For those of you that have worked with our chatbots in the past, you know that our existing pre-built chatbots, Hello Bot, Order Bot, and FAQ Bot, are turnkey solutions for your business. They require zero programming, training, or additional development work on your end.
But what if you wanted to extend the chatbot capabilities of your business beyond simple chatbots that serve specific functions? What if you wanted a chatbot that can:
- Ask potential customers what they’re here for and what interests them?
- Guide potential customers to specific products based on their preferences?
- Ask potential customers a series of questions to get to the root of an issue?
- Greet customers as they arrive and send them to specific conversion funnels?
This is where Re:amaze’s Custom Chatbots step in to help! Custom Chatbots give you complete control over how a chatbot conversation can happen, evolve, and conclude. Let’s take a look.
Setting Up Custom Chatbots
To access Custom Chatbots, head on over to Re:amaze Settings > Automation > Chatbots > Manage Bots > Custom Bots > “+ New Cue Bot”.
Start with Cues
Currently, Custom Chatbots can only be triggered through an existing Cue. If you’re not currently using Re:amaze Cues, this is the perfect time to get started! Click here to learn more about Cues. It is recommended that your Cues contain "Action Buttons" mapped to "Quick Responses". When customers receive an automated Cue message, their selection of the Cue Action Button will trigger the designated Custom Chatbot.
Once your Custom Chatbot is created, you’ll be able to add additional steps in the flowchart as shown below. Each step is known as a “node”.
Creating additional steps or nodes will allow you to take the customer that’s interacting with the Custom Chatbot through a variety of questions and answers that you’ve designed. You may create as many nodes as you’d like to take customers through branching conversations.
- Each new node you add will allow you to create a “Bot Response”. This is what the customer will receive when they have clicked on (or engaged with) a prior “quick response button”.
- You may add additional quick response buttons alongside the Bot Response to direct the customer to another node/path OR simply have the customer’s response/input to escalate to your staff.
- When you do choose to add more quick response buttons in a particular node, you’ll have the option of having those specific buttons to “Go to” a new step/node.
- You can add titles to each node that you create, which makes it super easy to identify each step. We recommend added titles because untitled nodes will be identified by their message body (as picture below).
Within each node you have the option to "Show bot override option." By de-selecting this box, you are removing the "Speak to someone" button from this specific step in the bot flow. This will keep your customers engaging with your bot, rather than defaulting to a support agent. Don't worry, your customers won't be trapped in the bot flow and can still ask additional questions in the free-from text box, which will pass the conversation to an agent.
Looking at the results
To test your Custom Chatbot, be sure to save your work and enable it. Then head over to your site or app and trigger the associated Cue. Here’s the Cue that will kick off the Custom Chatbot:
