Chatbot quick start guide

Save time and quickly answer your most frequent customer questions with the Hootsuite generative AI chatbot. Your chatbot can answer high-volume customer questions from both direct and private messages on your website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and WhatsApp. When it can't answer a question, it can be set to escalate the question to a human agent via Inbox or your CRM.

Note: The chatbot cannot differentiate between Facebook direct messages and Facebook story replies. If you enable your chatbot to respond to Facebook messages, it will attempt to respond to both.

1. Build your knowledge center source files

The Knowledge center in Inbox hosts your brand-approved FAQ, policies, and key responses for use in AI-powered automations like smart replies and chatbot. You can use your knowledge source files to train the AI with relevant company data. This helps to ensure more accurate and on-brand responses. Your knowledge files can be in PDF or TXT format and must be less than 1MB in size. Learn how to build a knowledge file.

2. Define your identities

Give your chatbot a name and associate it with your company. Read more about creating chatbot identities.

1. Go to Inbox Admin settings.
2. Expand Inbox intelligence, and then select Generative AI chatbot.
3. Select the arrow next to Create chatbot, and then select Create identity. If you've already created a chatbot identity, select Manage identities, and then select Create identity. Follow the steps to create and save your identity.
   
4. Select the arrow next to Create chatbot, and then select Create company. If you've already created a chatbot company identity, select Manage companies, and then select Create company. Follow the steps to create and save your identity.

3. Set up an escalation path

Set up a new escalation path to guide your customers to a human agent when the chatbot cannot answer the customer's question.

1. In Generative AI chatbot, select the arrow next to Create chatbot, and then select Create escalation. If you've already created an escalation, select Manage escalations, and then select Create escalation.
2. Follow the steps to create and save your escalation. For details on setting up an escalation path, see Set up a chatbot escalation path.

4. Create your chatbot

Now it's time to create your chatbot and turn it on so it can serve as your first line of support! If you'd like to test your chatbot before it goes live, consider creating a dummy account on Facebook using a generic name like testpage, and connecting your chatbot to that account to test it.

1. In Generative AI chatbot, select Create chatbot.
2. Select your language preferences and your primary language. The primary language will be used when a customer's language is not recognized. To add additional languages, select Add language.
3. Enter an Internal name and description. This is the name and description that you and your administrators use to identify your agent. It is not shown to customers.
4. Select an Identity and a Company.
5. Select the Tone of voice you want your chatbot to use with your customers. Do you want your agent to be straightforward, formal, or friendly and cheerful? What best reflects your brand?
6. Select the knowledge sources you want the bot to use.
7. Select an escalation from the list.
8. There are times you may want to suggest that the customer talk to a human agent. Switch on the Automated AI tracking and triggers that tell your chatbot when to suggest the conversation be moved to a human agent.
9. Optionally, select whether you want your chatbot to ask your customers to consent to the use of AI.
10. Save your changes.
11. Switch on each channel you want to assign to your chatbot to turn the chatbot on for those channels.

Best practices for testing your chatbot

You may want to create a dummy account on Facebook using a generic name like testpage, and then connect your chatbot to that account to test it. Consider the following when testing your chatbot:

• Think about what kinds of questions your customers ask and how they may ask them.
• Ask questions about content that is not in the Knowledge Bank (content related to your business or not).
• Ask the bot questions that your customers have asked previously.
• Test the talk-to-human escalation feature. After this test, you'll need to change the status of the conversation in Inbox to “Resolved” to continue testing.
• Make spelling mistakes, write long questions, and try combining 2 questions in a single message.