Five answers your talking website needs on day one

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When a face on your website says hello, people answer. They ask a question, and they expect a real answer back. The good news is that most first questions are the same five. Teach your agent those five before it meets anyone, and it is ready for most of the people who will talk to it.

This post walks what to write and where to write it. You need one page of the dashboard and about an afternoon.

Where the teaching happens

Open your agents list. On each agent you own there is a small wand button titled Unified Editor. It opens the agent editor: one page per agent, with its words, its knowledge and its channels in tabs.

The first row of tabs is Who Is Your Agent. Open Knowledge. The box you will use most is Knowledge Text. Paste into it whatever your agent should be able to answer from. A pasted FAQ works well: the question on one line, the answer under it. Plain text works; headings help.

One habit saves a lot of confusion. The Save button at the top of the page saves the tab you are looking at, so press it before you move to the next tab.

Answer one: your hours

This is the question people ask most, and the one a silent website answers worst. Write your hours the way you would say them on the phone. Add the exceptions too: holidays, the early close on Fridays, the week you take off each summer.

When your hours change, come back to the Knowledge tab, change the line and press Save. The Knowledge Text box shows exactly what you saved, nothing more and nothing less, so you can always read back what your agent now knows.

Answer two: where you are

Write your address, and then write what a stranger needs to find you. Which entrance. Where to park. Whether you are upstairs. If you come to your customers instead, write the towns and neighbourhoods you cover.

A visitor who is standing on the pavement with a phone wants two sentences, not a map. Give your agent those two sentences.

Answer three: your prices, as you set them

Prices are yours to say, so say them in your own words. Copy the text of your services page or your price list into Knowledge Text, exactly as you charge today.

Then write the rule for the edges. If a price depends on the job, say so, and say what the visitor should do next: book a visit, send a photo, ask for a quote. Your agent answers from the knowledge you give it. If the price is not written there, you do not want it guessing.

The right place for that rule is the Personality tab. Its Soul MD box is a free-form description of your agent's character and operating principles, and it is the natural place to write what it must never do. Our guide's own example is "never promise a delivery date". Yours might be "never quote a price that is not on the list".

Answer four: how to book

Most visitors who ask a question want to do something next. Tell your agent what that is. Write the steps the way you would explain them at the counter: which page to open, what to have ready, how far ahead to book, what happens if they need to cancel.

Keep it plain. If you take bookings by phone only, write that. If walk-ins are welcome, write that too. A short true answer beats a long hopeful one.

Answer five: who to call

Some questions should reach a person. A complaint. A problem with an order. Anything urgent. Write down who handles each one and how to reach them, and add a line to Soul MD that says so. Our guide's own words: always hand a complaint to a person.

This one answer is what makes the other four safe. Your agent does not have to know everything. It has to know when to hand the visitor to you.

Test it before anyone else hears it

At the top of the editor, next to Save, are two buttons. Chat opens a typed conversation with your agent. Talk opens a spoken one.

Ask it each of the five questions, out loud. Then ask one it should hand to you. Read the answers, not the settings. If an answer does not reflect what you just wrote, say what you want more plainly, save, and ask again.

Nobody else can reach a private agent, so this is the safe place to get it wrong a few times.

FAQ

Can I upload a document instead of typing all this?

Not from the agent editor yet. You will see a Knowledge Documents drop box, but uploading straight into your agent's knowledge from there is coming. Until it arrives, open the document, copy the sections a customer would ask about and paste them into Knowledge Text.

How do I check what my agent knows?

Open the Knowledge tab again. The Knowledge Text box shows exactly what you saved, nothing more and nothing less.

What if my prices change every season?

Change the lines in Knowledge Text and press Save. Your agent answers from what is saved there.

Can I label what I pasted?

Yes. Under Knowledge Text, the Tags (comma-separated) box lets you label the knowledge, for example bookings, returns, opening hours.

Now put it where your visitors are

Once your agent knows your hours, your address, your prices, how to book and who to call, it is ready to meet the people who visit your site. Our step-by-step guide walks the embed page that puts it there. You publish your agent, paste one tag into your site and prove the site is yours. It also shows where the switch appears that lets your agent speak first. The guide takes about five minutes to read, and nothing breaks if you paste the tag before you verify.