You can use the bot builder to create answers for your conversation bots, giving your customers the opportunity to self-serve their support issues before connecting with agents. In this article, we’ll introduce you to the bot builder UI and basic functionality. For information about working with the bot builder, see Building a conversation bot using answers.
This article includes the following topics:
The bot builder UI
The bot builder is the tool you use to create answers for your bot, which controls how it behaves in response to customer input.
The bot builder components are listed below. Each plays an important role in building your answer:
- Header, which appears at the top of the screen, above the flow. On the header, you'll find breadcrumbs for the answer's bot as well as the Preview and Done buttons. For more information, see Publishing bot updates.
- Flow, your answer represented in a decision tree format, as a series of connected steps representing the interaction the bot can have with a customer. You can select a step to configure the bot's responses, and add steps to the answer. The navigation controls at the bottom of the flow allow you to zoom in and out of the answer, or pan to areas in the answer, and you can pinch to zoom using a touchpad or touch screen.
- Configuration panel, where you can customize each step in your answer. The appearance of this panel changes based on what type of bot step you're working on.
- Answer builder (shown above), displayed when you initially create an answer, and when you select the top step in the answer. Here, you can configure your answer intent, and work with your question variations.
- Configuration tab, which appears when you select a step to the answer, or add a new step to an answer. Here, you can select the type of step you want to add to your answer, add and edit automated messages, and build lists of options for your customers to choose from. For detailed information on these step types, including usage and configuration rules, visual examples of the steps in the bot builder, and how each appears to your customers in a Web Widget, see Understanding bot step types.
- Preview tab, for previewing the customer experience created by the answer, before releasing it to your customers. Click the Preview tab in the Configuration panel to view.
Publishing bot updates
Any changes made in the bot builder must be published before they appear in your messaging channel.
To publish a bot update
- Create or update your answers in the bot builder, and click Save.
- In the header, click Publish. This makes the changes live in your messaging channels, and updates the publishing information in the header.
For more information about publishing, see Publishing answers.
106 Comments
Hi @...
If you configure your transfer to agent step with name and email, they will be mandatory fields before an end-user can be transferred to an agent.
Hi @... - that's not working in all cases unfortunately.
See the ZD support ticket number 6081159
I'm looking for a way to make it mandatory at all times, as it seems they can be transferred to an agent without selecting the flow builder step......
If I am incorrect, please let me know, as I'd love to solve this.
Hello,
I decided to introduce Zendesk Messaging to help a limited number of agents. I found two problems while creating and testing chatbots through Flow builder.
The first problem is that if I press the 'talk to a human' button on the feedback flow provided, the agent will be connected, but it will work the same after working hours. I'd like to print out an information message if it's not working hours. Is there a way?
The second problem is that when an agent is connected by pressing the 'talk to a human' button, a user is considered an anonymous user. So the customer has to tell the agent who they are every time. I would like to provide this chatbot in the app I created and create a ticket based on the information logged in from the app when users are connected to the agent through the chatbot. Is it possible?
I can not enable Flow Builder for my trial version. Is that only business account can enable Flow Builder?
Are we able to have more than one Flow per brand, segmented by language?
with the flow initiation being controlled by whatever we pass the web sdk client from our product?
Hi Nabia,
Currently, Flow Builder doesn't allow you to modify "Talk to a human" step in the system generated feedback flow. This is something we are planning to make configurable in the future.
For your business hour use case, you can set up a chat trigger to communicate information when your agents are offline for messaging. Here is an article to explain how to create this https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260801553730-Creating-an-out-of-office-message-in-Flow-Builder.
Hey Yen,
Is it a Zendesk Suite trial that you've signed up to?
Hi @..., no this is not possible today. Could you help me understand why you would like to have different language flows for the same brand?
Are you imagining each language flow they would contain different content or will you be using it as a way to localize your flow content? Thanks
Hi @...
Thanks for replying! I would like different language flows for the same brand because Brands are tied to Guides and Guides support content in multiple languages.
We have several products that span multiple regions and languages, we currently have one brand per product and leverage Guide Enterprise to host our self-serve content. Thus, we have one Brand per product. We rely heavily on Articles and their translations.
We also provide chat services in different languages for these products and really need to be able to author Flows that will allow us to serve these different customers.
