A dog grooming salon starts offering cat grooming. The owner builds a lovely new page, posts about it on social media, and puts a sign in the window. On launch evening a visitor asks the website assistant whether they groom cats, and the assistant says, politely and confidently, that the salon specialises in dogs only.
It is not wrong about the content it has. The "About us" page still says "dogs only, always", and so does a Q&A pair written two years ago to stop cat owners booking by mistake.
This is the most common failure when businesses update chatbot knowledge for something new. They add the new information and forget to retire the old. The assistant then holds both, and the old version has more pages behind it.
Where the old answer is hiding
Before adding anything, find everything that says the opposite. For a new service, the contradicting text usually sits in one of these places.
- Your website pages. "About us", service lists, the FAQ page, footers and old blog posts that explain what you do not offer.
- Uploaded documents. Price lists, brochures and terms that list services, often in a version older than the website.
- Q&A pairs. Especially ones written to turn away the enquiries you now want, like "Do you groom cats? No, sorry".
- The assistant's own setup. The plain-language business description, its instructions and the suggested prompts shown to visitors.
The quickest method is to search. Pick the words that describe what has changed, such as "cats", "only", "don't offer" or the name of a service you have stopped, and look through each source. Most website builders have a site search, and a document search on your own computer will cover the files you uploaded.
The launch-day routine
This splits into work you do before the day and work you do on it. Doing all of it on launch morning is how things get missed.
The week before
- Write the essentials in one place. What the service is, who it is for, the price or starting price, what is not included, how to enquire, and any launch date.
- Draft the new web page and any Q&A pairs, but do not publish yet.
- List every contradicting line found in the search above, with the new wording beside each.
- Decide what the assistant should do with an enquiry for the new service. Capture a lead, ask qualifying questions, or hand over to a person.
On the day
- Publish the new page and the edits to the old pages at the same time.
- Replace outdated documents. Upload the new price list and delete the old one. Do not leave both.
- Edit or delete old Q&A pairs and add the new ones.
- Update the business description and suggested prompts.
- Re-crawl the website so the assistant reads the new and edited pages together.
- Run the test questions in the next section.
The questions to test, and what a pass looks like
Ask each of these in your own words, as a customer would. Then ask one of them a second way, since visitors rarely phrase things the way you expect.
| Test question | A pass looks like | A fail usually means |
|---|---|---|
| "Do you do [new service]?" | A clear yes with a short description | An old page or Q&A pair still says no |
| "How much is it?" | The correct price or starting price | Old price list still uploaded, or price missing |
| "Who is it suitable for?" | The right conditions or limits | The new page is vague on this |
| "How do I book / enquire?" | The assistant offers to take details | Lead capture instructions not updated |
| "What's the difference between [old service] and [new]?" | A sensible comparison | Only one of the two is well described |
| A question the content does not cover | An honest "I don't have that detail" and an offer to take details | The assistant filling a gap by guessing |
The last row matters. On launch day you will not have every answer written down, and you want to see the assistant admit that rather than improvise.
What a contradiction sounds like in practice
Contradictions do not always produce a flat "no". Often they produce an answer that is half right, which is harder to spot.
Visitor: Can I bring my cat in for a nail trim? Assistant: We now offer cat grooming, including nail trims. Please note that we specialise in dogs, so appointments are for dogs only.
Read that twice and it contradicts itself, because it has blended the new page with the old "About us" text. A visitor will not know which part to believe, and most will not bother asking again. If you see an answer like this in testing, search for the old phrase and remove it at the source, then re-crawl and ask again.
A week after launch
The first real visitors will ask things you did not think of. For a new service, expect questions about availability, first-time preparation and whether an existing customer discount applies.
Seven days in, open the unanswered questions report and pick out anything related to the new service. Each gap is either a missing fact worth adding as a Q&A pair or a sign the new page needs another paragraph. There is more on working with that list in turning unanswered questions into website pages.
Then run the same ten test questions again. Pages get edited in the days after a launch, prices get adjusted, and it is easy to reintroduce an old line by accident.
Put it in the launch plan
Add "update the website assistant" as a named task in whatever launch checklist you already use, with the search step written out, and give it to one person. Schedule the one-week re-test the same day you set the launch date.
If this is the first time you have reviewed the knowledge base since setting it up, how to keep your chatbot's knowledge up to date covers a regular routine, and preparing documents helps with the price list you are about to replace. The docs show where re-crawling and document replacement live.