Where the terms blur
"Chatbot" and "AI agent" get used interchangeably in sales conversations, which makes it hard to know what you are actually buying. The clearest way to tell them apart is not the label — it is what the assistant can do once a conversation moves past the first message.
What a basic chatbot does well
Menu-based flows and canned replies are genuinely useful for routing and simple FAQ triage. They are predictable, fast to set up and easy to audit. The limitation shows up the moment a customer asks something the script did not anticipate.
What changes with an AI agent
An AI agent like Brain reads from approved knowledge sources, can call connected business tools to check current data, and can complete an approved next step rather than only describing one. When a conversation needs a person, it hands off inside the same thread with the context the customer already gave.
Native, connector and custom capabilities
Not every capability arrives the same way. Some things are native to the platform, some depend on a connector to a specific system, and some require custom tool development. Worth asking any vendor — including us — to be specific about which category a given capability falls into before you commit to a workflow around it.
A simple way to evaluate either option
Ask three questions: can it read our current data, not just a script; can it complete an approved action, not just describe one; and can it hand off to a person without losing the conversation history. The answers tell you more than the label on the box.