Answers tell an AI agent how to respond to customer questions. Each answer addresses a single question your customers might ask. Answers are comprised of steps that determine how the AI agent responds to customer input.
This article contains the following sections:
Creating an answer
Creating your own answer
You can build an answer from scratch, starting with an empty answer flow. Answers are comprised of steps that determine how the AI agent responds to customer input. An answer can have multiple steps or a single step, but each answer must have at least one step. When the AI agent matches a customer’s query to an answer, the AI agent displays the behavior defined by the steps in the answer.
An AI agent for messaging can include up to 2,000 steps and 500 answers.
To create an answer for your AI agent
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select AI agents and automation > AI agents.
- Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
- Click the name of the AI agent you want to edit.
- Click the Answers tab, then click Create answer.
- Click Build your own answer, then click Next.
- Enter the Answer name, then click Next.
The name should be a brief, clear description of the issue addressed by the answer. For example, “Password reset,” “Request a refund,” or “Talk to a human."
- Enter Training phrases in the available fields, then click Add phrase if you need
to add more.
Training phrases teach the AI agent how to interpret questions so it can match the most relevant answer. You can add up to 100 additional phrases. See best practices for training phrases.
Alternatively, if you have an intent model assigned to your account, you might see up to three AI-powered suggested intents to use instead of training phrases. You can select one or more intents. If none of the intents work, click Train the AI agent yourself to add training phrases.
- Click Next.
The answer opens in bot builder where you can build out the AI agent’s response.
- Click Add step to create the first step in the answer.
Each answer needs at least one step only.
- Under Choose step in the configuration panel, select a step type, then enter options to
Configure the step.
For information on the available step types, see Understanding answer step types. Click Preview to view the step as a user.
- Add additional steps to the answer as needed.
For more information, see Adding and removing steps in an answer.
- Click Done when you’re finished.
The answer appears as Ready to publish status.
At this point, you can click Create answer to create another answer or you can click Publish AI agent to make your new answer available in the AI agent. Before new or edited answers are available to customers, you must publish the AI agent they’re attached to. When you publish the AI agent, all answers in the Ready to publish state are published.
Creating an answer from a template
You can choose from a number of templates to use as a starting point for an answer. These templates provide examples of common answer topics and construction. While each template has a complete answer framework, most will require you to add information before you publish.
To create an answer from a template
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select AI agents and automation > AI agents.
- Click Manage AI agents for messaging.
- Click the name of the AI agent you want to edit.
- Click the Answers tab, then click Create answer.
- Click the answer template you want to use, then click Next.
The answer opens in bot builder.
- Update the Name and Training phrases for the answer, if
you'd like.
- Click each step in the answer and make changes as needed.
It's a good idea to check each step in the answer to make sure it is complete and has been personalized for your business.
- Click Done when you are finished.
Or, if you are just viewing the answer structure without making any changes, you can click your browser's Back button to return to the Create answer page.
At this point, you can click Create answer to create another answer or you can click Publish AI agent to make your new answer available in the AI agent. Before new or edited answers are available to customers, you must publish the AI agent they’re attached to. When you publish the AI agent, all answers in the Ready to publish state are published.
Adding and removing steps in an answer
Inserting new steps to an answer
In addition to copying and pasting steps into an answer, you can also insert a step between two existing steps in an answer.
When you add a branching step, such as a Present options or Add business hours conditions step, the subsequent, pre-existing steps will be included under the new step's initial branch.
- Present options: Existing steps are included under Option 1.
- Add business hours conditions: Existing steps are included under the When openbranch.
You can't add the Transfer to agent step to an answer before another step. It can be the final step in an answer only.
To add a step into an answer
- Open an answer for editing.
- In bot builder, hover over the line connecting two steps and click the
Add new icon (
).
- In the Configuration panel, select the message type to insert into the answer and configure the step as needed.
- Repeat as needed, then click Done when you're ready.
Remember to publish the AI agent to make the updated answer available.
Copying and pasting steps in an answer
You can copy one or more consecutive steps and use them elsewhere within the same answer. You can't copy a step from one answer to another answer. You can paste copied steps only at the end of a branch in the answer, and that branch can't currently end with a Transfer to agent step.
To copy a step (or multiple steps) and paste it elsewhere in an answer
- Open an answer for editing.
- Click the step you want to copy.
- In the configuration panel, click the Options (
) menu, then select an option:
- Select Copy this step to copy only the selected step
- Select Copy this and following steps to copy the selected step and all subsequent steps
- Click the Add new icon (
) or the Add a step icon (
) at the end of the branch.
- Click the Options (
) menu again, then select Paste step.
- Click Done when you're finished.
