What Happens When a Chatbot Can't Answer a Question?

Every chatbot demo looks good when it's answering questions it was designed to answer. The real test is what happens when it can't — and it's the single most revealing question you can ask a vendor.

The bad outcomes

Some chatbots guess anyway, confidently stating something incorrect about your business. Others loop the visitor through the same canned suggestions repeatedly. Both erode trust fast, and both are worse than not having a chatbot at all.

The better outcome: an honest handoff

A well-built assistant recognizes when a question falls outside what it knows and says so plainly, then routes the conversation to a real person — ideally live, in the same conversation, not a "please email us" dead end that starts the visitor over from nothing.

What to actually test before you buy

• Ask it something genuinely outside your business (a competitor's pricing, an unrelated topic) — does it admit it doesn't know?
• Ask it something plausible-sounding but false about your own business — does it guess, or defer?
• If it escalates, does the visitor have to repeat themselves to a human, or does the context carry over?

ChatGenio's live Slack handoff was built specifically around this — the visitor's whole conversation is already visible to whoever picks it up. More on how it works on the features page.