01What a bot takes off your inbox
Most of what lands in a small business inbox is a handful of questions in different words: are you open on Saturday, how much does it cost, do you have a slot this week. A bot answers those at once, at 11 pm as well as at 9 am, and points the person to the booking page. PROOF48's AI assistant page describes the good fit plainly: businesses that answer the same 20 questions every day, lose customers because nobody replies after 6 pm, or spend the day repeating one reply to different people. Questions under a post belong in the same pile. AUTOMATE lists comment moderation and auto-replies for them.
- Opening hours, prices, location and free slots: questions with one right answer
- Replies at night and at weekends, when nobody is holding the phone
- A first reply to a comment that asks something with a fixed answer
- A link to your booking page instead of a long back-and-forth about dates
02What still needs a person
A bot works from the rules you gave it, and it has nothing to go on when a message falls outside them: a complaint, a refund, a customer who wants something you do not normally do, a message that is half question and half story. The AI assistant page is blunt about this. It is not a fit where every client situation needs a human judgment call, for medical diagnosis, legal advice or financial recommendations, or on any channel where a wrong answer creates legal or safety risk. Our own view as builders, and not a measured figure, is that the messages that lose you a customer are rarely the repeat questions. They are the awkward ones.
- Complaints and refund requests
- Anything you quote case by case, or do only for some customers
- Medical, legal or financial questions
- A customer who asks for a person, at any point
- An upset customer, where the tone matters more than the facts
03How the inbox job changes once a bot is running
The bot does not remove the inbox job, it changes it. Instead of answering everything, someone reads what the bot passed on and what it could not answer. On PROOF48's AI assistant page, you see every conversation the assistant handled, sorted into answered, escalated and unanswered, and the first month is for learning, after which escalations drop. We have no measured figure for how far they drop, so we give none. Settle three things before launch: who reads the escalations, how fast they reply, and where. A bot that hands off to a mailbox nobody opens is no better than having no bot. Meta's own rules for automated direct messages are in our post on Instagram DM automation.
- Before launch: name the person who reads escalations and agree a reply time
- Each day: glance at the conversations the bot passed on
- Each week: read the unanswered list and turn repeated questions into new answers
- From day one: send complaints and refunds straight to a person
04What AUTOMATE lists, and where PROOF48 is the wrong choice
AUTOMATE costs 2,997 EUR a month. Its feature list includes comment moderation and auto-replies, AI DM and email auto-responders, an AI website chatbot that qualifies and books, booking automation with a CRM and two custom automations a month, on top of everything in GROWTH. Instagram and Facebook are named in that list only for auto-posting, not for the DM responders, so tell us which inbox you mean and we say plainly whether it fits. The list names software, not a person who answers customers for you. It is the wrong plan if you get a handful of messages a day (answer them yourself), if every conversation needs your judgment, or if your customers write on WhatsApp or phone you. Both sit outside AUTOMATE, and a WhatsApp assistant is a separate custom build, priced on request.
- AUTOMATE, 2,997 EUR a month: comment moderation and auto-replies, AI DM and email auto-responders
- Also listed: AI website chatbot that qualifies and books, booking automation with a CRM, two custom automations a month
- Instagram and Facebook are named only for auto-posting; the plan page does not name the platforms of the DM responders
- Not covered: WhatsApp and phone (a WhatsApp assistant is a custom build, priced on request)
Questions a site answers before anyone writes
Rotiseria Baba Novac, a rotisserie in Bucharest, has an ordering system built by PROOF48 at rotiseria.ro: a priced menu, pickup slot selection at checkout, an order confirmation email on every order and order tracking for the customer. Those cover questions that would otherwise arrive as messages, such as what is on the menu, when can I collect and did my order go through. It is not a chatbot and we claim no chatbot there. We do not know how many messages it saved, because we do not measure the restaurant's message volume and will not estimate it.
See the build: Rotiseria Baba NovacQuestions, answered
Can a chatbot answer my Instagram and Facebook messages on its own?
AUTOMATE lists AI DM and email auto-responders. The plan page names Instagram and Facebook only for auto-posting, so tell us your channel and we say plainly whether it fits. Meta's rules for automated replies are in our Instagram DM post.
Is the website chatbot the same thing as an inbox bot?
No. AUTOMATE lists an AI website chatbot that qualifies and books, and AI DM and email auto-responders, as separate items. The first sits on your site. The second answers messages.
What should a bot never answer alone?
Our AI assistant page rules out medical diagnosis, legal advice and financial recommendations, and any channel where a wrong answer creates legal or safety risk. We would add complaints and refunds, but that is our view, not a line from the page.
Does AUTOMATE cover WhatsApp?
No. WhatsApp and phone are outside AUTOMATE. A WhatsApp assistant is a custom build, priced on request.
Where PROOF48 fits
A chatbot does not replace managing your Instagram and Facebook inbox. It makes the job smaller. It takes the questions with one right answer and leaves complaints, refunds and exceptions to a person who actually reads them, so decide who that person is before launch. PROOF48's AUTOMATE, 2,997 EUR a month, lists AI DM auto-responders and comment auto-replies with handoff rules you choose. It does not cover WhatsApp or phone.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.