A chatbot answers questions in conversation rather than through a menu. Older ones match keywords to scripted replies; newer ones generate answers from a model grounded in your documentation, which is a genuinely different product wearing the same name.
On a screen or kiosk the appeal is coverage: one interface that handles any question instead of a navigation tree anticipating each. In support it deflects the routine questions so people reach a human for the ones that need one.
The caveat is that a chatbot confidently wrong is worse than no chatbot. A generated answer about a returns policy or a price carries your authority even when invented, and customers reasonably act on it. Ground answers in a real source, show the source, and make "I don't know, here's a human" a first-class outcome rather than a failure branch.
Second, in a public space nobody types a paragraph on a wall-mounted screen. Chat interfaces belong on the visitor's phone; on the screen itself, a few large buttons beat a text box almost every time.