Teach it your business
What a knowledge gap is
A knowledge gap is a question your bot met with your fallback message instead of a real answer.
Before you start
- Nothing to set up. Gaps appear on their own once visitors start asking things.
About 4 minutes. You’ll do three things:
- what counts as a gap
- where gaps show up
- how to close one
A knowledge gap is a question your bot could not answer, so it gave your Fallback message instead. Adoomi counts those questions, groups the ones that mean the same thing, and shows you which of them keep coming back.
The test is strict. A gap is recorded only when the reply matched your fallback message word for word. An answer that was vague, or wrong, or beside the point does not count as a gap, because the bot did answer.
A worked example
Take a plumber whose website says nothing about emergency call-outs. Over four days, eleven visitors ask some version of the same thing: do you come out at night. Each time the bot has nothing to quote, so each visitor gets the fallback message and moves on.
On the Knowledge gaps tab the plumber now sees one row, not eleven. The question is there, Asked reads 11, and Last asked reads yesterday. One click on Add as Q&A carries that question into the Custom replies form. Two sentences about night call-outs, then Add reply, and the next visitor who asks gets a proper answer.
Where gaps show up
The same gaps surface in five places:
- The Knowledge gaps tab on Train your bot lists the top questions of the last 7 days, most-asked first.
- The panel on the right of that page counts them and offers Review knowledge gaps.
- The bot's own Dashboard page repeats the worst of them under Needs attention.
- Chat review has a Needs FAQ chip that pulls up the conversations behind those questions.
- An email arrives, but only if you have switched Knowledge gap detected on.
The email, and how often it can arrive
The gap email is off until you turn it on. Open Notifications under Workspace settings and tick the Email box on the Knowledge gap detected row. The page saves as you click and shows Saved.
| Condition | The rule today |
|---|---|
| You turned it on | Off until you tick Email on the Knowledge gap detected row. |
| How often the question was asked | At least 5 times in the last 7 days, on the same bot. The settings row says so: 5+ unanswered questions on the same topic. |
| How often it repeats | One email per question per bot, then that question stays quiet for 7 days however many more times it is asked. |
| Where it lands | Your account email. The subject names the bot, as in "Knowledge gap detected on Acme Plumbing". |
| How fast | Within a minute or two of the fifth ask. |
What the question column shows
The question you read is a tidied copy, not the visitor's exact typing. It is lowercased and stripped of stray punctuation so that near-identical wordings land on one row instead of five.
Anything that looks like a personal detail is dropped rather than shown. A name, a postcode, an order or booking number, an email address, a phone number: a question holding one of those is left out of the count altogether. That is deliberate, and it means the tab under-reports a little.
How to close a gap
| Option | Best for |
|---|---|
| Write the answer yourself | The answer is short and you already know it. Add as Q&A carries the question straight into the Custom replies form. |
| Point the bot at a page | The answer belongs on your website anyway. Write the page, add it as a source, and the bot can quote it from then on. |
Turn a gap into an answer
In the bot sidebar, click Train your bot, then the Knowledge gaps tab.
Find the row with the highest number under Asked.
Click Add as Q&A on that row.
The page switches to Custom replies with the question already in place, as both the Internal title and the first entry under Questions.
Type the answer into Answer.
Click Add reply.
The row starts at pending while your bot learns it. Reload the page and it reads ready.
If it didn’t work
The tab says No knowledge gaps detected yet.
- Check
- Two things produce that. Either nobody has been turned away in the last 7 days, or the replies your visitors got were something other than your fallback message word for word.
- Fix
- Open Chat review and read a few conversations. If the bot is answering badly rather than falling back, the fix is the same: write the answer as a custom reply. You just find those chats by reading rather than by waiting.
- Resolved when
- You have found the weak answers, or a real gap appears on the tab.
I never get the gap email
- Check
- Open Notifications and look at the Knowledge gap detected row. The Email box stays unticked until you tick it.
- Fix
- Tick it and wait for Saved. Then remember the bar: the same question has to be asked at least 5 times in 7 days before anything is sent.
- Resolved when
- An email arrives naming the bot and the question behind it.
The same gap emailed me once and then went quiet
- Check
- That is the 7-day quiet spell. One question sends one email per bot per week, whatever its count does afterwards.
- Fix
- Nothing to fix. Use the Knowledge gaps tab for the running count between emails, and close the gap rather than waiting for a second warning.
- Resolved when
- The tab's Asked number keeps climbing even though your inbox stays quiet.
A question I know visitors asked is missing from the list
- Check
- Three things keep a question out: the reply was not your fallback message word for word, the question held something that looks like a personal detail, or the question ran past 200 characters.
- Fix
- Open Chat review and click the Unanswered chip. It lists chats where the bot did fall back, including the ones too long or too personal to count. Read the chat, then write the answer as a custom reply.
- Resolved when
- The answer is live and the same question gets a proper reply.
I cleared my fallback message and gaps stopped appearing
- Check
- Open Bot behaviour and the Fallback tab. The Fallback message box is what every reply is compared against, so an empty box means nothing can match it.
- Fix
- Put your fallback wording back and click Save. Gaps start being recorded again from the next chat onwards, not retrospectively.
- Resolved when
- New rows appear on the Knowledge gaps tab after your visitors ask something you cannot answer.
What this can’t do
- A gap is recorded only when the reply matched your fallback message exactly. A wrong answer is not counted as a gap.
- The tab covers the last 7 days and lists at most 50 questions.
- Questions holding anything that looks like a personal detail are dropped, not shown.
- The bar of 5 asks before an email cannot be changed from the dashboard.
- Closing a gap is manual. Nothing is written for you, and the row leaves the tab on the 7-day clock whether or not you acted on it.