For example, I'd love to have our Answerbot for our Retail product provide different options to English users than we would perhaps display to French or Dutch users of the product. Sometimes features or common issues are regional. The other issue becomes when we attempt to transfer to a human, we need to be able to pass some kind of language identifier so we make sure the correct group of agents that speak that language are online.
In the current state, it seems the current flow builder isn't able to be used in a multilingual support environment. If you'd like to dig deeper into a use case for Enterprise, I'd be happy to connect with you to discuss in detail!
Is it a Zendesk Suite trial that you've signed up to?
I've just subcribe for a Suite trial, if Zendesk work well and suiteble for my case, I will suggest my client to upgrade.
I cannot find the icon for flow builder. Can you advise on why this is missing?
Thank you,
John
+1000 on what @... said :) While I understand the feature is "somewhat new". The current set-up doesn't allow the flow to be created for the same brand (Brand A) in multi-language. Our customers are either English or French, and we would require the ability for the system to automatically serve the user the Flow that is built for their language - and also pass to the correct department afterward to continue serving the user in their preferred language with a seamless handover. Thanks!
Is there any way to present a specific ticket form or embed the "Submit a request" link as one of the options to be chosen? I know I can simply paste the link, but this doesn't present as nicely. If one of the option types (Message, Article, Transfer etc) was Link that would be very useful.
If any of these options already exist, would someone, kindly, point me to the appropriate article?
Thank you,
Tammy
Hey Tammy,
I did some testing on my end and it doesn't look like you can present a ticket form at this time using Flow Builder. I realize that just including a link may not be the best option so another solution would be to have a designated article that informs your users how to contact your Support team. This article can include steps for submitting a request and you can hyperlink directly to your Submit a Request page if needed.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Dear Zendesk Team,
Please advise:
1. Can I remove the option TALK TO A HUMAN ? - I do not want this option to EVER APPEAR unless I choose so. I need to be able to close some of my flows with a start over option only - they are purely informational flows, I do not want customers to be able to contact me via chat at the end of these flows. It is very inconvenient not having the power of decision on how your flow ever ends (unless you choose to connect to an agent option of the flow).
2. Nabia asked a question that remained unanswered. I have the same concern. I would like to provide this chatbot in the app I created and create a ticket based on the information logged in from the app/ particular app screen when users are connected to the agent through the chatbot. Is it possible?
If not, what integration shall I use, what app from your marketplace can do this? Can maybe Twilio be a good option?
3. We have the Enterprise plan, In Admin>Billing I see the following information about answer bot: Answer Bot / Add-on / 50 resolutions per month. Please correct me if I misunderstand. This means:
A. Answer bot supports FOR FREE only 50 customer queries per month (can be used 50 times only? True / False)
B. What happens after these 50 resolutions per month end?
4. Can the flow that I am using inside an organization (flowbuider) be copy-pasted (automatically transferred) to another one of my organizations? supposing I do not have to build everything all over again. E.g: I have 5 organizations. I need to have the same flow in all of them.
5. Can I personalize the aspect of the answer bot? If yes, how? (tried already but did not manage)
A. If yes, can I personalize the aspect of each answer bot based on the Organization? E.g: I have 5 organizations. I need to apply distinct organization branding for each of them
Hi All,
How is everyone setting up their Messaging triggers to route end users to a specific group?
I have a selection called "I want to make a purchase" and I want this to route straight to a human in our Sales group.
I believe this is possible - But how? Any help would be much appreciated! =]
I just want to add on that not having the ability to chance the experience for after business hours almost makes this unusable...I set the after hours trigger but it still gives the expectation that the customer is going to talk to a human - UNLESS they send another message which to me means at that point, the customer is frustrated.
See attached where the "customer" had to say "hello?" to get the trigger to fire with the auto reply.
Hey @... How'd you manage to route to an agent for your "in-office" hours workflow?
I'm on struggle street with this piece!
Hey @... if its "in-office" hours when the customer selects "talk to a human" it should work. But I learned today after talking with Zendesk support for a few hours that at least 2 agents must be online for the notification to appear in the agent workspace.
Also your other question about routing to a specific group - check out this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057455393/comments/1260800262330 might be helpful to you.