Remember to publish the AI agent to make the updated answer available.
Removing steps from an answer
Deleting a step removes all subsequent steps from the answer. If you want to delete a step but retain the subsequent steps, you can copy and paste the subsequent steps later in the answer.
To delete a step in an answer
- Open an answer for editing.
- In the configuration panel, click the Options (
) menu.
- Select Delete this step or Delete this and following steps. If there are subsequent steps, click Delete steps in the warning box.
- Click Done when you've finished making your changes.
Remember to publish the AI agent to make the updated answer available.
71 comments
Daniel V
Hello.
We have noticed that the flow does not start if you receive an image or a voice message as the first message from the client.
Many people do not start a conversation flow by writing a text that says "hello" or another text, they directly send an audio or an image. It would be great if the flow would start automatically when faced with these non-text events. Is it possible to have that improvement?
Agurated your comments to know what to respond to my clients.
Regards!
Daniel.
1
Tony
thank you very much for your suggestion. I assure you, your feedback is heard, and our team will have a look at it.
Best,
0
Jahn
Hello Team, we do have different kind of customers (based on class eg., a,b, & c). Is there a way or chance that this Zendesk native bot can identify that?
First thing is the Intent but can't see anywhere if there's like a condition where to set if the customer is for example a VIP.
0
Dane
The bot does not have the capability to determine any form of customer type or tags. You can utilize tags in Flow Builder so that once the ticket has been created on the Transfer to Agent steps, you can use the appropriate triggers that can help with your use case. But if your main goal is to sort customers on the actual Flow Builder, it's not possible.
0
Marcin Rogalski
We just setup a bot. And this enabled messaging for our site. Though previously we were using Chat and Support. So if we were online, customers had the Chat option and we could converse. Though after hours or if not online, they were presented with help and created a ticket for an email. We could then respond in the ticket system or through emails once available.
Now with Answer Bot, I don't see a workflow to allow the customer to be transferred to email support. It just hangs on transferring you to an agent. And they wait indefinitely. How do we creat the flow to let the bot chat us if available or tell them we'll get back to them?
I see your Z Bot does this. Tells us it take 1 to 2 day to respond. I don't know if this is also dynamic so if we're online.
We did already check and made sure our agents were offline in our support.
Thanks,
Martin
1
Tana
Is there a way to have an answer recommend other answers similar to how the fallback standard response works? I don't want to have to build entire flows when an answer is already created for that particular flow, I just want to push users towards self-serving instead of using generic responses to be pushed to our messaging.
0
Christian de Heij
Hi, we have a private knowledge base, only accessible by our customers.
Why can't I use knowledge articles within the bot? As we don't want to have our knowledge base worldwide available.
0
Korisnička podrška (Igor)
Hi,
Could I set up working hours for chat bot?
Lets say every day 00-08 hours when there is no agent online.
0
Max
Hey there, so I have 2 questions :
1. Information collecting fields : it would be nice to be able to make them mandatory o no. As in I give the customer the option to give more details, but he can just fill the mandatory ones if he wants (basically same behaviour as in the web form)
2. I would love to activate the option where the "assistant/bot" recommends articles from the helpcenter based on what a customer is typing, however, it doesn't send a "Were these articles helpful? YES/NO" message, so after offering some articles, it's like the conversation ended if the customer doesn't risk himself typing something.. how to avoid that ?
Thanks a lot
1
Julio H
In the Agent Workspace, the tickets created via Messaging are multi-channel, this means that you can change the channel of the Messaging ticket to reach out the customer.
To achieve this, you need to ask the name and email when transferring the end user to an agent, using the Ask for details step.
You can do this even if the customer is requesting to be transferred to an agent outside business hours.
For example, you can create a step with the Business hours step, this will allow you to transfer the customer when open and when closed, so when you have agents online (open), the bot will transfer the customer to an online agent, if you do not have agents online (closed) you can show a custom message to the customer and indicate that you are not available at the moment and we will contact you via email as soon as possible.
For more information, please review: Understanding answer flow step types
Greetings!
0
Nurlan Safarov
Hello,
When conversation ends with transferto agent , after that bot doesnt response anything. How i can fix this ?
0
Azat Faezov
Hello!
I have 100 answers. And I want to add the same scenario (begins with "Was this helpful" block) in each of 100 answers. What is the best way to do it if I can't copying and pasting steps between answers?
0
Viktor Osetrov
At this moment we can only suggest using Copy this and following steps option to simplify your Flow Builder workaround.
