Checklist
AI Chatbot Deployment Checklist: 47-Point Pre-Launch Audit (2026)
The definitive pre-launch audit covering knowledge, persona, integrations, security, performance, accessibility, analytics, and rollback. Use it for every AI chatbot you ship, internal or customer-facing.
9 min readUpdated
Why this checklist exists
87% of AI chatbot deployments that miss launch goals fail on items every team would have called "obvious" in retrospect. This 47-point audit is built from common post-mortem findings across the industry. Every item maps to a specific failure mode seen repeatedly in production.
1. Knowledge & Training
- Indexed every public-facing help article
- Removed outdated/contradictory content
- Added 30+ hand-curated Q&A pairs for high-frequency intents
- Verified retrieval quality on 50 sample queries
- Set similarity threshold for refusal-on-empty
- Documented re-indexing cadence (weekly recommended)
- Tagged content by audience (public vs internal-only)
2. Persona & Conversation Design
- System prompt finalized and version-controlled
- Refusal rules documented (legal, medical, competitor, off-brand)
- Brand voice rubric written and signed off by marketing
- Fallback handoff language tested across tones
- Few-shot examples included for tone-sensitive flows
- Greeting message A/B tested
- Bot identity disclosure in line with regulations
3. Integrations & Tooling
- CRM (HubSpot/Salesforce) field mapping verified
- Calendar booking flow tested end-to-end
- Slack/Teams handoff routing rules confirmed
- Zapier/Make webhook fallback configured
- Email follow-up sequences connected
- Order/payment APIs tested in staging
- Knowledge base sync job scheduled
4. Security & Compliance
- SOC 2 / ISO 27001 documentation reviewed
- GDPR data processing agreement signed
- HIPAA BAA in place if applicable
- PII redaction rules tested on chat transcripts
- Prompt injection attack vectors tested
- Conversation retention policy defined
- Audit logging enabled and shipped to SIEM
5. Performance & UX
- Time-to-first-token under 1.5 seconds
- Widget bundle size under 80 KB gzipped
- Mobile keyboard interactions verified
- Screen reader (VoiceOver, NVDA) tested
- Keyboard-only navigation works
- Color contrast meets WCAG AA
- High-traffic load test passed (3x peak)
6. Analytics & Rollback
- Resolution rate dashboard live
- Top unanswered topics tracked weekly
- CSAT survey configured
- Cost-per-conversation tracked
- One-click bot disable / fallback to human
- Prompt and training version history retained
- Incident response runbook published
Phased Launch Strategy
- Internal pilot (3 to 7 days): bot deployed only on internal Slack/Teams. Team poses real questions, scores accuracy.
- 5% canary (7 days): bot serves 5% of inbound traffic. Monitor resolution rate, CSAT, fallback rate hourly.
- 25% rollout (5 days): if metrics hold, expand. Watch for new failure modes at scale.
- Full launch: 100% traffic, with one-click rollback armed for at least 30 days.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should an AI chatbot pilot run?
7 to 14 days of canary traffic on 5 to 20% of users surfaces 80% of issues.
Do I need a rollback plan?
Yes, even mature deployments hit edge cases. Rollback should be one click and revert to forms, human-only chat, or a previous version.
What metrics signal launch readiness?
Resolution rate >60%, CSAT 4.0+, hallucination <2%, fallback <15%, zero unresolved compliance flags.
Ship with confidence
EzyConn includes built-in pre-launch checks for security, performance, and accessibility on every plan.
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