What is Conversation AI?

Conversation AI is an advanced communication system that automates customer interactions, using AI-powered bots designed to provide smarter, more flexible, and more efficient customer interactions when handling inquiries, providing support, and streamlining communication across multiple channels.

Key Benefits of Conversation AI

Multi-Bot Support: Manage multiple bots to handle different types of conversations, ensuring specialized responses for various tasks.
Primary Bot for Inbound Conversations: Designate one primary bot to manage all inbound messages that aren't initiated within workflows, streamlining communication.
Workflow Integration: Utilize additional bots to respond within workflows, enabling automated and context-specific interactions.
Multi-Channel Support: Enable bots to communicate through channels like SMS, Facebook, Instagram, and live chat.
Real-Time Testing and Feedback: Use the chat window to test, give feedback, and refine the bot during setup, allowing immediate adjustments.
Appointment Booking Actions: Automate scheduling with actions like sending booking links, transferring to another AI bot, and triggering workflows after bookings.

Creating Conversation AI Bots

Creating a conversation AI bot in Lead Hero can be a very quick and easy process! The following steps will help you get a conversation AI bot up and running for your sub-account:

Create a Bot: Click the “Create Bot” button in the Conversation AI dashboard.
Select a Prompt Template: Choose a prompt template that aligns with the bot’s purpose. The template information can be fully edited after creating your bot. Templates were designed to help you get started, or for customers that don't have much experience with customizing AI prompts.
- General Q&A Template: Designed to prompt the bot's responses for handling customer support and general inquiries.
- Appointment Booking Template: Designed to prompt the bot's responses for scheduling and managing appointments.
Set Bot Status: This controls how the bot interacts with incoming messages. There are three different statuses to choose from:
- Off: The bot is inactive and will not respond to any messages.
- Suggestive: The bot generates response suggestions that appear in the message composer. Users can review, edit, and send these suggestions manually.
- Auto-Pilot: The bot automatically responds to incoming messages on behalf of the business without manual intervention.
Assign Channels: In the bot settings, assign all the communication channels that you want the primary bot to communicate within (e.g., SMS, Facebook, Instagram, live chat). The primary bot will handle all inbound messages not initiated within a workflow.
Set the Bot as Primary (optional): The “Primary” bot will answer all incoming conversations in your inbox that were not already handled by another bot from within a workflow. Only one bot can be designated as the primary bot at a time. Click here to learn more about primary bots vs non-primary bots!

IMPORTANT: Selecting a "Bot Template" when creating your bot will ONLY affect the "Prompts" for your conversation AI bot.

You can always overwrite anything added from the template you selected, but if you select a template, Lead Hero will populate the following areas for you to create foundational bot prompts.

Primary vs Non-Primary Bots

Both Primary and Non-Primary Conversation AI Bots will serve as the cornerstone of your communication strategy. Properly assigning communication channels to both types of bots is essential for seamless operation and optimal customer interaction.

Primary Bot

Handle all general inbound conversations that are not transferred to another bot from within a workflow.
Assign all relevant channels to the primary bot to ensure it handles incoming conversations on those channels.

Non-Primary Bots

Assign specific channels based on the workflow where you want the bot to operate.
Ensure the channels in the workflow match the channels assigned to the bot.

WANT TO LEARN MORE? Click here to learn more about the differences between Primary Conversation AI Bots vs Non-Primary Conversation AI Bots!

Advanced Features and Settings

Advanced features allow you to customize bot behavior by configuring wait times, message limits, sleep mode, and FAQs. These settings help control response timing, prevent interruptions, and ensure accurate answers to common questions.

Wait Time Before Responding: Adjust the delay for responses to create a natural flow.
Maximum Message Limit: Set the cap for the number of bot messages per interaction.
Send Bot to Sleep: Temporarily disable the bot during manual interventions or workflows.

WANT TO LEARN MORE? Click Here to learn more about Conversation AI Advanced Settings!

Bot Training

Bot training helps improve the bot's accuracy and relevance in responses by using two key features: the Web Crawler and Custom Bot Responses (FAQs). These tools provide the bot with the information it needs to handle customer queries effectively.

