Teach it your business
Add FAQs and custom replies
When you are done, your bot answers the questions you pick using the exact words you wrote.
Before you start
- You have a bot, and its sidebar shows Train your bot How to check
- You know the answer you want given, in the words you want it said
About 5 minutes. You’ll do three things:
- pick FAQ or custom reply
- write the answer
- ask your bot the question
Most of what your bot knows comes off your website. An FAQ or a custom reply works the other way round. You type the answer yourself, and those are the words the bot uses.
The two live on separate tabs of the same page and do separate jobs. Pick the one that matches what you are answering before you start typing.
| Option | Best for |
|---|---|
| FAQ | One fact you want on record: your returns window, where to park, what the call-out fee covers. You write a single answer and nothing else. |
| Custom reply | A question people ask in several different wordings. You list the wordings, and one answer covers all of them. |
Write an FAQ
In the bot sidebar, under Bot setup, click Train your bot.
Click the FAQs tab.
Under Add FAQ, type a short name into Title.
The name is there so you can find the row again. Your bot answers from the Answer box, so nothing you type here reaches a visitor.
Type the whole answer into Answer.
The empty box tells you what it wants: Write the answer your bot should use.
Click Add FAQ.
The new row appears below with a status of pending while your bot learns it. Reload the page and it reads ready.
Write a custom reply
Still on Train your bot, click the Custom replies tab.
Under Add custom reply, type a short name into Internal title.
Type the question the way a customer says it into the first box under Questions.
Click Add another question.
Type the next wording into the new box.
Repeat both steps for every wording you have heard. One reply holds up to 20 of them.
Type the answer into Answer.
Click Add reply.
As with an FAQ, the row starts at pending. Reload the page to see it turn ready.
How your answer sits next to your website pages
Your bot searches everything it knows in one pass. Pages, documents, FAQs and custom replies all sit in the same pile. It pulls the ten closest matches to the question and writes the answer from those.
So an FAQ does not beat a crawled page for being an FAQ. It wins when it is the closer match to what the visitor typed. The wording you use matters more than the tab you use.
Change or remove an answer
On the same tab, write the new version using the steps above.
Save the new row first. This way round your bot is never left without an answer while you tidy up.
Find the old row in the list below and click Delete.
Click Confirm delete.
The row goes, and so does everything your bot learnt from it.
If it didn’t work
I asked the question and got a different answer
- Check
- Read your answer back against the question you asked. For an FAQ, only the text in Answer is searched, so a phrase that is missing from it cannot be matched.
- Fix
- Write a custom reply instead and list the exact wording you used as one of the Questions. Ask again once the row reads ready.
- Resolved when
- The bot replies with your wording.
The row's status says failed
- Check
- Look beside the status for · error and rest your pointer on it. The reason the row could not be learnt shows there.
- Fix
- Delete the row and add it again. If it fails a second time, email hello@adoomi.ai with the bot's name and the title you used.
- Resolved when
- The status reads ready.
Add another question has gone grey
- Check
- Count the question boxes. The button switches off at 20, and a save over that limit is refused with At most 20 questions per reply.
- Fix
- Drop a wording you can live without, or write a second custom reply for the rest. Two replies can hold the same answer text.
- Resolved when
- The button works again, or the second reply's status reads ready.
Saving says You've reached the training limit for this bot. Remove some sources or upgrade.
- Check
- Read Total size in the panel on the right of Train your bot. Everything you have added to this bot shares one allowance, and your plan sets how big it is.
- Fix
- Delete a source you no longer need, or move up a plan. The pricing page shows what each plan includes.
- Resolved when
- The save goes through and the new row appears in the list.
I cannot find the answer I wrote last month
- Check
- The list shows a title, a size, a date and a status. It never shows the answer text back.
- Fix
- There is no way to read a saved answer out of the dashboard. Keep your answers in a document of your own, so a rewrite is a copy-paste rather than a memory test.
- Resolved when
- You have your own copy of every answer, and rewriting one takes a minute.
What this can’t do
- Nothing written here can be edited. A change means a new row plus a delete.
- The dashboard does not show a saved answer back to you. Keep your own copy.
- One custom reply holds at most 20 question wordings. Write a second reply for more.
- An FAQ's Title is not searched. Every phrase that matters has to be inside Answer.
- FAQs and custom replies share one training allowance with your pages, documents and spreadsheets. That allowance grows with your plan, and Total size on Train your bot shows where you stand against it.