Chatbot Top Questions: What Customers Ask and How to Answer
The questions customers ask a website chatbot most, with answer patterns for hours, orders, returns, pricing and lead capture, plus how to keep answers current.
The questions people put to a website chatbot are mostly plain and repetitive: when are you open, where is my order, how much does it cost, can I talk to a person. If your chatbot handles those eight or ten well, it handles most of the conversations that matter. This guide lists the questions in the order they tend to come up, shows what a good answer contains, and covers the parts that decide whether a bot helps or irritates: accuracy, languages, lead capture and handoff to a human.
TL;DR
- A small set of questions covers most chatbot traffic: hours, location, products and services, price, order status, returns, and “can I talk to a person?”
- Good answers are short, specific to your business, and end with a next step (a link, a question, or a handoff).
- Shipping and returns answers matter for sales, not only support: unexpected costs are a leading reason shoppers abandon carts.
- Keep answers accurate by feeding the bot your own FAQs, pages and a synced product feed, and by reading the questions it could not answer every week.
- When the bot cannot answer, it should capture contact details or hand the chat to a person, never loop.
Table of Contents
- The questions visitors ask most
- How to answer the basics: hours, location, products and pricing
- E-commerce questions: orders, delivery, availability and returns
- Capturing a lead or reaching a human
- Keeping answers accurate, current and multilingual
- Our perspective: start narrow, then let the questions teach you
- Setting this up with Konvuno
- A checklist before you go live
- FAQ
- Sources
The questions visitors ask most
No one publishes a single authoritative ranking of chatbot questions, and the lists you find online are mostly practitioners’ observations. They agree closely, though, and the pattern matches what any small business hears by email and phone. Roughly in order of frequency:
- “What are your business hours?” The easiest question and the one most often answered wrongly after a holiday schedule changes.
- “Where is my order?” The top question for online shops.
- “Can I speak to a human?” Not a complaint about the bot. Often it is a buyer with a specific need.
- “What products or services do you offer?” Visitors who can’t find it in your navigation ask the bot.
- “How much does it cost?” Pricing, quotes, shipping fees, free trials.
- “How do I return something or get a refund?”
- “Where are you located?” Address, service area, pickup options.
- “Do you have this in stock?” Availability, sizes, variants.
There is a second layer of questions that are not about your business at all: “Are you a robot?”, “What’s your name?”, “What do you do with my data?” People test bots. A short, honest reply to those (yes, I’m an AI assistant; here’s what I can help with; here’s how to reach a person) builds more trust than a clever one.
The third layer is the one only your own data reveals: the odd, specific questions your customers ask that no generic list contains. That is why analytics on real conversations matter more than any list, including this one.
How to answer the basics: hours, location, products and pricing
A good answer does three things: it states the fact, adds the one detail that prevents a follow-up, and offers a next step.
Business hours
Give today’s status, not just a table. “We’re open until 5 p.m. Eastern today. Outside those hours you can leave a message and we reply the next business day.” Include time zone if you serve customers in more than one. Holiday hours should live in one place the bot reads, not in a pop-up it cannot see.
Location and service area
Give the address, the city or service area, and whether visitors can walk in. For a service business, the real question is often “Do you come to me?” so list the areas you cover. For an online-only store, say so plainly and point to the shipping page.
Products and services
Answer the specific question first, then widen. If someone asks “Do you sell waterproof jackets?”, answer with two or three matching items, a price each and links, not a description of your catalog. For services, describe what is included, who it suits and the typical first step. If a question cuts across categories, ask one clarifying question rather than guessing.
Pricing
Never dodge price. If you have fixed prices, state them. If a price depends on scope, say what it depends on and give a realistic range or the starting point you are comfortable publishing, then offer a quote. A bot that replies “contact us for pricing” to every pricing question trains visitors to leave. Visitors who ask about price are close to deciding, so this is also the best moment to offer a lead form or a human.
E-commerce questions: orders, delivery, availability and returns
For shops, these questions decide sales as well as satisfaction. Baymard Institute’s research notes that shoppers look for shipping cost, expected delivery date and return policy details, including whether an item can be returned, who pays return shipping and how long the window lasts. Those are exactly the questions a bot gets before purchase.
The stakes are real. In a February 2024 Baymard survey of US adults, 48% said they had abandoned a cart because extra costs such as shipping, tax or fees were too high. A bot that states shipping cost and delivery time up front removes a common reason for walking away.
| Question | What the answer should include | Source of truth |
|---|---|---|
| Where is my order? | Status, carrier, tracking link, what to do if it is late | Order system, or a handoff if the bot has no order access |
| How much is shipping? | Cost by region or order size, free-shipping threshold | Shipping policy page |
| When will it arrive? | Typical delivery window, cut-off time for same-day dispatch | Shipping policy page |
| Is it in stock? | Yes or no for the variant asked, price, link | Product feed or catalog |
| Can I return it? | Window length, condition rules, who pays return shipping | Returns policy page |
| How do I get a refund? | Steps, how long it takes after receipt | Returns policy page |
Two practical rules. First, be honest about what the bot can see. If it cannot look up a specific order, it should say so and hand off with the order number already captured, instead of inventing a status. Second, product answers go stale fastest. Prices, stock and variants change daily, so the bot should read from a live feed rather than from text someone typed last spring.
