Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Chattering.ai — how the AI works, pricing, setup, data privacy, and more.
Product overview
What is Chattering.ai?
Chattering.ai is an AI-powered customer support platform built for small teams. You connect it to your website or help documentation, and it trains on that content to answer customer questions instantly via a chat widget. Every answer cites the exact source it came from. When the AI cannot answer — because the topic is not in your content or the customer needs human judgment — it hands the conversation to your team with the full thread attached.
Who is Chattering built for?
Chattering is designed for small software companies, SaaS startups, developer tools, e-commerce businesses, and agencies where the founder or a small team still handles support. If you are answering the same dozen questions over and over, and those answers already exist somewhere in your docs or on your website, Chattering will handle most of those conversations automatically — so your team can focus on the questions that actually require a human.
How does Chattering differ from Intercom, Zendesk, or Freshdesk?
Chattering is purpose-built for small teams, not enterprise support operations. Key differences: Chattering cites the exact source for every AI answer — Intercom and Zendesk do not. Chattering trains on your website automatically with no manual content uploads — Zendesk AI typically requires manual configuration. Chattering's free plan requires no credit card. Intercom's AI features start at several hundred dollars per month. Chattering can be live in under fifteen minutes. Zendesk and Freshdesk implementations commonly take days or weeks. Chattering does not charge per seat on its starter plan.
What types of questions can Chattering's AI answer?
The AI answers any question that is covered in the content you connect — product documentation, help articles, FAQs, landing pages, policy pages, and any text files you upload. It excels at repeat questions with written answers already available: pricing, setup steps, feature explanations, account management, and troubleshooting. It does not answer questions that fall outside your content, and it says so clearly rather than guessing.
What does Chattering include?
A Chattering workspace includes: an embeddable AI chat widget for your website, an AI agent trained on your content, a shared team inbox for chat and email conversations, a customer-facing help center, a public feedback portal where customers can vote on feature requests, and a reporting dashboard. All pieces are connected — a conversation can be published as a help article with one click, and new articles are indexed immediately so the AI can use them.
Getting started & setup
How do I get started with Chattering?
Sign up for a free account at chattering.ai — no credit card required. Paste your website URL, and Chattering crawls your pages automatically. Once the crawl finishes (usually a few minutes), you can test the AI in a playground to see how it answers questions. When you are happy with the results, copy a one-line script tag onto your site and the widget goes live.
How long does setup take?
Most teams are live the same day they sign up. The core setup — creating an account, connecting your website, testing the AI in the playground, and pasting the widget script — takes under fifteen minutes. You do not need to write any new content, configure connectors, or migrate existing tools. Start with the widget and add the inbox, help center, and feedback portal as you need them.
Do I need technical skills to set up Chattering?
No coding is required to add the AI agent. You paste a single script tag into the HTML of your site, or drop the tag into the custom-code section of Webflow, Framer, Squarespace, or Shopify. If you manage a WordPress site, you can add the tag through a plugin or the theme editor. The onboarding is designed so a non-technical founder can complete it independently.
What do I need to get Chattering working?
At minimum, a public website or set of help articles for the AI to read. The more structured and thorough your existing content is, the better the AI's answers will be. You do not need to create new content from scratch — Chattering works with whatever you already have published.
Can I add content beyond my website?
Yes. In addition to crawling your website, you can add content by pasting raw text directly into the knowledge base, uploading plain-text files, or writing Q&A pairs manually. You can also create help articles inside Chattering's built-in help center, which the AI reads automatically.
Plans & pricing
Does Chattering have a free plan?
Yes. The free plan includes 50 AI replies per month with no credit card required. That is enough to train an agent on your website, test it with real questions, and deploy the widget to see how customers interact with it. Upgrade when your volume grows beyond the free limits.
How is Chattering priced?
Chattering's plans are based on the number of AI replies per month, not per seat. You pay for conversations the AI actually resolves, not for each team member who logs into the inbox. Paid plans start at an affordable monthly rate and scale with volume. See chattering.ai/pricing for current plan details.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. All plans are month-to-month with no long-term contracts or cancellation fees. Cancel from your billing settings and you keep access until the end of the current billing period. There are no data lock-in penalties — you can export your conversations and help articles at any time.
What counts as an AI reply?
An AI reply is counted each time the AI writes a substantive response to a customer question. Draft messages you discard, system messages, and automated acknowledgements do not count. The Reports section shows you how many AI replies resolved a conversation versus how many were escalated to a human, so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
Is there a trial of the paid plan?
The free plan is available indefinitely without a trial period. You can use Chattering for free as long as you stay within the free plan's monthly limits. When you need higher volumes or advanced features, you can upgrade to a paid plan at any time — no trial period required.
How the AI works
What does the AI train on?
The AI reads your public website pages and any additional content you provide — help articles, uploaded text files, or manually written Q&A pairs. It does not use general internet data or knowledge from other companies' websites. Every answer it gives is grounded in your content, not generated from general training data.
Does the AI cite its sources?
Yes, every AI reply includes citations linking to the exact source it used. Customers can click through to read the full help article or page the answer came from. This transparency helps customers verify answers themselves and helps your team identify outdated content when a citation leads to an article that needs updating.
What happens when the AI cannot answer a question?
When a question falls outside the content the AI has indexed — or when the AI's confidence is below its threshold — it tells the customer clearly that it does not know and offers to connect them with a human. The conversation is then routed to your inbox with the full thread, the sources the AI checked, and a summary. Your team picks up the context immediately without asking the customer to repeat themselves.
