Fixing incorrect responses delivered by AI Assist
The instructions below are for desktops and laptops only.
While tawk.to’s AI Assist is a powerful tool for streamlining your customer support, AI Assist can sometimes miss the mark. This can happen when AI Assist doesn't have the answer to a question or gives an inaccurate response. Or it may provide a correct answer that could be phrased more effectively.
This guide will help you troubleshoot these issues and get AI Assist back on track.
Why doesn't AI Assist respond correctly?
AI Assist relies entirely on your data sources to provide accurate information to your customers. Here are common reasons why AI Assist might generate an error response:
Outdated information
Data sources may need a refresh to incorporate new information. When changes occur in your business or industry, update your data sources to give AI Assist access to the latest information.
Duplicate information
Some data sources may contain duplicate information, disrupting AI Assist’s ingestion and causing an error in its responses. Organize your data sources to help AI Assist find the most relevant information effectively.
Information not ingested
AI Assist cannot ingest information in
CSV files with formatting errors
Images and tables in documents, files, and web pages
Websites that cannot be crawled
How your data sources are used
AI Assist is designed to understand the context of your customer's query and scour your data sources for relevant keywords.
AI Assist will find keywords in up to 5 data sources by analyzing:
FAQs and Shortcuts with related questions and answers
1000-character snippets from Text, Knowledge Base articles, Documents, and Websites
1000 characters per row in CSV files
FAQ character limits: Individual FAQ questions can be up to 255 characters, and answers can be up to 1,000 characters. If an AI response seems cut off or incomplete, first check that the related FAQ question and answer are within these limits. For information that doesn’t fit, move it to a longer-form source, such as Text, Knowledge Base articles, or Documents, so AI Assist can reference the full details.
AI Assist will then use the gathered information to generate a suitable response.
To learn more about AI Assist’s data sources, check out these guides:
Understanding AI Assist’s Data Sources
Why AI Assist’s web crawler might not be able to crawl some sites
Troubleshooting error responses
You can troubleshoot your AI agent’s error responses by investigating the data sources it used to generate the response.
1. Log in to tawk.to, and select the correct property.

2. Click Automations on the left navigation bar.

3. Click Agents in the left submenu.

4. Select your AI agent. The widget preview will appear on the far right of the page. You can use this test environment to fix AI Assist’s responses without exhausting your monthly message allocation.

5. Enter an example of a customer query in the widget preview, and check your AI agent’s response for errors. If there’s an error, click the Data Sources icon next to the agent’s response.

6. This lists the data sources your AI agent used to generate the response.
Note: Base Prompt instructions aren’t listed here.
7. Replace incorrect or outdated data sources. Ensure your new data sources contain accurate, updated information.
If a website wasn’t crawled effectively, check if AI Assist’s user-agent can access it. To learn more, check out this guide: Why AI Assist’s web crawler might not be able to crawl some sites
8. Test your AI agent’s response after updating your data sources.
9. If you still receive incorrect responses, repeat steps 3–7 until your AI agent’s answers are consistently accurate.
Use shortcuts with related questions
Insert relevant keywords and questions in your shortcuts to help AI Assist identify and analyze data sources faster. To learn more, check out this guide: Creating and managing shortcutsUpdate your AI agent’s Instructions
Give clear, specific Instructions for your AI agent to extract the right information from relevant data sources. To learn more, check out this guide: Modifying the Base Prompt
A/B testing
Develop different response templates and shortcuts, and A/B test them to see which version performs best for your audience.
Monitor and improve continuously
Monitor AI Assist’s responses and update data sources regularly. AI Assist is designed to learn, making improvements easier over time.
If you’re still having difficulty fixing AI Assist’s responses, schedule a call with us and we’ll help you further.
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