Quickstart guide: Answer Bot

This Quickstart guide is written to help new Answer Bot users get a simple Answer Bot configuration up and running with their existing Help Center content.

Answer Bot is included with all Zendesk Suite plans and is available as an add-on for Zendesk Support + Guide users. To get the most out of Answer Bot, your Help Center should have at least 10 articles that cover commonly-asked questions.

This article contains the following steps:

• Step 1: Activate Answer Bot
• Step 2: Evaluate your current Help Center content
• Step 3: Enable Answer Bot
• Step 4: Assess Answer Bot performance

Step 1: Start your Answer Bot trial

If you're a Zendesk Suite customer, you'll need to activate Answer Bot on your account. If you're using Support + Guide, you need to sign up for the 30-day trial to start using Answer Bot If you’ve already done this, skip ahead to Step 2.

To sign up for an Answer Bot trial

1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Business Rules > Answer Bot.
2. Click the Activate Answer Bot button (Zendesk Suite users) or Try Answer Bot for 30 days to activate your 30-day unlimited trial (Support + Guide users).

Step 2: Evaluate your current Help Center content

Take a look at the content offered in your Help Center. You can optimize your articles for Answer Bot with some small changes.

In particular, look at the following article elements:

• Titles: Try to title your articles using language and phrasing your customer might use in a search, or in a ticket description. Simple questions ("How do I reset my password?") or phrases ("Resetting a password") are a good approach.
• Introductions: Answer Bot weighs the first 75 words of an article most heavily, so getting relevant keywords in your introduction is key. Try to start your articles with clear, focused paragraphs.
• Topics: Create bite-sized articles that address single, narrowly-focused topics, rather than long articles with multiple separate, if related, sections. For example, instead of writing one article including all profile-related settings, break that information up into separate articles for each setting. You can connect these smaller articles together using a related articles list, or collect them in a resource article containing links to all profile-related articles.

If you are using Content Cues, you can leverage the suggested articles feedback to improve your Answer Bot results.

Keep in mind that these are just suggestions for building a Help Center that will work with Answer Bot. You can apply any, all, or none of them to your Help Center content at any time during the trial.

Related articles:

• Creating and editing articles in the knowledge base
• Optimizing your articles for Answer Bot
• Understanding Content Cues

Step 3: Enable Answer Bot

Next, you can enable Answer Bot throughout Zendesk. Where you add it depends entirely on your Zendesk products and integrations, and where you think it will best fit into your setup. You can use it to offer article suggestions through email notifications or web forms, in the Web Widget or the mobile Support app, in conjunction with the Slack integration with Zendesk, and more. For information on your options for using Answer Bot across Zendesk, see Understanding everywhere you can use Answer Bot.

Related articles:

• Enabling and configuring Answer Bot for email notifications
• Enabling and configuring Answer Bot for web forms
• Using the Answer Bot for Slack integration
• Searching and linking articles using the Knowledge Capture app
• Enabling and using Answer Bot in the Web Widget
• Answer Bot SDK iOS
• Answer Bot SDK Android
• Answer Bot API

Step 4: Assess Answer Bot performance

With a few simple configurations, you can evaluate how Answer Bot impacts your customer interactions Creating ticket views, as well as using your Insights or Explore dashboards, can help you decide if Answer Bot is the right tool for you.

Creating views for Answer Bot tickets

You can create views for tickets affected by Answer Bot, to easily see how your end users are interacting with Answer Bot, and to assess whether it is working for you.

You’ll want to use triggers and tags to identify Answer Bot tickets and sort them into Answer Bot-only views. Your basic Answer Bot views can include (but are not limited to):

• Tickets Answer Bot has fired on
• Tickets Answer Bot has helped customers self-solve
• Tickets Answer Bot has fired on but not solved

Related article:

• Best practices: Setting up Answer Bot triggers, views, and workflows

Using Explore or Insights

Answer Bot has dedicated dashboards in both Explore and Insights that monitor a number of related metrics, including ticket volume, article performance, and Answer Bot performance by time and channel.

Answer Bot begins gathering usage data immediately upon implementation. You can begin monitoring performance through your Explore or Insights dashboard right away, or wait until more information is available. Commonly, users check data after 24 hours, 48 hours, 1 week, and three weeks to see how Answer Bot performance changes over time.

Answer Bot’s metrics are tracked on the Guide - Explore dashboard. A few key metrics to look at include:

• Resolution rate: The percentage of answers resolved through Answer Bot from the total answers offered.
• Resolutions: The number of resolutions provided by Answer Bot.
• Resolution time median: The median time from Answer Bot offering an answer, to the request being resolved by the end user.
• Click-through rate: The percentage of Answer Bot answers clicked by an end user.
• Click time median: The median time from Answer Bot offering an answer to the user clicking on that answer.

Related articles:

• Overview of the Zendesk Guide Explore Dashboard
• Analyzing your Answer Bot activity with Insights