Answer visitors with a support bot

A support bot answers the visitors of your website in a chat widget, at any hour. The app names a support bot a chatbot. This page tells you how to make a chatbot and choose what it knows and who answers. It also tells how to put the bot on your site, test it and read the conversations.

Before you begin

• Owners and admins make, change and delete chatbots.
• You need the Customer support product. An owner or admin gives products to people in Settings > People.
• A teammate writes each answer, so your troop must be able to work. Each answer is a run on your AI plan.
• Tell Troopy what your business does. The bot answers from it. Read What the bot knows.

A workspace can have many chatbots, for example one for each website. Each chatbot has its own look, its own teammates, its own websites and its own script tag.

Make a chatbot

1. Open Products > Customer support.
2. Select New chatbot.
3. Type a Name, for example Store support. Select Make the chatbot.

Troopy opens the Chatbot builder. A new chatbot is a Draft: it is off, and the Chief of Staff answers for it. The chatbot starts with a welcome message and a blue brand colour.

Set up the chatbot

The builder has 2 tabs, Customize and Install. The live preview is at the right. Owners and admins change the fields, then select Save changes.

• The avatar is a PNG, JPEG or WebP file of 512 KB at most. Upload avatar saves it at once.
• The welcome message has 500 characters at most.
• Pick the colour that reads best on your brand colour chooses the colour of the text of the visitor for you.

With changes that are not saved, the builder shows Changes not saved. The way back to Chatbots then asks Leave without saving? first.

What the bot knows

The bot answers only from what your business made public. Knowledge and replies > What it may tell visitors counts the pages and the docs that the bot may use.

• The name, the website and the description of the business. Write the description in Brain > Brand > Company > What the business does.
• The pages of the own website of the business, which Troopy learned. Read Teach the brain.
• The docs that a person shows to the bot.

To show a doc to the bot, open the menu of the doc in Docs, and select Show to the support bot. Hide from the support bot takes it back. The person who made the doc, owners and admins decide. The bot reads the text of the doc. It never reads its dated notes, its comments or the names of its authors.

The bot never reads the memory files, the notes of teammates, the About you files, interviews, research reports, canvases, files, or the other docs. Whatever a visitor writes, the rest of the brain stays inside the business.

Choose who answers

Under Replying team, select the teammates that answer. The first teammate that you select answers, and shows Replies first. It can ask the other teammates of the list for help in private, 2 times at most for each message. The visitor never sees those talks.

• With no teammate, the builder shows "Choose at least one troop to reply." and the bot cannot answer.
• A paused teammate shows Paused, and you cannot add it.
• A chatbot has 12 teammates at most.

The bot has no approvals and no skills, and it changes nothing in Troopy. It can do one thing more than answer. When a visitor reports a defect of your product, such as an error, the bot makes an engineering task of high priority. It tells the visitor only after the task exists. A visitor never adds a memory to the brain.

Put the chatbot on your website

1. In Customize > Where it lives, type each address in Allowed websites, one on each line.
2. Type the whole address with https://. Add each subdomain on its own line.
3. Turn on Enable on your website.
4. Select Save changes.
5. Open the Install tab, and select Copy embed code.
6. Paste the code before the closing </body> tag of each page.

<script async src="https://troopy.ai/api/support/widget.js" data-bot-id="YOUR_CHATBOT_ID"></script>

The chat shows in the bottom corner of the page. It keeps the styles of your site and its own styles apart. On Pro, it shows "Powered by Troopy" under the message box. Max and Ultra show no badge.

A chatbot has 30 allowed websites at most. The id of a chatbot never changes, so the code on your site stays good.

Test the chatbot

The live preview at the right of the builder talks to the chatbot as a visitor does. Members, owners and admins can use it.

1. Select Save changes one time. The preview needs saved settings.
2. Type a message, or select a suggested question.
3. Select Desktop preview or Mobile preview to see the chat in each size.

• The preview tests a chatbot that is off.
• The look of the preview shows your changes before you save them. The answers use the last saved settings.
• New conversation starts again. Each save starts a new conversation too.
• Your tests show in Conversations under Previews.

Read the conversations

Open Conversations, under Customer support in the sidebar. The Conversations button of a chatbot card opens the conversations of that chatbot only.

The list shows 25 conversations on a page, the newest first. Select a conversation to read it.

• A visitor shows as Visitor and the last 6 characters of the conversation id.
• Details shows the conversation id, when it started, until when the visitor can write, and when the page last reported.
• A file of a visitor opens in a dialog: a picture, a PDF, audio or text. Each file has a download link.
• A visitor is Online while a page with your chatbot is open. The page reports every 30 seconds.

Nobody answers a visitor from this page. The page loads again every 5 seconds while its tab shows.

Troopy keeps a conversation after the visitor leaves. The widget opens a session on each page that loads it. Troopy deletes a session that has no message when its 12 hours end.

Files, voice and emoji

Owners and admins turn each feature on or off for a chatbot, under Chat features.

• A session takes 20 uploads or 40 MB at most.
• The bot reads the words of a text file and of a transcript. It does not look at pictures or PDFs. It asks the visitor to say what they show.
• The bot transcribes 50 voice messages a day at most, by default.
• With transcription on and no transcription service, the microphone stays hidden. Turn off Voice transcription to take recordings with no words.
• If your site shows the chat inside an iframe, the iframe needs allow="microphone" for voice messages.

Delete a chatbot

1. Open Products > Customer support.
2. On the card of the chatbot, select the delete button.
3. Select Delete chatbot.

Who can do what

Limits

Problems

Related

• Teach the brain about your business
• Write and share docs
• Set up your brand
• Hire and manage teammates
• Open and pin products