Where do the answers come from?

This is the biggest question. A generic chatbot that pulls answers from its own training answers the same wherever it sits, and guesses at what it does not know. What you want is a tool that answers from your business's own knowledge, from your website, your price list, your common questions, so the answers are yours and not generic. If the salesperson cannot show you where each answer is drawn from, you do not know what the customer is being told.

What does it do when it does not know the answer?

A good system would rather say it does not know than make something up. A bad one always sounds convincing, including when it is wrong, and a wrong answer is worse than none. Ask what happens in the face of uncertainty. Does it admit it, or fill in the gaps? One wrong price can cost more than all the convenience saves.

Can a person take over the conversation?

Some things always belong with a human: a complaint, an unusual request, a sensitive matter. Ask whether a team member can step into a live conversation, take the thread over, and hand it back, without the customer having to start again. Live human takeover is the most underrated part, and the one fewest tools advertise.

Which languages does it handle, and does any of them cost extra?

In Iceland you need good Icelandic and English at the very least. Ask whether the Icelandic is genuinely good, with correct declensions and grammatical cases, or just translated English in disguise. And ask whether any language is hidden behind a pricier plan. A good answer is that Icelandic and English come on every plan, not as an upgrade. We wrote separately about answering each visitor in their own language.

How do you teach it your business, and who approves what it learns?

AI does not arrive fully trained. It is closer to a new employee who has to learn the business before it can answer for it. Ask how much work it is to get going, whether you can teach it in conversation, and whether you get to approve what it learns before it goes live. You want to be able to say “this is how we answer that” and trust that it holds.

How is it installed, and how fast does it go live?

Some tools need a plugin, an app, or a long technical setup. Others are one line of code you paste onto your site. Ask what you actually have to do yourself, whether you need a developer, and how far it is from signing up to the chat answering its first visitor.

Who is responsible for what it says, and where does the data live?

Responsibility for what is said stays with the business, not with the software, as we went through in its own piece. That is why keeping control matters, that you can see what it says, correct it, and decide when it passes a matter on. Ask too where the data is stored and how what visitors type is handled. Get clear answers before you sign.

13 July 2026

Seven questions to ask before you choose an AI for your business

Thorir Aron Stefansson, founder of annasvarar.is

Gunnar runs a small car workshop in Kópavogur. He has three tabs open in the browser, three AI tools that all promise to answer his customers for him, and they sound exactly alike. Each one promises flawless Icelandic, each shows a tidy chat in a demo video, each says it saves time. He knows one of them might suit the workshop well and another badly, but from the landing pages alone he cannot tell which is which.

The landing pages, it turns out, tell you little about what actually separates these tools. The difference shows up in a handful of questions they rarely answer: where the answers come from, what happens when the AI does not know, and whether you can step in. Here are seven worth asking before you choose, and what a good answer sounds like.

Seven questions before you choose

Run this list past every tool you look at. The one that answers clearly and the one that dodges become easy to tell apart fast.

Where do the answers come from? This is the biggest question. A generic chatbot that pulls answers from its own training answers the same wherever it sits, and guesses at what it does not know. What you want is a tool that answers from your business's own knowledge, from your website, your price list, your common questions, so the answers are yours and not generic. If the salesperson cannot show you where each answer is drawn from, you do not know what the customer is being told.
What does it do when it does not know the answer? A good system would rather say it does not know than make something up. A bad one always sounds convincing, including when it is wrong, and a wrong answer is worse than none. Ask what happens in the face of uncertainty. Does it admit it, or fill in the gaps? One wrong price can cost more than all the convenience saves.
Can a person take over the conversation? Some things always belong with a human: a complaint, an unusual request, a sensitive matter. Ask whether a team member can step into a live conversation, take the thread over, and hand it back, without the customer having to start again. Live human takeover is the most underrated part, and the one fewest tools advertise.
Which languages does it handle, and does any of them cost extra? In Iceland you need good Icelandic and English at the very least. Ask whether the Icelandic is genuinely good, with correct declensions and grammatical cases, or just translated English in disguise. And ask whether any language is hidden behind a pricier plan. A good answer is that Icelandic and English come on every plan, not as an upgrade. We wrote separately about answering each visitor in their own language.
How do you teach it your business, and who approves what it learns? AI does not arrive fully trained. It is closer to a new employee who has to learn the business before it can answer for it. Ask how much work it is to get going, whether you can teach it in conversation, and whether you get to approve what it learns before it goes live. You want to be able to say “this is how we answer that” and trust that it holds.
How is it installed, and how fast does it go live? Some tools need a plugin, an app, or a long technical setup. Others are one line of code you paste onto your site. Ask what you actually have to do yourself, whether you need a developer, and how far it is from signing up to the chat answering its first visitor.
Who is responsible for what it says, and where does the data live? Responsibility for what is said stays with the business, not with the software, as we went through in its own piece. That is why keeping control matters, that you can see what it says, correct it, and decide when it passes a matter on. Ask too where the data is stored and how what visitors type is handled. Get clear answers before you sign.

None of these seven is about the technology underneath, and that is no accident. The customer never feels the technology itself, they feel the answer they get. So it is the answers, not the technical words on the landing page, that tell you whether a tool fits.

This is why Anna answers the way she does

We built Anna to pass exactly this list. She answers from your business's own knowledge, not from a generic well, and she would rather say she does not know than guess. A team member can take over a live conversation at any time, on every channel. Icelandic and English come on every plan, no language is an add-on. You teach her in conversation, you approve what she learns, and from then on it holds, so she gets steadily better at your business in particular. Setup is one line of code, no plugin and no app. And the responsibility, the control, and the oversight stay with you. You see what she says and decide when she hands a matter on.

No single option suits everyone, and an honest vendor tells you so plainly. If you bring these seven questions to us, we will go through them with you, at no cost, and if Anna is not right for the business we will say so. Drop us a line and we will have the conversation.

To start: see what Anna does or try the chat right now, no signup needed. And to dig deeper: you're not getting a chatbot, you're getting Anna and whether a small business should use AI at all.

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