IndustryIndustries and use cases
AI Chatbot for HR Consulting Firms
An HR consultancy can use a chatbot to explain its services, qualify enquiries and book discovery calls at any hour. It must not use one to give employment-law advice or to take a grievance. Those go to a named human, immediately.
The 30-second answer
Most enquiries to an HR consultancy arrive when a business owner has run out of patience, and that is rarely at 11am. A chatbot trained on your own pages explains what you do, how engagements work and what a review involves, then books the call. Two rules keep it safe. It never gives employment-law advice, and it never takes a grievance, harassment or whistleblowing report through a public widget. Both stop and route to a named person.
The enquiry that arrives at 9pm on a Sunday
Small businesses do not look for HR support when things are calm. They look after a difficult conversation, an unexpected resignation, or a letter that mentions a tribunal. That moment lands in the evening or over a weekend, because that is when the owner finally has time to worry about it.
Your website meets that person with a contact form and a promise to reply in two working days. They fill it in, keep browsing, and by Monday two other consultancies have replied. The enquiry was not lost to a better website. It was lost to whoever answered first.
So after-hours cover matters more for advisory firms than the traffic numbers suggest. You are not chasing a hundred chats a month. You are chasing the handful that become retainers, and those arrive at inconvenient times. The general case is in our after-hours support guide.
Where the line sits
Draw it once, write it down, and build the bot around it. On one side sit questions about your firm. On the other sit questions about someone's actual situation.
The top four rows are ordinary marketing chat and they cover most of your inbox. The bottom two rows are why this post exists.
No employment-law advice. None.
Say this plainly to whoever configures the bot. It must not answer whether a dismissal was fair, how much notice is owed, whether a contract clause holds, or whether a client can do the thing they are asking about. Those answers depend on facts, jurisdiction and documents a chat window has never seen. A confident wrong answer is worse than no answer, because the client may act on it.
The replacement behaviour converts well anyway. The bot says a consultant needs the specifics, offers the earliest slot, and captures enough context for that consultant to arrive prepared. People asking legal questions at 9pm want a person, and being offered one quickly reads as competence.
Test the rule against sideways phrasings. "Just hypothetically", "asking for a friend" and "in general, how much notice" are the same question wearing a hat. The bot declines all three the same way.
Sensitive reports stop the bot entirely
A grievance, a harassment report or a whistleblowing disclosure must never be collected through a public chat widget. Not summarised, not partially taken, not held until morning. When that language appears the bot stops asking questions and hands the conversation to a named person or your published reporting route.
Two reasons, both worth stating. Those routes normally have an agreed process behind them with named contacts and record-keeping expectations, and a marketing widget sits outside all of it. And people should not have to tell that story twice, because every question the bot asks is one a human will ask again properly.
So write the wording in advance, keep it warm, and make the handover the next thing that happens. Our handover protocols guide covers landing that transfer on a real person rather than a queue.
Qualifying in four questions
For everything else, a useful enquiry answers four things: headcount, sector, whether they have HR support today, and what prompted them to look now. That tells you whether this is a retainer, a one-off project, or a poor fit to decline early. Ask across the conversation, not in a block. Scoring is in our lead qualification guide, and the in-house view sits on our AI chatbot for HR page.
Volume and cost
A consultancy site rarely produces heavy chat volume, which is good news for the bill. The free plan covers 500 messages a month at $0 forever, with no credit card, 2 seats, one chatbot.
If you outgrow it, Paid plans are Starter at $25 a month and Professional at $95 a month, with 20% off on annual billing. Annual billing takes 20% off. Every tier runs GPT-4o and Claude and answers in many languages, useful if your clients employ a multilingual workforce. See the pricing page.
A four-week rollout
Week 1: Write the two refusals
The rules that matter mostDraft the wording for a legal question and for a sensitive report. Keep both short and warm. Test fifteen real phrasings, including the vague ones.
Week 2: Train on public pages only
Nothing client-specificPoint the crawler at services, sectors, team and FAQ pages. Keep client documents and anything naming an organisation out.
Week 3: Add qualification and booking
Better discovery callsCollect headcount, sector, whether they have in-house HR, and what prompted the search. Four questions route the enquiry properly.
Week 4: Route into your working day
Replies in minutesOn every plan, Free included, the bot passes live conversations into Slack or Microsoft Teams, so a consultant steps in without a separate dashboard.
Ongoing: Read transcripts monthly
Catches driftLook for bad answers, and for moments the bot kept talking when it should have stepped back. Fix and retest the same phrasing.
Measure four numbers: conversations outside office hours, discovery calls booked, legal questions correctly declined, and sensitive reports routed to a named person without questions. The last one should be checked every single week.
Frequently asked questions
Can the chatbot answer employment-law questions?
No. It must never give an opinion on notice periods, dismissals, contracts, redundancy, pay disputes or anything a client could act on. It can explain what your firm does and how an engagement works, which is a different thing. Anything with a legal shape goes to a consultant and a booked call.
What happens if someone reports harassment through the widget?
The bot stops and hands the conversation to a named person immediately. It does not ask what happened, who was involved or when. Nobody should have to tell that story twice, and the second telling is harder than the first. Write the wording in advance and test it.
Should the bot handle whistleblowing or grievance reports?
Never through a public website widget. Those routes usually have an agreed process, named contacts and record-keeping expectations, and a marketing chat sits outside all of it. The bot recognises the language, says this needs a person, and passes them to your named contact without collecting detail.
What can the bot usefully do, then?
Plenty. It explains your services, how a retainer differs from project work, what an audit or handbook review involves, and books the discovery call. It also handles ordinary admin: invoices, scheduling, where to find a document you sent. That is most of the inbox and none of it is sensitive.
What does it cost for a small consultancy?
Free is $0 forever with no credit card, 2 seats, 500 messages a month, one chatbot. Then Paid plans are Starter at $25 a month and Professional at $95 a month, with 20% off on annual billing. Annual billing is 20% off.
Answer the Sunday enquiry
EzyConn trains on your service pages in minutes, explains how you work, books the discovery call, and hands anything sensitive to a named consultant.
Start FreeLast updated . Pricing reflects EzyConn published plans. Nothing here is legal advice; agree your intake and escalation rules with your own advisers. View more guides.