Customer Assist

Customer Assist, our conversational assistant feature, provides multiple interactions that you can use to gather information about your customers and guide them through the conversation path. Depending on what you select, you can either have a customer continue to the next interaction within the dialog after answering a question or selecting an option, or you can choose to redirect them to another dialog entirely. The conversational assistant is fully customizable to your business needs.

To learn the main concepts of an assistant, see Introduction to Customer Assist. For a step-by-step conversational assistant tutorial, see Tutorial: Build a conversational assistant.

In this article:

• Available interactions by channel
• Available interactions by assistant type
• Add an interaction
  • Send message
  • Text question
  • Button question
  • Attribute question
  • Conditional branch
  • Business schedule
  • Object selector
  • Run workflow
  • Update attribute
• Add an end interaction
  • Request feedback
  • AI response
  • Navigation buttons
  • Article deflection
  • List selector
  • Redirect to dialog
  • Transfer to an agent
  • End conversation

Available interactions by channel

This table shows the interactions that are available for each channel. 

Available interactions by assistant type

Depending on the type of assistant you have, you may have different interactions available. For more information, see this article. Please note that the channel type mainly determines available interactions. For example, if you create an SMS assistant that does not support the Button Question interaction, it will not be available regardless of the assistant type.

Add an interaction

Interactions (interactions without redirects) are messages or questions the assistant sends the customer.

Interactions without redirects continue to the next interaction within the dialog. The assistant runs through interactions from top to bottom for a dialog. You can reorder interactions. 

Use interactions without redirects to:

• Collect information from the customer to help you personalize the support experience
• Send multiple messages to provide instructions or context
• Ask multiple questions that require a customer text, button, or multi-level list response

You can add an interaction by selecting Add Interaction in the editor and selecting one of the available options.

Send Message

Send Message sends a message to your customer and automatically moves to the next interaction.

Use Send Message to send messages that do not require a customer response. Attachments can only be sent in assistants created for WhatsApp. The supported file formats for attachments are JPEG, PNG, and MP4.

Text question

Text question sends a message to your customer and wait for a text response.

You can select to save the customer response as a text attribute (that is, a message) on a standard Conversation or Customer object. This interaction can be used to detect intent with the conversational assistant.

Button question

Button question creates custom response buttons for the customer to select.

Similar to the Customer Text Response option, you can select to save the button text of the customer response as a text attribute (that is, a message) on a standard Conversation or Customer object.

Attribute question

Attribute question creates custom response buttons based on the existing values for data attributes on your Customer and Conversation Klass.

You can select the values for the response buttons based on the Klass (that is, Customer or Conversation), the data attribute on the selected Klass, and the data value (for example, Conversation [Klass] > Assigned Teams [data attribute, or field] > CX, Sales, Shipping [separate data values]).

The assistant automatically saves the customer button response data to the selected Conversation or Customer Klass in Kustomer. You can select to skip the Attribute question interaction if the data for the selected attribute already exists for the Customer or Conversation object in your Kustomer organization.

Conditional branch

Conditional branch creates personalized interactions based on if-else conditions using conversation and customer data. With this option, you can set up various conditions at any point in your conversation flow that connect and direct customers to any of our interactions or redirect them to another dialog.

Using conditional branches, you can solve various use cases based on your customer's input. For example, you can create separate responses based on the email address they are using or if they are considered a higher VIP tier in your organization.

For more information on operators and to learn more on how to build your conditions, see Understanding filter operators.

Business schedule

Use the Business schedule interaction to allow the conversational assistant to perform different actions based on your organization's business hours. For example, you can use this option to ask a customer for their name and email address if they contact you during your business hours or send a message notifying them that your business is currently closed if they contact you outside of those hours. Learn more about defining your business schedules in this help article.

