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Use AI to respond to customer inquiries

Last Update: Sep 2024 • Est. Read Time: 4 MIN
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Customer Assist, our conversational assistant feature, enables customers to self-serve and optimizes your organization's support experience. Powered by OpenAI, chat and WhatsApp assistants using the AI response interaction can respond to customer inquiries using precise answers found in your organization's knowledge base.

Who can access this feature?
User typesAdmins create conversational assistants.


In this article

Prerequisites

  • To use AI to respond to your customers' inquiries, you must have a public knowledge base with published articles.
  • The AI response interaction is only available for Premium assistants, which requires a KIQ Conversations plan.

How does the AI response interaction work

The AI response interaction uses OpenAI to answer questions in your chat or WhatsApp assistant using information found on your public knowledge base. You can set up an assistant to use this feature using the Respond with AI template, or you can add it as an End Interaction to an existing Premium assistant. 

You can customize the template to suit your needs best. You can also customize how the AI will respond by creating a new profile with custom prompts. By default, the template will direct users through the conversational flow based on whether or not the answer to their question was found and if feedback was received. Questions will only be answered using information found in published articles on your public knowledge base. In all cases, the assistant will ask the user if they have any other questions and attempt to respond again.

After the second attempt, if the user selects negative feedback or the assistant cannot find the answer in your knowledge base, the customer will be transferred to an agent to provide additional support.

Set up an AI response conversational assistant

You can start answering inquiries with AI by creating a new assistant using the Respond with AI template. 

Note: The AI response interaction is only available for Premium assistants on the chat and WhatsApp channels.

  1. Go to Settings   > Kustomer IQ > Customer Assist.
  2. Select Add Assistant and then select the Respond with AI template.
  3. Select the channel for which you want to create the assistant. This template is available for both the Chat and WhatsApp channels.
  4. Select the knowledge base you want to use to respond to customers from the drop-down menu. 
  5. You can optionally select whether you want the template to be in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. By default, it is created in English.
  6. Select Use Template.
  7. Modify the template as needed. The new assistant comes configured with interactions and default messaging so you can use it immediately. 

    Note: If modifying the text in the template, do not remove the wording that discloses that the assistant is not a person. For more information, see our Best practices for the conversational assistant.

  8. Once ready, select Save Draft (if you made any changes), followed by Publish.

To start using your new AI-powered assistant, return to the Customer Assist page, select the Rules tab, and select Respond with AI from the Assistant drop-down menu.

Once set, your assistant will use your public articles to answer customer questions.

FAQ

Q: Which articles are used to respond to a customer's inquiries?

The conversational assistant uses only articles published on your public knowledge base. Content found in internal articles, work-in-progress drafts, or unpublished content will not be used as a response. 

Q: How accurate are the responses?

While we constantly work to improve our model, it's important to remember that AI models are not perfect and may sometimes generate an inaccurate response or "hallucinate." To minimize this as much as possible, the AI response feature conducts an initial search and only responds to questions related to content found in your knowledge base. If a customer asks a question unrelated to your help articles, the assistant will say it cannot find an answer. 

Q: Are the changes immediately available if I create a new article or update an existing one?

In most cases, any updates to your public articles can immediately be used as a response.

Q: What assistant type can I use the AI response interaction with? Is it available for all channels?

The AI response interaction can only be used with Premium assistants for chat or WhatsApp.

Q: Is there a limit to how many questions can be asked per day or month?

There is currently no limit. We may reevaluate this based on usage.

Q: Are my articles being used to train an OpenAI model?

No, your data is not being used to train or deploy any OpenAI model. For more information, see Open AI's API data usage policies.

Q. Can the assistant respond in a different language?

The assistant can only respond to an inquiry in another language if:

  • The customer's browser language is set to that language and 
  • You have public knowledge base articles written in the same language. 

For example, if a customer's browser is set to Spanish (es-es) and you also have articles published in Spanish (es-es), the AI can find an answer and respond in Spanish. However, if a customer's browser is set to French and you do not have any articles published in French, the assistant will not be able to respond.