Bancheng / Setup time

How long does it take to set up an AI chat assistant?

If you're asking, you've probably already heard "first we'll schedule a discovery call, then we'll see about timing". This page explains what those weeks are spent on, which parts don't actually need you, and when we're slow too.

Where the time goes in a typical rollout

An enterprise AI chat project usually runs like this: discovery call, gathering content, loading it into the system, tuning the answers, internal testing, launch. Between each step someone waits for someone else's calendar, and those calendars aren't measured in days.

The slowest part isn't technical — it's gathering the content. Someone has to collect what's scattered across Word files, PDFs, an old website and your staff's heads into one document, and that someone is usually you. A consultant can ask the questions, but only you have the answers.

We removed that step

The knowledge base doesn't start blank. It grows from what you already have:

• Pages and articles on your website go into the knowledge base when you publish them, and update when you edit them.
• Product data — names, options, prices, stock. When a customer asks "what do you have under $500?", that's a lookup, not a guess.
• Paste some text or give it a web address, and the system reads it and splits it up by itself.

So the only thing left for you is putting up what needs saying. You'd have to do that anyway — it's your website.

What actually happened

There are 17 sites running on the platform right now. The fastest went from new account to live website in 56 minutes — not built by us, filled in by the business owner.

Since going live, in 89% of 655 real conversations nobody pressed the button to ask for a person. That number is customers voting with their behaviour, not us grading our own answers.

When it's still slow

The fast side is easy to talk about; the slow side is the useful part. In these cases it takes longer, here too:

• Your information was never organised. There are three versions of the price list and nobody is sure which one is current. No system can help with that, and it's usually the real work.
• Answers have to match another system. Stock lives in your ERP, orders in something else — that needs connecting, connecting takes time, and the other vendor has to be willing to open up.
• You need a feature the platform doesn't have. We build those, but it's a separate job with its own timeline and quote, not folded into "setup".

Want to see it first?

The free plan needs no credit card, and the assistant is ready to try as soon as you sign up. If you'd rather talk to someone first, that's fine too — we won't ask you to sign anything.