I think this is a great use case for a lightweight AI assistant rather than a traditional rule-based chatbot.
For a small business with only a few customer questions each day, you can organize your information into categories such as pricing, services, accepted items, business hours, and FAQs. Then let the AI retrieve the most relevant answer instead of relying on exact keyword matches. One thing I’ve noticed is that customers often ask the same question in completely different ways. For example:
Even though the wording changes, a semantic search or retrieval approach can usually understand the intent much better than a basic chatbot.
I also recommend keeping your knowledge base updated with clear FAQ pages and practical guides. That makes retrieval more accurate and improves the overall customer experience.
I’d be interested to hear what model or framework others would recommend for a small-business setup with limited resources.