Web Crawler: The Web Crawler enables you to enhance your bot's training by gathering data from various online sources, ensuring precise and context-aware responses. It can be configured to pull information from specific URLs, directories, entire domains, and even Google Docs.
Custom Bot Responses (FAQs): Custom Bot Responses (FAQs) let you specify precise answers for frequently asked questions, ensuring consistency and accuracy. When a user asks something that matches or is similar to an FAQ, the bot provides the exact response you've configured in the FAQ section.

WANT TO LEARN MORE? Click Here to learn more about training your Conversation AI bots!

Bot Goals

Bot goals define the bot’s personality, intent, and additional instructions to align with your business needs. Setting these parameters helps the bot maintain the right tone and focus, whether resolving queries or generating leads.

Prompt

The prompt defines the core behavior of the bot by combining its personality, intent, and additional information. This helps guide the bot’s responses to ensure they align with your business needs and communication style.

Lead Hero Pro Tip: Avoid including details about calendar slots in appointment booking prompts. This can lead to the bot generating incorrect responses, commonly known as “hallucinations.”

Personality: Personality determines the tone of the bot’s responses, such as friendly, professional, or formal, to match your brand’s communication style.

Some examples of different personalities you can use for your conversation AI would be:
- Friendly: Casual and approachable.
- Professional: Business-like and formal.
- Formal: Reserved and highly structured.
Intent: Intent specifies the bot's primary objective, such as resolving customer queries, generating leads, or providing information.

Some examples of different intents would be:
- Resolving Queries: Focus on answering customer questions.
- Generating Leads: Guide conversations toward lead generation and conversions.
Additional Information: Additional information allows you to provide specific instructions or details to customize the bot’s responses more precisely.

Appointment Booking Actions

Appointment booking actions help the bot facilitate scheduling by sending booking links, transferring conversations to employees, or triggering workflows after an appointment is booked.

PLEASE NOTE: These actions are independent of the "Appointment Booking" prompt template selected during bot creation and focus specifically on automating tasks related to appointment management.

Picking a Calendar: To assign appointment booking actions to your conversation AI bot you will need to first pick the calendar you want it to reference and book on. Use the dropdown to select the calendar from your sub-account's existing calendars.
Send Booking Link: Instead of displaying available calendar slots, the bot can send a direct booking link to customers. Ideal for businesses that prefer customers to choose slots independently from a calendar interface.
Pause After Booking: Disables any further bot responses once an appointment has been successfully booked. This ensures the bot does not continue the conversation unnecessarily, allowing for a smoother handoff to follow-up processes or human interaction.
Transfer to Employee: This feature allows the current AI bot to hand off a conversation to another AI bot. This enables specialized bots to take over based on the context or type of inquiry, ensuring the conversation is handled by the most appropriate bot. The handoff is seamless, allowing the new AI bot to continue the conversation without interruption.
- Use Case: When a general support bot needs to transfer a conversation to a booking bot or a specialized bot for more detailed assistance.
Trigger Workflow After Booking: Automate follow-ups or notifications after an appointment is booked. Send confirmation emails, reminders, or internal notifications automatically once an appointment is scheduled.
- IMPORTANT: You must FIRST create the workflow that you want to trigger, and then you can connect your bot to that workflow.

Test and Train Your Bot in Real-Time

The chat window in the Training and Goals sections allows you to test and refine your bot as you configure it. This real-time feature helps ensure your bot performs accurately before going live.

Chat with the Bot: Have full conversations with the bot with no limitations and at no cost. This helps you understand how the bot responds to different queries.
Give Feedback on Answers: Provide feedback on the bot’s responses. Positive feedback improves the bot’s behavior, while negative feedback automatically creates a new FAQ entry in the training section.
Edit the Prompts: Update the bot’s personality, intent, and additional information directly during testing by clicking the small edit icon next to the feedback buttons.
Reset the Conversation: After making edits, reset the conversation without refreshing your browser. This allows you to test changes immediately and continuously refine your bot.

Next Steps

Continue learning about and setting up Conversation AI:

Verify the primary bot and channel assignments.
Create bots for workflow-specific tasks.
Explore advanced features and workflows to optimize customer interactions.