A talking agent on a small-business website: what it is, what it costs, and when it is worth it

First, what it is

A talking agent is a face on your website that talks back. Someone lands on your page at 9 p.m., clicks the little video window, and asks “do you do water heaters?” or “are you taking new clients?” The agent answers in a normal voice, the way your front desk would, because it has been taught your services, your hours and your area. When the person is ready, it takes their name and number and sends them to you.

The ones I use are made by Tavus. They are the same video agents larger companies put on their sites, and they are the first ones I have seen that a business owner can watch and not cringe at. I put one on my own film studio’s site, AktionFilm AI, before I ever offered it to a client.

What it actually does for a plumber, a salon, an insurance agent

It answers the same five questions you answer on the phone all day. Do you serve my town. What do you charge to come out. Are you open Saturday. Do you take my insurance. Can I get a quote. Every one of those, answered at 2 a.m. in a human voice, is a call that would otherwise have gone to the next listing on Google.

For an insurance agent the agent does something extra: it asks the three or four questions that qualify a lead (what kind of coverage, business or personal, when their current policy renews) and hands you a lead that is already warm. That is the use I am building first, for a real agency.

What it costs, both ways

If you set it up yourself on Tavus: their Starter plan is $59 a month with 100 minutes of talk time, then 37 cents a minute. Training the agent on a video of a real person (you, or whoever you want as the face) is a one-time $65. You will spend an evening in their dashboard writing the agent’s instructions and another getting the widget onto your page. If you like dashboards, that is a fair deal and here is the link.

If I host it for you: $149 to set it up and $99 a month, with 100 minutes of talk included and 50 cents a minute after that, only if it happens. You never open a Tavus account. I write the instructions from your site and a ten-minute call, I put it on your page, and I keep it running. The $99 is more than their $59 because the evening in the dashboard is mine, and because I am the one who fixes it when it says something wrong.

Either way the minutes are the thing to watch. A hundred minutes is roughly forty real conversations a month. Most small-business pages never get there. If yours does, that is a good problem, and the agent is paying for itself several times over.

When you should skip it

If your website gets fewer than a few hundred visits a month, fix that first. An agent on an empty page is a receptionist in an empty lobby. That is why I lead with modernizing the page and only put the agent on after. The page is $495; the agent is the second thing, not the first.

Also skip it if you are the kind of owner who answers every call personally and likes it that way. The agent is for the calls you miss, not the ones you love.

The honest part

The Tavus links in this post are referral links. If you sign up through them, Tavus pays me a referral fee and it costs you nothing extra. I recommend them because I use them, not because of the fee; if I find a better agent I will switch and say so here.