Ortem Technologies

    AI & ML Solutions

    AI Chatbot Development Services

    Custom RAG chatbots that answer from your documents, with SSO, permissions and audit logs

    We build customer support chatbots and internal assistants that answer from your help centre, policies and internal documents, cite the source, and hand off to a person when they should. Simple RAG chatbots start at $15,000 and go live in 4–8 weeks.

    See Chatbot Pricing
    Clients Worldwide
    300+
    Projects Delivered
    1,000+
    Rated on Clutch & GoodFirms
    5/5
    Years Experience
    13+

    Most companies asking for an AI chatbot want one of two things: fewer repeat questions reaching the support team, or staff who stop hunting through SharePoint for a policy. Both come down to the same build. Your documents are indexed, the right passages are retrieved for each question, and a language model writes the answer from those passages only, with a link to where it came from.

    When a custom chatbot is worth it

    If your questions are generic and your help centre is small, a SaaS tool such as Intercom Fin or Zendesk AI at $500–$2,000 a month is the cheaper answer, and we will tell you so on the first call. A custom build pays off when answers live in internal documents or databases, when different users are allowed to see different documents, or when your data cannot go to a third-party API.

    Chatbot or agent?

    A chatbot explains. An agent acts: it looks up the order, issues the refund, books the slot. Look at a week of your queue. If most tickets end with an explanation, start with a chatbot. If they end with someone clicking through another system, you need an AI agent, and the budget is roughly two to three times higher. To add AI to a product you already sell, see AI integration services.

    The full cost breakdown, including run costs, is in our AI chatbot cost guide and enterprise RAG cost breakdown.

    Pricing

    What an AI Chatbot Costs to Build and Run

    Build cost and monthly run cost by chatbot type. Run cost covers model API, vector database and hosting.
    Chatbot typeWhat you getBuild costTimelineMonthly run cost
    FAQ chatbotScripted answers, lead capture, appointment booking. No LLM.$5,000–$20,0004–8 weeksHosting only
    Simple RAG chatbotAnswers from one document source, web chat widget, no access control$15,000–$25,0004–8 weeks$300–$800
    Production RAG chatbot3–5 sources, hybrid search, role-based access, Slack or Teams, admin dashboard$40,000–$80,00010–16 weeks$1,000–$3,000
    Enterprise private chatbotSelf-hosted model, SSO (Azure AD, Okta), per-document permissions, audit logs$80,000–$150,000+16–28 weeks$2,000–$8,000
    Chatbot that takes actionsLooks up orders, issues refunds, books, updates your CRM (an AI agent)$50,000–$150,0008–16 weeksDepends on volume

    Each extra channel (Slack, Teams, a help desk widget or a mobile app) adds 2–4 weeks. Send us your document sources, user count and security requirements and we will reply with a fixed-scope estimate covering both build and run cost.

    Capabilities

    AI Chatbots We Build

    Chatbots Trained on Your Documents

    RAG pipelines over SharePoint, Confluence, Google Drive, PDFs, help centres and databases, with hybrid search and re-ranking so the right passage reaches the model.

    Customer Support Chatbots

    Answers on your site, in your app or inside Zendesk, Intercom or Freshdesk, with order lookups and a warm handoff to a human agent when the bot is out of its depth.

    Internal Assistants on Slack and Teams

    HR, IT, policy and engineering questions answered where your staff already work, with links back to the source document.

    SSO and Per-Document Permissions

    Azure AD or Okta sign-in, with retrieval filtered by role so a user only gets answers from documents they are allowed to open.

    Audit Logs and Private Hosting

    Immutable logs of every question and answer, PII redaction, and self-hosted models for teams that cannot send data to a third-party API.

    Answer Quality and Analytics

    RAGAS faithfulness scoring before launch, plus a dashboard of unanswered questions, deflection rate and cost per conversation after it.

    Upgrade Path to an AI Agent

    Start with a chatbot that answers, then add actions one system at a time: refunds, bookings, CRM updates, each with confirmation gates.

    Results

    Chatbots and Assistants We Have Shipped

    KnowledgeCore

    Internal knowledge assistant for a 1,200-person manufacturer, answering from SharePoint and Confluence on a self-hosted Llama model.

    fewer internal knowledge tickets
    73%
    RAGAS faithfulness score
    0.94
    queries in the first 90 days
    12,000+
    Read the case study

    ClearVoice

    Voice AI support agent for a financial services company handling 4,000+ inbound calls a month, with caller verification against the core banking API.

    of calls resolved without an agent
    58%
    agent hours freed per month
    380+
    caller satisfaction on AI calls
    4.2 / 5
    Read the case study

    How it works

    How a Chatbot Project Runs

    1. 01

      Queue Audit

      We read a week of your tickets or questions and sort them into explanations and actions. That tells us whether you need a chatbot, an agent or a SaaS tool.

    2. 02

      Knowledge Audit

      We map your document sources, who may see what, and what is out of date. Stale documents are the most common reason chatbots give wrong answers.

    3. 03

      Build and Evaluate

      Ingestion, retrieval, prompts and the chat interface, tested against a question set built from your real queries until the faithfulness score holds.

    4. 04

      Pilot

      A small group uses it for two to three weeks. We review every unanswered or downvoted question and fix the gaps in content or retrieval.

    5. 05

      Launch and Tune

      Roll-out to every channel, with monthly reports on deflection, unanswered questions and run cost.

    FAQ

    Frequently Asked Questions

    A scripted FAQ chatbot costs $5,000–$20,000. A RAG chatbot that answers from one document source costs $15,000–$25,000. A production RAG chatbot with several sources, role-based access and a Slack or Teams bot costs $40,000–$80,000. A private enterprise chatbot with a self-hosted model, SSO and audit logs costs $80,000–$150,000 or more. Monthly run costs range from $300 to $8,000 depending on query volume and hosting.

    A simple RAG chatbot on one document source takes 4–8 weeks. A production chatbot with 3–5 sources, access control and one chat integration takes 10–16 weeks. A fully on-premises chatbot with SSO and compliance logging takes 16–28 weeks. Each extra channel, such as Slack, Teams, a help desk widget or a mobile app, adds 2–4 weeks.

    Use a SaaS tool such as Intercom Fin, Zendesk AI or Tidio ($500–$2,000 a month) when your questions are generic, your knowledge base is small and stable, and you do not need deep access to internal systems. Build a custom chatbot when answers depend on internal documents or databases, when different users may only see different documents, or when data cannot leave your environment.

    Yes. We deploy open-source models such as Llama or Mistral on your own cloud or servers, with a self-hosted vector database. No document or conversation leaves your environment, which is how we meet HIPAA, GDPR and SOC 2 data residency requirements.

    The chatbot answers only from retrieved passages of your documents and shows the source with each answer. When retrieval finds nothing relevant, it says so and offers a handoff to a person. Before launch we score answer faithfulness with RAGAS on a test set built from your real questions, and we re-run that test whenever prompts or documents change.

    A chatbot answers questions from your knowledge base. An agent completes tasks in your systems: it looks up an order, issues a refund, books an appointment or updates a CRM record. If most of your tickets end with an explanation, you need a chatbot. If they end with someone doing something in another system, you need an agent, which typically costs 2–3 times more.

    Get a Fixed Estimate for Your Chatbot

    Tell us what the chatbot should answer, where your documents live and who will use it. On a 30-minute call we confirm the right tier and send a fixed-scope estimate with build and monthly run cost.

    Also see: AI Integration · AI Agent Development · Hire AI Developers