Product Newsletter August 13th

Hi there,

Hope you're ready for a huge update because this newsletter is absolutely bursting at the seams with new features and additions to the platform.

What's new:

Advanced module actions that help you keep track of your customers' needs.
A new way to utilize the NLU in Connections.
Improvements to the human handover functionality in Zendesk.
Domain whitelisting for the BotXO Widget.
New, and exciting webinars.
Webhook templates for BotXO, Zendesk, and Salesforce.
Bug fixes.

Keep reading to find a detailed description of our new additions.

Advanced module actions that help you keep track of your customers' needs

With this release, we've added a whole new action for you to use in your Connections. It's called "Set Variable", and it's a feature that we think you're going to love.

It allows you to create connections where you conditionally or unconditionally set the value for a specific variable. The value of the variable can be filled with either a hardcoded value or the reply of the end user to the module in question.

Now that I've explained the technobabble side of it, let me tell you why this feature is something that you need to be using in your bot(s) right now.

You can use this feature to tag every single flow that end users are going through for the purpose of generating reports that tell you exactly what your customers want to know more about.

You can also use it in connection with creating a support ticket in Zendesk where you tag each subject area the end user has asked about in the conversation. This allows your agents to minimize the time spent asking the user to clarify what they're inquiring about.

These are only two examples, but the use cases for this feature are practically endless.

If you've got a use case in mind for this feature that you're not entirely sure about, please reach out to our Customer Success team, we're very happy to help.

NLU + Custom Variables = ❤️

Another feature we've added is the ability to use the NLU in custom variable connections.

This allows you to leverage your NLU not only to analyze user statements but any value contained in a custom variable.

This feature can, for example, be used in conjunction with a translation API to enable you to launch your chatbot in several languages (without the need for an NLU dataset in the language you're expanding to).

Since you'd be running user statements through the translation API which returns translated text contained in a custom variable, you can use the NLU to analyze the translated text for the purpose of identifying which intent the statement is recognized as.

It's a slightly complex use case, but essentially, this completely bypasses the need for creating a large NLU dataset in each individual language, since you'd only need to build a dataset for one language, saving your company both time and money.

Get started

Improvements to the human handover functionality in Zendesk

We're excited to let you know that we've implemented some improvements for the handover functionality in Zendesk, specifically focusing on the handover that takes place between two or more human agents.

What we've done is refine the behaviour that occurs when an agent transfers the conversation to another agent or department, as well as when an agent leaves the conversation.

This means that there should now be a seamless transition between human agents, and there should be no unfortunate occurrences of the bot takeover kicking in before it needs to.

Domain whitelisting for the BotXO Widget

Are You Building a Chatbot? Stop Making These 10 UX Mistakes

Domain whitelisting is a method of securing that your chatbot's visibility is limited to the domains you specifically allow.

We've added this functionality to Bot Settings, which means that you will be able to define, on a bot-level, which bots can be implemented on which domains.

If you don't need to use this feature, no worries! This setting is disabled by default, so your chatbot's visibility will not be impacted until you manually switch it on.

Stay current by attending our webinars

To help you stay up to date on the latest trends within the world of conversational AI, chatbots, and customer service, we've gathered some exciting webinars for you to attend:

BotXO & FDIH - AI Chatbots for E-Commerce in the New Normal (August 20th)
BotXO & Klaus - Towards A Bot-Human Hybrid Customer Service (August 27th)
BotXO - Build a Bot in 1 Hour (September 2nd)

Highlighted Webhook Templates

On the menu today, we have a varied selection of webhook templates that will help you derive as much benefit as possible out of your chatbot.

The first webhook template is BotXO Get Conversation History, which is able to fetch the full chat transcript for an ongoing conversation, with the ultimate purpose of either displaying the transcript in the chat or appending the transcript to a support ticket in a third-party system such as Zendesk Support.

The second webhook template is Zendesk Talk Check Agent Availability, which allows you to check the availability of a given agent in Zendesk Talk. Whereas our Zendesk Chat Agent Availability webhook template returns the availability for a whole department, this webhook template is able to check the availability of a specific human agent.

The third webhook template is Salesforce Create Case, which equips your bot with the ability to create a case in the Salesforce platform. A case represents a customer's question, feedback, or issue. Once created, support agents in Salesforce can review the case with the purpose of seeing how they're able to deliver a better experience for end users.

Psst! If there's a specific platform that you'd like us to integrate with, let us know.

Webhook me up!

Bug fixes:

As always, we've been fixing some things to make your life a little easier:

Custom Groups, when created and changed by the Bot Operator, will default to the original name and colour.
The widget icon of the BotXO Widget would be a different size depending on the browser used.
In some cases, certain messages from the end user would be missing in the Inbox view.
Under certain conditions, the inbox would show an incorrect timestamp for some messages.
The "Go to" search field had unreliable performance when searching for strings of text.
When using the "Train and go" feature when training the NLU, the user would be presented with several confirmation messages.
After going through a module fallback, the previous module response is empty, and therefore cannot be saved inside a custom variable.
When implementing the matching rules "doesn't exist", "exists", "is empty", or "is not empty", the Connections appear unfinished due to a frontend glitch.

Please see our known bugs article for a list of unsolved long-term bugs.

Get in contact with us

Whether you need assistance from our Customer Success team, want to request a new feature or search for an article in our knowledge base; we love being in contact with you.

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Customer Success

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