Teaching the AI chat assistant about your business

In this article, you'll learn how to teach the chat assistant on your website about your business: the questions you answer every week, the background it should know, and the rules it must always follow. The assistant reads all of it at the start of every conversation, so the more you give it, the more accurate its answers are.

Note: These sections only appear when the widget is in AI chat mode. If you haven't switched that on yet, see Turning on the chat widget. This is a dashboard feature, so it's on the web only.

To open the assistant's settings:

  1. In your dashboard menu, click Website. The Website sub-menu slides open.
  2. Click Chat Widget.
  3. Under Widget mode, make sure AI chat is selected. The Questions & answers, Company details and Instructions sections appear below it.

Questions & answers

This is where you write the questions customers ask most and the exact answer you want given. The assistant reuses these answers, in its own words when that reads better, but it never changes the facts.

Importing questions from your website

If your site already has an FAQ, you don't have to retype it.

  1. In the Questions & answers header, click Import from followed by your website's address.
  2. The button reads Scanning while it works. It reads up to a dozen pages, starting with FAQ, services, pricing and about pages, and pulls out question-and-answer pairs.
  3. A green note tells you how many questions it found and asks you to review them below, then save. If nothing new turned up, it tells you how many pages it scanned instead.
  4. Read through each imported pair and fix any wording you don't like.

Questions you already have in the list aren't imported twice. Nothing is saved until you click Save changes, so you can remove anything you don't want first.

Adding a question by hand

  1. Click Add a question.
  2. Under Visitor asks, type the question the way a customer would ask it.
  3. Under Assistant replies, type the answer you want given.

Removing a question

  1. Hover over the question. An X appears in its top-right corner, labeled Remove this question.
  2. Click it. The row disappears, and the change is kept once you save.
Tip: The Conversations section at the bottom of the page lists every chat from the last 30 days. Open a few and look for questions the assistant had to pass on. Those are the next ones to add.

Company details

Company details are background the assistant reads before answering: your services, your service area, your pricing approach, your policies. You can paste as much as you like.

  1. Click Add company details.
  2. Give the block a title, such as Services we offer.
  3. Type or paste the details in the text box below the title.
  4. Add more blocks for other topics. A good start is one block for services, one for your service area, and one for pricing or policies.

To remove a block, hover over it and click the X labeled Remove this block.

Instructions

Instructions are rules the assistant always follows, no matter what a visitor asks. They sit above everything else, including your company details and your answers. New accounts start with one rule: never give exact pricing, and offer to have someone follow up with a quote instead.

  1. Click Add a rule.
  2. Type the rule in plain words, such as "Never promise a same-day appointment."
  3. Add one rule per row.

To remove a rule, hover over it and click the X labeled Remove this rule.

Tip: If your website uses a brand name that's different from your account name, add a rule telling the assistant which name to use. Rules override the name it would use by default.

Saving your changes

As soon as you edit anything, a dark bar appears at the bottom of the page reading Unsaved changes.

  1. Click Save changes.
  2. The bar reads Saving, then Saved with a green check, and goes away on its own.

If the bar reads Couldn't save, click Save changes again.

Note: Rows you left completely empty aren't kept. If you clicked Add a question and never filled it in, it's dropped when you save. The same goes for empty company detail blocks and empty rules.

What the assistant does with all this

The assistant only states facts from your company details, your questions and answers, and passages it pulls from your own website. If a visitor asks something none of those cover, it says someone will follow up rather than guessing. It never invents prices, availability, timelines or guarantees. Where your website and your typed details disagree, your typed details win, and your rules win over everything.

Once it has helped, the assistant asks for the visitor's full name, a phone number or email, and the address where the work is needed. It asks naturally, never before answering a question, and lets it go if the visitor would rather not say. When it has those details, the chat becomes a lead, and the mobiles and email addresses listed under Chat notifications go to on this page get a text and an email.

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