AI Chatbot Requirements Generator

What goes into the brief

A chatbot project fails most often because nobody agreed what it should do, what it may say or who takes over. The brief turns your answers into the decisions a builder needs:

• Scope: your goals, channels, languages and actions, plus what is deliberately out of scope for now.
• Conversation flows: one flow for each goal, led by the one that matters most, plus the flows every chatbot needs: a welcome with a privacy notice, a fallback when it does not understand, a handover to a person and an after-hours message.
• Knowledge to prepare: approved answers to your frequent questions and a clean-up list for each source, each with an owner.
• Integrations: each system it connects to and what it reads or writes. Bookings and status look-ups are flagged when the system they need is missing.
• Escalation, data protection, risks, testing, rollout and metrics: covered in the sections below.

Keeping answers accurate

An AI chatbot can produce fluent answers that are wrong. OWASP’s Top 10 for LLM Applications lists misinformation, prompt injection, sensitive information disclosure and excessive agency among the main risks. The brief turns those into practical rules:

• answer only from approved knowledge, and say “I don’t know” instead of guessing;
• give the chatbot the narrowest permissions it needs, and confirm before any booking or order;
• check identity before showing account details;
• test with real questions, awkward cases and attempts to break the rules, then review transcripts every week.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s voluntary AI Risk Management Framework is a useful reference if you want a fuller risk process.

Data protection in Ghana

If the chatbot collects names, phone numbers, order details or anything more sensitive, Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) applies. The Data Protection Commission says all data controllers and processors must register. Its compliance guidance lists registration, lawful processing, security safeguards, data processors, people’s rights and notification of security compromises among the key obligations. The brief adds a data protection checklist based on your answers. Health information, children’s data and ID numbers are flagged for extra care. The brief is a planning aid, not legal advice. Our privacy policy generator can give you a first draft of a privacy notice to review with a lawyer.

Why the first phase is small

The rollout starts with your main goal, on one channel and in one language, with a person ready to take over. Once real conversations show the answers are reliable, phase 2 adds the other goals, actions and integrations. Phase 3 adds more channels and languages. Each phase is a chance to measure: track the share of chats resolved, handovers and how fast staff pick them up, and the accuracy of reviewed answers.

Using the brief

Send the brief to vendors so their proposals answer the same questions, or use it to plan an in-house build. If WhatsApp is one of your channels, run the WhatsApp Business readiness checker too. Not sure a chatbot is the right first step? The AI automation opportunity finder compares it with your other processes. Our AI and automation team can build and test the chatbot with you.