It's 1:40 a.m. A customer in Chattogram messages your Facebook page asking if the blue kurti comes in L. Five years ago, that message waited until 10 a.m., and by then the customer had bought from someone else. Today, a growing number of Bangladeshi businesses answer it in three seconds.
We've built chatbots for retailers, clinics, schools and distributors over the last two years. Here's what we've learned about what they do well, what they cost, and where a human still matters.
Why now?
Three things changed at once. Customers moved to Messenger and WhatsApp as their default way to contact a business. AI models got good enough to understand Bangla, English and Banglish in the same sentence. And the cost of running a bot dropped to a fraction of a support salary.
What a good bot actually does
A useful chatbot isn't a menu of buttons. It answers the questions your customers really ask, using your own products, prices and policies. The most valuable jobs we see:
- Product questions. Price, sizes, colours and stock, pulled live from your store or ERP.
- Taking orders. Collecting name, address and phone, then sending a bKash or Nagad payment link.
- Order tracking. "Amar parcel kothay?" answered with the actual courier status.
- Bookings. Appointments for clinics, salons and service businesses, with reminders.
Bangla, English and Banglish
This is where most off-the-shelf bots fail. Customers here rarely write in one language. They mix Bangla script, Romanised Bangla and English, often with spelling that changes from message to message. We train and test every bot on real customer messages, not textbook sentences.
Our bot now handles most night-time orders. The team starts the morning with confirmed orders instead of a hundred unread messages.
What it costs
There are two parts: building the bot, and running it. A custom bot for your website and one messaging channel starts from $3,000. Running costs depend on volume: AI model usage and WhatsApp messaging are billed by the providers, usually a few dollars to a few hundred a month.
Where humans still matter
Complaints, refunds, custom orders and anything emotional should reach a person fast. A good bot recognises these moments and hands over to your team with the full conversation, so the customer never repeats themselves. The goal isn't to replace your support team. It's to let them spend their time on the conversations that need them.
If you're thinking about a chatbot, start small: one channel, your top questions, and a clear handover rule. Then grow from what the conversations tell you.