How you organize these answers on the site matters as well. Clear page structure makes both visitors and bots faster, and these UX practices for e-commerce redesigns cover how to surface shipping and product information where shoppers look for it.
Capturing a lead or reaching a human
Two of the top questions are really requests for a person: “Can I speak to a human?” and anything the bot cannot answer. Treat both as opportunities, not failures.
When the bot should hand off
Set clear triggers:
- The visitor asks for a person, in any wording.
- The same question is rephrased twice without a satisfying answer.
- The topic is sensitive: a complaint, a billing dispute, a legal or safety concern.
- The visitor is ready to buy something custom or high-value.
When it hands off, the message should say what happens next and when: “I’m passing this to our team. They reply within one business day. What’s the best email to reach you?” Pass along the conversation so the visitor never repeats themselves.
How to ask for contact details without scaring people away
Ask after you have been useful, not before. A visitor who just got a clear shipping answer will happily leave an email for a quote. Ask for one thing at a time, usually name and email, and explain the reason. Phone numbers convert worse unless the visitor asked for a call. Whatever you collect should land in a system someone checks daily. Templates help the follow-up too: these customer communication templates give service teams ready wording for common replies.
Keeping answers accurate, current and multilingual
A chatbot is only as good as what it reads. Four habits keep it trustworthy.
Answer from your own content. Restrict the bot to your FAQs, website pages and product catalog. When the answer is not in those sources, the right behavior is to say so and offer a person, not to improvise.
Automate what changes. Anything that changes weekly (prices, stock, availability) should come from a feed. Anything that changes a few times a year (hours, policies) should live in one page the bot reads, so a single edit updates the website and the bot together.
Review unanswered questions weekly. The log of questions the bot could not answer is a to-do list. Each one is either a missing FAQ, an unclear policy page or a product you should stock. Ten minutes a week keeps accuracy rising.
Write for each language, not around it. If you serve customers in several languages, check that policies and product names read naturally in each. Test the top eight questions in every language you enable, and make sure the human handoff works in the same language or says plainly when it cannot.
Our perspective: start narrow, then let the questions teach you
We build Konvuno for owners who have a website and no support team, and the same pattern shows up again and again: the owners who get the most from an assistant do not try to cover everything on day one. They load their FAQs, their site and their catalog, preview the answers to the eight questions above, fix the weak ones, and only then put the widget in front of visitors.
We think three things matter more than clever conversation. First, the assistant must answer from your content, so it stays on your facts. Second, product answers must stay current without anyone remembering to update them, which is why we sync catalogs from WooCommerce or a Google Merchant or Facebook product feed. Third, a human must always be one step away, with leads captured along the way instead of lost when the page closes.
The analytics are where owners tend to be surprised. What visitors actually ask is often different from what the owner assumed: shipping to a particular country, a size question, a service nobody realized was confusing. Those questions are free market research from people already on your site.
— Konstantin
Setting this up with Konvuno
If you want these answers working on your site without hiring a developer, Konvuno installs with a single script tag and is configured from a hosted dashboard. It answers from your FAQs, website content and product catalog, captures leads into a built-in CRM, hands off to a human when needed, and works in 7 languages. You can configure and preview it before paying.
Plans are Starter at €29 per month, Growth at €79 per month and Business at €199 per month, with no per-seat pricing. See the plans on the Konvuno site and test your own top questions against your own content.
A checklist before you go live
- Write down your top ten real questions from email, phone and social messages.
- Check that each has a clear answer on your site, in one place.
- Confirm your shipping, returns and hours pages are current.
- Connect your product feed so prices and stock are not typed by hand.
- Ask the bot each question in every language you enable and read the answers as a customer would.
- Set handoff triggers and decide who receives the leads and how fast they reply.
- After one week of live traffic, read every unanswered question and fix the five most common.
FAQ
What is the most common question people ask a business chatbot?
Business hours and order status lead most practitioner lists, followed by requests to speak with a person, product and service details, and pricing. The exact order depends on your business: shops see more order and returns questions, service firms see more pricing and availability questions. Your own conversation log is the reliable answer.
What should a chatbot say when it doesn’t know the answer?
It should say it does not have that information, then offer a concrete next step: connect to a person, take a message, or capture an email for a reply. It should never guess about prices, policies or availability. Preserve the conversation so the visitor does not repeat themselves.
How many questions should I prepare before launching?
Start with eight to ten covering hours, location, products, pricing, shipping, returns and contact. That is enough to handle most early traffic. Then add answers weekly based on the questions the bot could not answer.
Can a chatbot answer in several languages?
Yes, if it is built for it and your source content is clear in each language. Test your top questions in every language you enable, and check that the handoff to a person works in the same language or states plainly when it does not.