Thanks
0
Jeremy
I have found that since moving to the new messaging widget with FlowBuilder that AnswerBot barely works at all. In fact, I'll ask a question that is completely unrelated to any of the bots or training questions I've configured and it seems to pick a random bot to dump the customer into. Not a great experience. Is the solution the imagine the infinite number of bots I need to create or is there a way to get AnswerBot to help fill in the gaps?
1
Nico V
Hei,
I have a chatbot for my website.
I made:
- answer A for first arrival on home page
tree branches 1, 2, 3,
- answer B for general use
tree branches 1, 3, 4, 6
- answer C when the customer visit cancellation policy
tree branches 6
It would be useful to use same "branch" for branch 1 in Answer A and B
It would be useful to allow branch transfers from B to C in case of cancellation.
Having same text on multiple answers allow for errors like having outdated information on one area but not the other.
What solution do you recommend?
0
Gwyn Mabo
We have the exact same issue Jeremy
We've raised with our account manager, but in the meantime it means we aren't able to switch this feature on!
0
Raphaël saclé
Can we use this bot in the unified ioS SDK ? if so how ?
0
Permanently deleted user
We've hit the 2K steps ceiling but need to add more steps / answers. Is there a way to count the number of steps in each answer without having to manually count them individually? Thanks!
0
Paolo
Unfortunately, we do not have a way in the UI to show the number of steps in the bot.
However, we do have a trick (which would still require some manual work) to see the number of nodes in the Javascript network inspector, specifically the first
graphql
. To get this, go to your bot Flow Builder, Click the three dots at the upper right corner of your browser, then go to More Tools > Developer Tools > Network tab0
Lisa Tam
Ahmed Zaid "If the bot can't understand a question" clarification response will occur once, and if an answer can't be found after the end-user has clarified their question, then the "If there's no relevant answer" will be triggered.
Jeremy Gwyn Mabo Have you tried following these best practices when adding training phrases to the answers? This should improve the quality of question-answer match performance.
@... We have an update coming soon displaying the number of steps on the flow canvas. Longer term we will look to optimise our services and increase the step limit.
0
Gwyn Mabo
Hi Lisa, thanks and yes we have! No matter how good the training phrases are, if the end user types something in, it puts them into a random unrelated flow. Zendesk have acknowledged that there's something going wrong, but haven't fixed it yet.
1
Chad Susa (Gravity CX - Zendesk Partner)
Hi
I agree with Raphaël Péguet - Officers.fr. The answers seem to be offered in the order that they were created. I can't find any mention of this apart from:
I'm not sure I understand this comment. It would be great if we could simply order the answers in the setup tab under Suggest answers (up to 10) section. Unfortunately, to get the order I want, I have to recreate the entire bot and answers (we have multiple) to simply re-order how they appear to an end user....I think you can agree how bad this experience is.
Also, testing the bot needs lots of work. As far as I can tell, if you are not using messaging for brands that are currently using the classic web widget, there is no way to test the bot. Preview doesn't cut it and having to create a brand to test is very frustrating, especially if you have article steps in the flow that offer articles that are not in the new 'test' Brand. You have to go back and select articles that are in the test Brand...which we have LOTS! Again, terrible experience.
Bots still needs a lot of work.
0
Marcin Miodek
Hi, I can't see any mention of the "training phrases" in the chatbot builder. Is this removed in newer versions?
0
Maria Mendez
Hi @...
I created 3 Answers to my Bot.
Is there a way to call another Answer in one of them? Is this way I can have separately the answer branch object.
For example: Out of office hours:
Yes: Out of Office Branch
No: Normal Business Hours Branch
Thanks.
Maria
0
Carl McDowell
I've turned your question into a support ticket, as I think it will help to know a bit more about your use case and then we can help figure out the best way to set everything up for your account.
0
Nikki Goodson
What I'd really like is a way for there to be "blocks" that I can reuse or reference w/o needing to copy/paste them. (Even better if they're dynamic and I can make an edit in one place to update all of them.)
Is there a way to change the default messages for the "ask if question resolved" step type. The default "Great, knowledge is power. You can ask me another question at any time." doesn't really fit our tone, so I'm editing it over and over each time I add it.
1
Dane
It pertains to pasting it to another flow which is currently not available.
The blocks that you are pertaining is definitely a good feature to have for it will make bot creation more efficient. Would you mind posting your use case to our Feedback on Support topic? This is to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature. Thanks!
0
Viachaslau
Nikki Goodson Dane I support this feature request and here suggested an analog of Guide's content block but in builder.
1
Nikki Goodson
Thanks Viachaslau - I added my use case & upvoted.
1
Janet Hong
Hello,
I want to know if I can create ticket together with the conversation bot in the end to let our agents can continue deal with the customers problems. Thanks a lot.
0