) — CRM-with-a-chatbot vs agentic CRM — accessed 2026-10-19

## Related

- [AI Agent](/en/wiki/ai-agent/)
- [Agentic CRM](/en/wiki/agentic-crm/)
- [Business automation](/en/wiki/business-automation/)