Conversational agent

A conversational agent is a program built to hold a conversation with a human toward a defined goal — qualifying a request, answering FAQs, booking an appointment. Built around a large language model (LLM), it understands natural language instead of following a rigid decision tree, which sets it apart from old button-based chatbots. It can be text-based (chat, SMS) or voice-based (AI voice agent).

For a tradesperson or shop owner, the value isn't novelty but coverage: a conversational agent replies at 2 AM, on Sunday, while you're on a job. Reliability rests on two conditions: a closed knowledge base that bounds what it can assert, and a human escalation rule the moment it's unsure. A well-designed agent knows how to say "I don't know."