Also, this could be helpful for routing to a group: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360057909933#topic_wrf_5km_jnb
Hey @...,
Thank you for that! I managed to work it out using unique ticket fields presented to the customer prior to the expected transfer to agent. This way I was able to define exactly which group will be presented with the chat.
Any ideas on how to populate the Customers name? All of my chats are coming through as "Web User 74358734957934"?
@... I think if you get the customers info at the beginning then it will change? I am not sure but that is what I read as a suggestion somewhere online.
I actually switched back to old school chat and answer bot cause messaging was not going to work for my needs at this stage in it's development. Long term, I think it will be awesome!
@... Yeah I'm feeling we may end up doing something similar until this Product goes to market. The product thus far has HUGE potential and pretty excited to see this rolled out across all of our websites.
Thanks for your help too! =]
@... as part of the collect data step in Flow Builder you can choose to capture "Name" (system field) which replaces the anonymous "Web User 123456" with their name in the various places.
Hey @... thanks for that! It worked!
Hi @..., I have a question regarding the data collection step. We have our flow builder setup with a data collection step to gather users information which is working properly when they end up on that step. The issue we're running into is when the flow presents the customer with a list of articles and they then select the Talk to a Human option, this skips the data collection step and routes the user directly to the agent. Is there any way to route this to the data collection step properly? At the moment on the flow builder seems to hit a dead end after the suggest article step, I'd like to make it easier for our agents by having the information collected beforehand every time.
Hey Mike,
I've got a couple of proserv customers who are looking at using Flow Builder for their needs however they have both come back to me with the same feedback.
They both reference the bot which is on Dan Murphy's website here: https://www.danmurphys.com.au/dm/home
The bot on here is very similar to what you've created with the Zendesk Flow Builder however it has more functions. When live chat is no longer available on this bot they are running, it allows the customer to still submit a ticket.
Both of these customers currently use the web widget and feel if they upgraded to using flow builder for a nicer/more personalized experience, that there are a few features that are missing and we're hoping to see if these might be on the road map at all for flow builder.
1. Ability to customize the messages more. i.e when the bot asks "was this helpful" and the yes no options appear, could this text be customizable so it's possible to make it more obvious that if you select no, it takes you to a chat or wherever from there. It's just not that obvious from a customer perspective
2. You can add name/email& custom fields... however no option to add a description field to capture a question before the customer is transferred to the agent on chat. If the customer selects no and gets all the way to chat, then most of the time what they want to ask will differ from the suggestion which has been served up. It would be nice to be able to offer a description field if the question for the human on chat differs, in the end, from the original. The reason for this is by the time the ticket is created for chat, the transcript could already be quite lengthy by the time agent gets to read it.
3. Both asking for the ability to be able to serve a ticket form as a last resort when chat is not available.
4. there's nothing to indicate that if they select to talk to a human... that chat is offline.
Don't shoot the messenger. Appreciate any feedback on this. :)
Looking for the answer to Ruben's question above also. We have hundreds of 'Web user' anonymous users being created and it's causing some havoc..... as we dont know if they have separately contacted us and their issues resolved....
@... and Ruben, in the short term we're looking to introduce the name and email by default on the fallback experience to ensure this is captured. Longer term the plans are to make all experiences (including this fallback and feedback flows that aren't currently configurable) available for you to configure as well.
@...:
1. Covered above
2. What we suggest here is that the handoff message (as part of the transfer step) asks the user to provide a description. When the user replies, that reply would be then be visible as the most recent message in the history for the agent to respond to - this is cleaner and simpler and more conversational than having a "description" field.
3. Messaging is a new way of thinking - we're no longer forcing users to think about "channels". If the user has a question and they need to speak to a human, we connect them. We don't force them to "submit a ticket" and switch over to email. If a user chooses to provide their email so they can get notified when an agent replies, it's up to them. The most important part here is setting the right expectation around agent response time so users aren't left waiting around when an agent isn't available to reply quickly. The new re-engagement work which is still in the process of being rolled out, addresses this. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260803148430-Enabling-continuous-conversations-to-re-engage-messaging-customers
4. Re-engagement above begins to address this as well, and we're also working on making the offline/online experience better and more configurable - stay tuned
As always, thanks everyone for your feedback, questions and context, it's hugely useful and valued 🙏🏻
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