In today’s article, we’re going to cover how to set up and fine tune one of Zendesk’s most powerful and sought-after features: the Answer Bot.

Once fully set up, Answer Bot typically deflects 10% of all customer queries away from your agents, saving your team oodles of time and money.

Not only will Answer Bot save you time on the easier to answer, low-priority tickets that it can easily solve on its own, Answer Bot makes it easier for your agents to quickly handle higher priority ticket by providing agents with relevant context from the bot’s initial conversation with the customer, meaning your team no longer have to waste time asking transactional questions such as a customer’s email address or location.

With so many options at our disposal, however, setting up the Answer Bot can be a bit overwhelming at first. In this guide, I’ll breakdown the most important steps to take to get a simple yet intelligent Answer Bot working at your disposal.

Create a New Bot

Your first choice is whether you want to create your Answer Bot in production or in your Sandbox. We’ve previously written extensively about the benefit of using a sandbox for Answer Bot training, so do take a look if you’re unsure.

Whether in your Sandbox or production, the first place you need to head to is Admin Centre > Channels > Bots and Automation > Bots, or https://YOURDOMAINf.zendesk.com/admin/channels/bots-automation/bots/conversation-bots and then click on Create bot in the top right of your screen.

Next, you should be presented with the super simple flow below.

Go ahead and give your bot a name. This is the name that appears next to your bot’s messages once published; it’s effectively its persona’s name - so make sure you go for something that is in keeping with your brand. You can always change it later if you’re unsure

Next up is choosing an avatar, the icon that will appear next to your Answer Bot’s responses. I covered how to customize the visual side of Answer Bot in a two-part series, so do give that a read if you want some top tips on keeping your Answer Bot looking on brand.

With an avatar selected, it should look something like this.

Go ahead and click on Next in the bottom right, select the language you want your bot to speak in, then click Next again.

Generative AI

Next up, you’ll notice the option to turn on Generative AI features.

This is where Answer Bot really comes into its own. In short, ticking this box (which I highly recommend) allows your bot to harness the power behind Chat GPT to turn your bot from a static data-returning machine into a fluent, friendly and intelligent first line of support.

Generative replies allow Answer Bot to use its understanding of your Guide articles to craft its very own unique, conversational responses. As a customer, this is a thousand times more personable and enjoyable to interact with than a bot that simply presents you with three Guide articles and hopes for the best. Instead, Answer Bot will do its best to understand the customer’s question and then pick out the crucial part of the relevant Guide article, returning the answer in its own words as part of a fluid conversation.

Just as importantly, Bot personas allow you to choose from three different personas in which the bot will converse with your customers. These range from the extremely professional to the downright casual - and you can pick whichever one suits your brand the best.

Although you can’t actually tweak these settings here, turning on generative AI features by checking this box at this stage is a required first step.

With the absolute basics done, go ahead and click on Create bot!

Tweaking the Answer Bot

After creating your bot, you’ve most likely been brought to the Behavior page of your new bot.

To finish configuring the settings we just covered, however, we’ll need to head back to Settings.

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Next up you’ll see all of the same settings that we just tweaked, although now you’ll spot the addition of Personas.

Why Zendesk doesn’t just allow us to amend all of these settings in one flow, I don’t know!

Go ahead and click on Persona.

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This is where you can choose how formal or informal you’d like your Answer Bot to be when conversing with your customers.

Whilst it can be tempting to try out the Playful persona, in my experience of setting up dozens of Answer Bots for my clients, only the most laid-back, beach-vibe brands are going to want to use this one; it’s just to informal for most brands and is likely to irk those customers of yours who are in more of a rush.

I recommend using the Friendly persona, unless your company markets itself as a high-end or super-slick brand.

You’ll notice that you also have the option to deselect bot personas entirely.

This is a good option if you have the time to program exactly what you’d like your bot to say every time. The huge downside is that your returning customers will quickly get bored of hearing the same lines over and over again. This is where Zendesk’s use of Generative AI is so powerful; it keeps your customer bot interactions fresh, even if behind the scenes they’re following the same flow they’ve followed the last five times.

Finally, you’ll see the option to allow, and crucially choose, which emojis you want your bot to be able to use.

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This applies much more to bots that have the Playful or Friendly personas selected, as the Professional personal almost never uses emojis.

Personally, I think there’s no need to overthink this one and handpick 20 custom emojis. I recommend leaving the checkbox ticked and moving on.

Choosing a Channel (and Brand)

The final task of the initial Answer Bot setup is to tell Zendesk where you want your Answer Bot to appear.

First of all, select the Brand in which you want to use the Answer Bot. Then, select a Channel.

Don’t panic if, at this stage, you see the below message. Contrary to what it might suggest, it doesn’t mean that you suddenly have no channels associated with your Zendesk environment.

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All this means is that you haven’t yet set up a channel capable of hosting your Answer Bot.

There’s a great tip to be had here: although the image above suggests you can only host your bot in the Web Widget or Android/iOS SDK, that’s not actually the case.

As you’ll see when you click the “Go to Messaging page” hyperlink and follow the flow on that page, you can in fact add your Answer Bot to channels such as
WhatsApp, Instagram Direct or Facebook Messenger.

Although creating these channels is beyond the scope of this article, the ability to deploy your bot to these three huge platforms unlocks powerful new ways to reach your customers where they need you most; on their mobiles, without having to leave their favorite apps.

The simplest choice for now (and the one that 90+% of readers will want to choose) is to set up a new Web Widget for your Brand. We’ve already covered how to customize a Web Widget in this article, so do check that out if you’re keen to get going.

With an appropriate channel set up, you can now select the channel as the place to host your Answer Bot.

Like me, you may worry that selecting a channel will publish your bot right away but, as long as you steer clear of the big blue “Publish bot” button in the top right, your customers won’t see your bot until you’ve tweaked it, tested it, and it’s ready to go.

Do note that, unlike some other flows on Zendesk, this page doesn’t require you to hit “Save” or an equivalent button anywhere in order to save your changes, so long as you give the page half a second to log your tweaks before shutting it.

That’s Part 1 complete; your bot is now technically ready to go, but we’ll want to make a few more changes to make it our own and in keeping with the rest of our customer experience.

In Part 2, Fine Tuning Answer Bot, we’ll cover the more complex changes you need to make that really control the behavior of the bot at a conversational level, from how it says hello, to what to do when it doesn’t understand your customer’s intent (which will happen)!