You can use this interaction to perform the following actions during or outside of your business hours:

• Send Message
• Text question
• Button question
• Attribute question
• Run workflow
• Update attribute
• Redirect to dialog

Object selector

Object selector creates a card in the assistant that looks up and presents authenticated customers with the most 3 recent objects created for a Klass on their timeline that match their input.  With this option, you can use the object selector to add custom object data, such as order information, into your conversation experience.

To set up this interaction, first select the Klass you want to use and then customize the card by mapping the attributes to each of the three available fields.

If results that match the authenticated user are found, they can select the object and get more information right in the conversation window. If the customer isn't authenticated or results aren't found, you can redirect them to another dialog to continue the conversation.

Run workflow

Run workflow calls the workflow you select in the drop-down menu and uses data captured from a customer's interaction with the conversational assistant to return relevant data to your customer.

Once you select the workflow, you can specify the data the workflow needs to run and optionally determine where the information you return to the customer is saved. For more information, see Callable workflows and the conversational assistant.

Update attribute

Update attribute changes a value of the Conversation and Customer object attributes from directly within the conversational assistant. For example, you can use this interaction to update a conversation's priority and route it to the correct team, or change an attribute that's required for closing the conversation.

Along with new custom attributes, you can use this interaction to update the following attributes:

• Conversation
  • Name
  • Priority
  • Brand
  • Tags
  • Default Language
• Customer
  • Name
  • Default Language
  • Company

Add an End Interaction 

End Interactions (interactions with redirects) direct the customer to another dialog in the flow or end the assistant for the customer based on their response (for example, to connect the customer with an agent). 

Use End Interactions to link dialogs together to create your conversational flow. You can create both linear and branched conversational flows.

You can add an interaction by selecting Add End Interaction in the editor and selecting one of the available options.

Request feedback

Request feedback sends a message to your customers asking for feedback on their most recent support experience.

You will need to select redirects based on the type of feedback they give. For example, if they choose the Failure button, you may want to redirect them to an agent to assist them.

You can customize the interaction by selecting from 3 different button designs.

AI response

AI response uses information from your organization's knowledge base to answer customer inquiries. See this article to Use AI to respond to customer inquiries.

This interaction can also be used to detect intent with the conversational assistant. You can customize the AI's response by creating a new profile with custom prompts. 

Navigation buttons

Navigation buttons create buttons to redirect customers to other dialogs in the flow. 

Use Navigation buttons to create branched paths for the customer in the flow. For example, you can redirect sales and support inquiries to separate dialogs in the flow.

You can select to save the button text of the customer response as a text attribute (that is, a message) on a standard Conversation or Customer object.

Article deflection

Article deflection searches your knowledge base and returns relevant articles based on the customer response or request. This interaction can also be used to detect intent with the conversational assistant.

Use Article deflection to help customers resolve their support requests without an agent.

You can select the knowledge base brand the assistant should use for article deflection. 

You will need to select redirects for the following article deflection scenarios:

• If there are relevant knowledge base articles:
  • The assistant finds and shares relevant articles from the knowledge base:
    • A dialog redirect for when the article helps the customer
    • A dialog redirect for when the article is unhelpful or the customer needs additional help
• If there are no relevant knowledge base articles:
  • A dialog redirect for when the assistant doesn’t find any relevant articles in the knowledge base.

List selector

List selector creates a list of up to 10 buttons that redirect your customer to another dialog when they select a button in the message. 

You can select to save the customer response as a text attribute (that is, a message) on a standard Conversation or Customer object. This interaction can be used to detect intent with the conversational assistant.

Redirect to dialog

Redirect to dialog redirects the customer to any dialog in your assistant.

Transfer to an agent

Transfer to an agent ends the assistant and transfers the conversation to an available agent based on the customer response and agent routing.

Use Transfer to an agent to end the assistant and to connect customers with an agent. The agent will have access to the customer information collected by the assistant.

End conversation

End conversation ends the conversation with the customer. The customer cannot reopen or continue the conversation. The customer will need to open a new conversation to request additional support.