Live chat vs AI chat: which one does your website need?

What live chat is good at

Live chat puts a real person in front of your visitor. It shines when a conversation needs judgment, empathy or authority:

• Complaints, refunds and anything emotional.
• Complex quotes, custom orders and negotiations.
• High-value sales where a personal touch closes the deal.

The downside is availability. Someone has to be there, and visitors arrive at all hours. A live chat that nobody answers is worse than no chat at all.

What AI chat is good at

An AI agent trained on your content answers in seconds, any time, in many languages. It is ideal for:

• The same questions asked every day: prices, hours, locations, policies.
• Nights, weekends and holidays.
• Busy periods when your team can’t keep up.
• Collecting a name and email so your team can follow up later.

Older chatbots followed rigid scripts and frustrated people. Modern AI agents understand normal questions and answer in natural language, as long as they are given good information to work from.

Cost and speed compared

Live chat costs staff time. Every conversation takes minutes of someone’s attention, and covering evenings or weekends means paying for extra hours. AI chat costs a monthly subscription and answers thousands of routine questions without extra staff.

On speed, AI wins every time: a reply in seconds rather than minutes. On quality, a person still wins for anything unusual or sensitive.

Why the answer is usually both

The most effective approach is to let AI handle the routine questions and pass anything else to a person. Visitors get an instant answer to simple questions, and your team spends its time on the conversations that really need a human.

For this to work, the handoff has to be smooth. When the AI can’t help, or a visitor asks for a person, the chat should collect their contact details, alert your team, and keep the full conversation so nobody has to repeat themselves.

Questions to ask before you choose

• How many chats do you expect, and at what times of day?
• What share of questions are the same every day?
• Who on your team will answer chats, and when are they available?
• Is AI included in the price, or billed per answer or per resolution?
• Can the AI hand off to a person, and can your team reply from a phone?

How TullyDesk Chat combines them

TullyDesk Chat includes both in one product: Tully, the AI agent, answers from your content, and a shared live chat inbox lets your team take over any conversation from desktop or phone. You can let Tully answer every chat, or only when nobody on your team is available, and AI replies are included in every plan.