Do we need a consultant if the platform vendor offers to set it up for us?

The vendor will set up their product well; that is not the risk. The risk is in the decisions before setup — scope, refusals, grounding, the acceptance test and ownership — and a vendor is not the right party to decide what its own product should refuse or how it is tested. If those are already written and signed, you may not need me.

Which is better for our customers, WhatsApp or a chat window on the website?

In the Emirates, WhatsApp is almost always where the customers already are, so it is usually first. But it carries Meta's template rules and the 24-hour window, and from October 2026 a per-message charge on replies beyond the free allowance, so the assistant has to be designed for it rather than dropped into it. Most companies end up with both, reading the same material; the decision is about sequence.

Can one assistant handle Arabic and English properly?

Yes, if it is tested in both with your own messages rather than assumed. Current models read Arabic well; the failure is that dialect, names, numerals and mixed-script messages are handled inconsistently, and an assistant tested only in English replies in the wrong register to Arabic customers. The acceptance test is run separately in each language and the assistant is not accepted until both pass.

How long does a first assistant take?

Six to ten weeks for a customer-facing assistant over your own material, of which the first two are reading your real conversations and writing the scope and the acceptance test. Anything that takes an action in another system takes longer, because the safety work around each action is where the time goes.

Will we depend on you afterwards?

No, and that is designed in. Someone in your company is trained to change the wording, read the weekly sample of conversations and switch it off, and the first monthly review is done together. After that the assistant is yours. A monthly retainer is optional; the assistant does not stop working without it.

What is the difference between a conversational AI consultant and a chatbot developer?

A developer builds what has been decided. A consultant decides it: what the assistant covers and refuses, which sources it may answer from, how it hands over to a person, and the written acceptance test it must pass on your own customers’ messages. Many projects need both, and the decisions should come first, because changing them after the build is where the cost goes.

What does a conversational AI consultancy engagement cost?

It depends on the number of channels, the languages, and whether the assistant must answer from live systems or only from approved documents. The section above on what it costs explains what moves the number. A fixed quote follows a short scoping conversation, before any work starts.

Does the assistant need to be connected to our own systems?

Not at first. A first assistant usually answers from approved documents only. Connections to bookings, orders or a CRM come after it has passed the acceptance test, because every connection is one more thing it can get wrong in front of a customer, and each one is added and tested on its own.

Book: Custom AI assistant build

Tell me who you are. You pay on the next screen.

Custom AI assistant build — AED 14,900.00, paid today. The assistant answering from your own documents and price list, on WhatsApp or your site, with the handover rules that decide when a person takes over, and training for whoever maintains it.

Running — AED 1,725 a month. Hosting, model usage, monitoring, answer corrections, from go-live, billed separately.