Can the AI make up answers?
No. Chattering's AI is constrained to your indexed content. It does not generate speculative or hallucinated answers — if the answer is not in your content, it says so rather than improvising. This is a deliberate design choice: a confident wrong answer damages customer trust more than an honest handoff to a human does.
How does the AI handle ambiguous or multi-part questions?
The AI tries to address each part of the question from the relevant sections of your content. If a question spans multiple topics, it will answer the parts it can ground in your content and note where it cannot help. For genuinely complex or ambiguous questions, it typically routes to your team rather than attempt a partial answer that might mislead.
Does the AI improve over time?
The AI's accuracy improves as you add more content to your knowledge base. When your team answers a conversation that the AI could not handle, you can publish that reply as a help article with one click — the AI indexes it immediately and can use it to answer the same question next time. Gaps in the AI's knowledge show up as escalations in your inbox, which become a map of what your documentation is missing.
Data, privacy & security
Is my data used to train AI models?
No. Your content is indexed for retrieval only — it is used to answer your customers' questions and is not fed into model training or shared with any third party. If you delete a page from your knowledge base, the AI genuinely stops using it. Your data is not used to improve AI models for other customers.
How is data encrypted?
All connections use TLS 1.3 in transit. Data at rest is encrypted with AES-256. Chattering runs on infrastructure that has passed SOC 2 compliance audits, and automated backups are stored in separate geographic regions so data is recoverable even if a data center fails.
Does Chattering sign a Data Processing Agreement (DPA)?
Yes. Chattering signs a DPA on paid plans. The DPA formalises the obligations for handling personal data in compliance with GDPR and similar regulations. Contact support@chattering.ai to request the DPA.
Who can see my customers' conversations?
Only members of your Chattering workspace can access your conversations. Access is role-based — agents can reply to conversations, while only admins can change billing or security settings. Chattering staff do not access your conversation data except when you explicitly request support and grant access.
Is Chattering GDPR compliant?
Chattering is designed with GDPR compliance in mind. Your content is indexed and stored only for the purpose of answering your customers' questions. You can delete any data at any time. Paid customers can sign a DPA with Chattering. If you have specific compliance requirements, contact support@chattering.ai.
What security protections does Chattering have?
Chattering uses defence-in-depth security. Every response includes Content Security Policy (CSP), HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), and X-Frame-Options headers. User input is validated before entering the system and output is encoded before reaching the browser, preventing SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Dependencies are scanned for known vulnerabilities on a regular schedule. Two-factor authentication is available for all accounts.
Human handoff & inbox
Can customers always reach a human?
Always. Customers can request a human agent at any point in a conversation. The widget shows your operating hours honestly, so customers know upfront when your team is available. You control exactly which hours the AI answers versus which hours conversations queue for your team to pick up.
What does my team see when a conversation is handed off?
Your team sees the full conversation thread, which sources the AI checked before escalating, a summary of what the customer was asking, and any context from the customer's previous conversations. Nothing is lost in the handoff — your team picks up exactly where the AI stopped without asking the customer to explain the problem again.
Does the inbox handle email as well as chat?
Yes. The shared inbox handles both chat conversations (from the widget) and email. Incoming emails appear alongside widget conversations so your team has one place to manage all customer communication. You do not need a separate email helpdesk.
Does the AI work outside business hours?
Yes. The AI is available around the clock regardless of your team's working hours. Outside your set operating hours, the AI continues to answer questions from your content. Conversations that require a human response are queued and your team picks them up when they return. Customers are shown your expected response time so they know when to expect a human reply.
Multilingual & international support
Does Chattering support multiple languages?
Yes. The AI answers in 80+ languages automatically, matching whatever language the customer writes in — even if your help content is only in English. A French-speaking customer asking a question in French will receive an answer in French, drawn from your English-language documentation. You do not need to translate your content to support international customers.
Do I need to configure language settings?
No configuration is needed. Language detection and response generation are automatic. The AI identifies the language the customer is writing in and replies accordingly. If your content is in multiple languages, the AI will use the most relevant version.
Help center & feedback portal
Does Chattering include a help center?
Yes. Every Chattering workspace includes a customer-facing help center where you can publish articles, how-to guides, and FAQs. The AI reads the help center automatically — any article you publish is indexed within minutes and available for the AI to cite in its responses. Your help center is available at a subdomain you configure.
What is the feedback portal?
The feedback portal is a public page where your customers can submit feature requests and vote on existing ones. It gives you a prioritized view of what your customers want built next, and it gives customers a way to participate in the product roadmap without emailing you directly. You control which requests are visible and which are marked as completed or declined.
Can my team turn a support reply into a help article?
Yes. When your team writes a reply that addresses a common question, they can publish it directly as a help article with one click. The article is indexed immediately, so the AI can use it to answer the same question automatically the next time — without anyone having to step in again.
Contact & support
How do I contact Chattering support?
The fastest way is the chat widget in the bottom corner of this site — it is powered by Chattering itself. You can also email support@chattering.ai. A real person reads every message and typically replies within a few hours.
Is there documentation or a knowledge base for Chattering?
Yes. Chattering's help center at chattering.ai/help covers setup, configuration, integrations, billing, and troubleshooting. If you cannot find what you need, the chat widget or email are the fastest paths to a human answer.
Still have questions?
Open the chat widget on any page, or email us at support@chattering.ai. A real person reads every message.