Companion & communication
Website companion & knowledge chat
You know those chat bubbles that pop up on websites and have the same three answers to everything. This is something different.
You'll get …
- 1
Answers in your tone
The companion knows your services, processes and limits, and answers visitors' questions the way you would.
- 2
A next step, not "contact us"
It works out what people need, every conversation leads to the right next step – and inquiries arrive as structured briefs.
- 3
A handover, not half-answers
With specialist questions, personal matters or anything unclear, the companion doesn't guess – it hands over to your team with the request already summarised.
01Intro
A companion is an assistant that knows your business: your services, your processes, your limits. It answers visitors' questions in your tone, explains what you offer, works out what someone needs – and points them to the right next step instead of stopping at "contact us". It's where your knowledge meets your visitors, and you decide what it draws on. Neo, the companion on this website, is one such system.
Worth knowing: a companion doesn't give professional advice – no tax, legal or health information; it passes questions like these straight to your team. It's also only as good as the knowledge behind it. A well-kept set of FAQs is enough to start with; in the long run, that becomes the knowledge catalog. And what it stores is decided in advance with data protection in mind, not after the fact.
02How it works
- 01
Define the knowledge base
Website, FAQs, services, pricing logic, internal rules: we gather and structure what the companion needs to know. This shows where your knowledge lives – and where the gaps are that visitors notice too. If you already have a knowledge catalog, the companion answers straight from it.
- 02
Set the behaviour, tone and limits
How does the companion speak, what is it allowed to do, and what must it never do? Formal or informal, when it offers to put people in touch, which topics go straight to a person – all of this is settled before it says a word.
- 03
Build it in where your visitors are
The companion becomes part of your website – in your own design, not as a third-party widget. On mobile and desktop, wherever questions come up.
- 04
Pass on inquiries in a structured form
When a conversation turns into an inquiry, it reaches you as a usable brief – not a chat transcript. If the companion is connected to your systems, it lands right where you work: in the CRM, the calendar or the booking tool. Unclear and sensitive cases go straight to a person.
- 05
Review and refine
What do visitors ask? The conversations tell you – and lead to better answers, new FAQ entries and sometimes a new offer.
03Stages
The starting point is deliberately limited – a companion doesn't have to do everything on day one, but it does have to be reliable.
Starter: the FAQ assistant
Curated knowledge on a limited set of topics, tight guardrails, and a clean handover to email and phone. Reliable rather than all-knowing.
Next step: companion with inquiry handover
A larger knowledge base with a process for keeping it up to date; it works out what people need, and inquiries arrive as structured briefs.
Full build: the companion that takes action
The companion deals with whatever comes up in the conversation. It's connected to your systems: it puts the appointment in the calendar, adds the inquiry to the CRM, checks a booking or lets the team know. It also adapts the website itself to the visitor's request, as Neo does on this page.
04Try it yourself
The companion of the fictional “Alte Mühle” event venue. Pick a question – on the right you see where each answer comes from.
A simulation with fixed answers from the knowledge base on the right. With a real language model you can try it with Neo, the companion of this website – bottom right.
The companion invents nothing: it answers from a curated knowledge base built from your content. And for anything that needs judgement or expertise, there's the built-in switch to a human.
The most important part is the least conspicuous: the maintained knowledge base on the left. It decides whether the companion is useful or merely polite.
05Technical implementation
- At its core is a language model with your curated knowledge base as context – at typical volumes it's cached rather than run through a vector database (simpler and cheaper).
- The companion runs as a component of your website with its own small back end – no third-party branding, no external widget window.
- Connections to your systems as needed: calendar, CRM, booking or reservation tool, notifying the team by email or chat. For every action, we decide whether the companion carries it out on its own or asks for confirmation first.
- Adapting the website is one action among several: on this site, Neo switches the view to match the visitor's request and picks up signals for the conversation.
- Guardrails on two levels: behaviour rules in the prompt, plus technical limits in the back end (rate limiting, input limits, moderation).
- Data minimisation by default: only what's agreed gets stored – contact details are kept separately and only with consent.
- Running costs stay manageable: an answer typically costs a few cents – we measure that rather than guess.
for context · This shows how something like this usually gets built – not how it has to be built for you. What actually fits is worked out in the project: around your existing setup, your team, and what stays easy to maintain.