Understanding the out-of-the-box bot behaviors

When you create a bot for your messaging channels, it comes with a simple, working flow for every active brand, along with automated response behaviors that are triggered by end user input. This behavior is fully-functional, and you can publish the bot to Web Widget and mobile SDKs without making any updates.

If you prefer, you can use Flow Builder to configure the bot to meet your needs by designing a flow that includes customizable bot behaviors. See Using flow builder to create bot flows for information.

This article discusses the following topics:

• The out-of-the-box bot flow
• The automated response behaviors

The out-of-the-box bot flow

The out-of-the-box bot flow consists of a simple greeting, a single quick reply option, an information request, and ends with a transfer to a live agent.

When an end user launches the Web Widget, they see the following:

The end user can then enter their question or click the Talk to a human option. If they choose the Talk to a human option (or if they type in “talk to a human”), they are then greeted with a request for basic contact information and handed off to an agent:

If they enter a message describing their support issue, the automated response behaviors are triggered. See The automated response behaviors for more information.

If you want to edit the bot, you can open it in Flow Builder. In Flow Builder, the out-of-the-box flow looks like this:

For more information on the step types shown above, see Understanding flow step types.

By default, this out-of-the-box flow appears in your account's default Support language, if that language is supported in Answer Bot; otherwise, it appears in English. You can also customize the language it appears in by selecting a flow language.

The automated response behaviors

In addition to the predefined bot flow described above, there are a number of non-configurable bot behaviors that are part of the out-of-the-box bot functionality. These are triggered by the customer entering a free-text message into the widget. The bot then assesses the content of the text entry and responds with one of the following behaviors:

• Conversational shortcuts
• Article suggestions
• Feedback flow
• Fallback flow

These responses remain active in customized bot flows.

These automated messages appear in your selected flow language. See Managing languages in Flow Builder.

Conversational shortcuts

A conversational shortcut uses AI to assess any free-text message entered into the conversation by a customer and automatically jumps to the relevant part of the flow.

If no flow step matches the free-text entry, an article suggestion is triggered. If article suggestions are not available, the fallback flow is triggered.

Article suggestions

Article suggestions are only available if you have a publicly available help center, and are followed by the feedback flow. If no help center is available, the article suggestion behavior will not be triggered, and a fallback flow is triggered instead.

Feedback flow

After an article suggestion has been made, the feedback flow is triggered. This behavior asks the customer to indicate whether they self-solved their question or still need assistance.

If the customer selects Yes, problem solved, the bot leaves a parting message and gives your customer the option to start a new conversation.

If the customer selects No, I still need help, the fallback flow is triggered.

Fallback flow

The fallback flow is triggered when none of the abovementioned behaviors help the customer self-solve their support issue. The bot gives them the option to rephrase their question or start a new conversation.