Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots are an always present, low maintenance, low cost (relative to having a staff member on duty 24/7) way of providing quick assistance to website users seeking to go beyond the browse.

Sign up for an e-newsletter, request a return call, or even book an appointment with this sample bot we've named Simon (think of the children's game "Simon Says")... so, click on the little green bubble to experience our Simon and while we do not publish an e-newsletter, you will get a sense of how this simple AI bot works.

In more sophisticated scenarios, a bot can begin the conversation with website visitors and when a more deft and nuanced interaction is required, hand off to a human operator. It can gather user information, send that information for processing and return results to the user either in the chat session or via another channel, like email for example.

The possibilities are broad so don't be shy about asking questions.

Artificial Intelligence is many things, and continues to improve but it is not equivalent to a human ... yet.

This particular chatbot is provided by the good folks at FlowXO