// Guide · 6 min read
How much does an AI customer support assistant cost?
What it costs to build and run a custom AI support assistant that answers from your documents and order data, and how it compares with chatbot subscriptions.
By Simple To Work ·
An AI support assistant answers customer questions on your website or in your inbox, using your own documents and, if you want, live order data. Anything it cannot handle goes to a person. Here is what it costs and what changes the price.
Subscription or custom?
- Helpdesk add-ons and chatbot subscriptions are quick to switch on and fine for answering from a help center. Fees are monthly, often per resolution or per seat.
- A custom assistant makes sense when answers depend on your systems (orders, accounts, inventory, appointments), when you need strict control over what it may say, or when per-resolution fees add up.
Typical custom ranges
- $10,000 to $25,000: a pilot that answers from your documents, with handoff to a person and a review screen for conversations.
- $25,000 to $60,000: connected to order, account or booking data, takes simple actions (status, reschedule, returns), works in chat and email, with reporting.
- Running it: AI model usage is usually a few cents per conversation, plus hosting; most businesses spend tens to a few hundred dollars a month at small volumes. Maintenance and tuning are extra.
What moves the price
- Connected data. Answering from documents is the simple case. Looking up a customer’s order safely needs authentication and careful permissions.
- Actions. Letting the assistant change something, like a delivery date, needs confirmations, limits and logs.
- Channels. Website chat, email and SMS each add work.
- Guardrails. Topics it must refuse, regulated industries and human review all add design and testing.
How to keep it safe
- Give it access only to the data each question needs, never the whole database.
- Hand off to a person whenever it is unsure, with the conversation attached.
- Review a sample of conversations every week for the first months.
Our AI support assistant demo answers from a fictional company’s documents and orders. Our guide on adding AI to business software safely covers the guardrails in more detail.
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