Using AI Assistants

You can create AI Assistants to automatically respond to queries from your contacts by scanning your blog, knowledge base and more. Using an AI assistant you can save lots of time by helping your customers get to the right answers quicker. This article will go through the steps to configure the AI and ensure it's working just how you want it.

How to create an AI Assistant

1. In Conversations, click on your Inbox name in the top right corner > AI Assistants
2. Use the button to + Create Assistant
3. Give your AI Assistant a name
4. Next you need to give your AI Assistant a Source that it can use to learn from. Transpond will Automatically train your AI Assistant, using articles we find on your knowledge base if you have one. If you don't have a knowledgebase, you can skip this step, and then manually add articles later.
5. Choose which channels you'd like the AI Assistant to be used for. Note that you can only have one AI Assistant per channel.
6. If you've added a source, the AI Assistant will start scanning the articles from it in the next step. Click Continue to finish the process. The content scanning will continue in the background.
7. Once saved, you'll be taken to the dashboard for your AI Assistant, which shows a report on how the assistant has been doing over time.

How to manage the AI Assistant Sources

When you first setup your AI Assistant you can give it a source URL to use to train learn answers from. If you didn't get a chance to add one, or if you want to add more sources, you can manage the sources from inside your AI Assistant settings.

How to add a new source for the AI Assistant

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Sources
4. From here you can see a list of all current sources that your AI Assistant is learning from.
5. Use the button to +Add Source to add a new source.
6. Enter the URL for the help docs or blog that you want the AI Assistant to learn from.
7. Transpond will detect what type of source it is, and if it can be used, click the button to Add Source.
8. At this point, Transpond will start scanning the source for articles to learn from. This will happen in the background and you can leave the page to do something else.

If you no longer want to use a specific source, you can remove it, and the AI Assistant will stop using answers based on it.

How to delete a source from the AI Assistant

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Sources
4. From here you can see a list of all current sources that your AI Assistant is learning from.
5. Click the three little dots next to the source you want to remove > use the option to Delete Source.

How to manage the AI Assistant Articles

Once you've added at least one valid Source, the AI Assistant will break down the Source into a list of articles. You can manage those articles and remove ones you don't want, edit their content or refresh it, if it's been updated on the source. You're also able tomanually add new articles for any custom content that doesn't exist in your Source content.

How to update or delete an existing Source Article

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Articles.
4. Click on the three little dots next to an article and use the options to Refresh, Edit, or Delete Article.

How to add a Manual Article

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Articles.
4. Click the button to Add Manual Article.
5. Now you'll be able to create your own article for the AI Assistant to learn from. Give it a title, populate the content, and optionally add a source URL for it. The AI Assistant will include the source URL when sharing information from this article in a conversation.
6. Click them button to Add Manual Article and you're all done.

Choosing a channel for your AI Assistant

You can select which channels this AI assistant will will reply to automatically. You can only have one AI Assistant per channel.

To choose which channels:

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Channels
4. From here, check the box next to the channel you want the AI Assistant to be used in.
5. Click the button to Save Channels and you're all set.

How to configure your AI Assistant name, avatar and messages

Just like every business has its own voice and branding, we want you to be able to match in your AI Assistant. You can therefore configure the AI Assistant's name, avata, and default messages - things it will say to welcome someone etc.

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Settings.
4. From here you can update the AI Assistant's name and avatar. These are what your customers will see when they interact with the AI Assistant.
5. You can also configure the messages that your AI Assistant will send to your customers. They will be different between chat at email. There are default messageds but it can be helpful to spend a bit of time setting these up to better fit your own brand and voice.
6. Click the button to Save Settings and you're done.

AI Assistant History

To help you keep track of your AI Assistants replies, and help it improve, there's an overview of the AI Assistant History in the settings.

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to History.
4. From here you can view the full chat history of AI responses to your visitors questions.

How to test the AI Assistant

Before you make your AI Assistant live, or if you've made some changes to the source or articles, it can be helpful to test it out. In the Test section you can ask your AI Assistant a question and see what it would answer. If something doesn't look right then you can go back to your Article list and update any content that needs changing, or manually add a new article if needed.

To test the AI:

1. Click on your Inbox name in the top left corner > AI Assistants
2. Click on your existing AI Assistant
3. Go to Test.
4. From here, type in the prompt just like you would if you were chatting with the AI assistant.
5. Click the button to Ask Question and review the reply.