Bumblebee Studio
Menu

Services · AI Chatbot Build

Custom AI Chatbot Development for Australian Businesses

A chatbot built around your business — your services, your tone, your handover rules. Fixed price, live in 3–5 weeks.

From $6,500 3–5 weeks

Who this is for

Built for businesses like yours

Retail & e-commerce

Answer product, shipping and returns questions instantly — even at 2am on a Sunday when your team is offline.

Real estate agencies

Qualify buyer and tenant enquiries, book inspections, and capture contact details while your agents sleep.

Clinics & allied health

Handle booking, rescheduling and common questions so your receptionist can focus on the patients in front of them.

Trades & field services

Turn website visitors into booked quotes with automated intake that asks the right questions, every time.

What's included

Everything in the fixed fee

  • Conversation design: intents, fallback paths, and tone matched to your brand
  • Dialogflow, OpenAI, or Anthropic — chosen for your use case, not our preference
  • Deployment to your website plus WhatsApp, Messenger, or Slack
  • Human handover: the bot escalates to your team with full context when it is stuck
  • Analytics dashboard: conversation volume, resolution rate, top questions
  • Handover documentation plus a training session for your team

Use cases

Use cases we build most

Customer support

Instant answers to the questions your team types out fifty times a week — with human handover for the rest.

Lead qualification

The bot asks your qualifying questions, scores the lead, and books the good ones straight into your calendar.

Booking & scheduling

Appointments, inspections and quotes booked in-chat, synced with your calendar — no phone tag.

Internal FAQ

A private bot for your team: policies, procedures and "where do I find…" answered in seconds.

Technology

Dialogflow vs OpenAI vs open-source — how we choose

We're not married to one stack. The choice comes down to your conversation volume, compliance needs, and how "free-form" your customer questions are.

Dialogflow CX

Structured flows with tight control. Best when conversations follow predictable paths — bookings, intake forms, FAQ trees. Google-grade NLU, per-request pricing.

OpenAI / Anthropic

LLM-powered for open-ended questions and natural small talk. Best when customers ask things you never anticipated. We add guardrails and strict handover rules.

Open-source

Self-hosted models when data residency or marginal cost at scale matters. More moving parts — we only recommend it when the case is clear.

Process

The 3–5 week delivery process

Step 01 · Week 1

Scoping & design

We map your real customer questions, design intents and fallback paths, and agree the handover rules.

Step 02 · Weeks 2–3

Build & train

Conversation flows built and trained on your content. You review a working bot mid-way, not at the end.

Step 03 · Week 4

Test & deploy

Edge-case testing, tone pass, then go-live on your site and channels.

Step 04 · Week 5

Handover & tune

Analytics review, team training, documentation handover. Optional retainer for ongoing tuning.

Pricing

From $6,500, fixed. No hourly billing.

A custom build pays for itself against the alternatives: a support hire costs $55k+ per year, and agencies typically quote $20k–$50k for comparable scope. Our fixed fee covers everything listed above — 50% up front, 50% on go-live.

Bumblebee custom build (fixed fee) From $6,500
Hiring a support person $55k+/yr + training
Agency custom build $20k–$50k + fees
Off-the-shelf bot (DIY) $0–$100/mo, your time

FAQ

Common questions

How much does a custom AI chatbot cost in Australia?

Most custom chatbot projects in Australia range from $5,000 to $50,000+. Bumblebee Studio builds start at a fixed $6,500 — conversation design, multi-channel deployment, analytics and handover included. No hourly billing, no scope creep.

Chatbot vs hiring a support person — which is cheaper?

A full-time support hire costs $55,000+/year before training and management. A fixed-fee chatbot handles the repetitive 60–80% of enquiries 24/7, so one person can do the work of two. Most clients see payback within 3–6 months.

Can the chatbot work on my website AND Facebook/Instagram?

Yes. We deploy the same bot across your website, WhatsApp, Messenger and Slack. One brain, every channel — conversations stay consistent and analytics are unified.

What happens when the bot can't answer?

It hands over to a human — with the full conversation transcript and collected details attached. You set the escalation rules: email, Slack ping, or a booking link. The bot never pretends to know something it doesn't.

Ready when you are

Let's figure out what AI can actually do for your business.

Book a free 20-min call → Open Calendly directly

Typical reply · 1 business day · AU-based team