Understanding AI Assist’s Data Sources

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AI Assist relies on your data sources to deliver accurate and helpful responses to customers’ inquiries.


The quality of the data you provide is crucial; the better it is, the more accurately AI Assist will respond on your behalf.

Data sources

AI Assist can read multiple sources simultaneously, and grab relevant information based on the context and relevance.

You can provide data sources in the following forms:

  • Shortcuts

  • FAQs

  • Documents (PDF, CSV, or TXT files)

  • Plain text

  • Websites

  • Knowledge Base articles


AI Assist looks for relevant keywords in up to 5 data sources by analyzing:

  • Every question and answer in your FAQs

  • 1000 character snippets from plain text, Knowledge Base article, uploaded PDF or TXT files, or website

  • 1000 characters per row in spreadsheets (CSV files)


Then, AI Assist will use the gathered information to generate a suitable response to customers in live chat.


We recommend organizing your data sources to avoid duplicate information in multiple sources. This helps AI Assist to access your data effectively, increasing the accuracy of its responses.


Other reference sources are the Base Prompt and API integration, which this article covers further below.


Let’s look at the individual data source types, starting with shortcuts.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are templated responses to common inquiries. They’re very useful for sending customers files, forms, and suggested messages, tagging chats, and transferring conversations to other agents or teams.

Click Add Shortcut to create new individual or batch shortcuts.


You can enter up to 5 questions containing related keywords within each shortcut. If AI Assist finds matching keywords in these questions, it’ll send the shortcut message to customers and prioritize it in the future. 

AI Assist will respond with the exact message you’ve written unless Revise answer based on context is enabled in the Behaviour settings.
FAQs 

Upload a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their responses.

Click Add FAQ to add new FAQs and ensure they’re Enabled. You can add individual FAQs or import them in batches with CSV files.
Text
Describe your business, products, and services in simple plain text. Enter your text, hit Save, and ensure it’s Enabled.
Documents

AI Assist can analyze text files, PDFs, and CSVs for relevant answers to customers’ questions. Ensure your documents contain text that can be copied as this enables AI Assist to read your documents easily.

Click Add Document to add new documents and ensure they’re Enabled.


Note:

  • For CSV files, please ensure

    • Each row contains 1,000 characters or less.

    • The first row is treated as a header with column labels.

    • Each cell contains a text string without line breaks, separated by a comma, instead of a semi-colon.

    • There are no empty cells in between cells with data.

  • AI Assist only analyzes the text in your documents. Images won’t be analyzed.

Knowledge Base

Create articles about your products and services in your Knowledge Base. Detailed articles help to equip AI Assist with the know-how to answer even the most in-depth customer queries.

To learn more about the Knowledge Base, check out these articles:

What is the Knowledge Base?

Setting up your Knowledge Base

Creating a new Knowledge Base article

Websites

AI Assist can scrape data from websites containing relevant information about your business. Depending on your AI Assist plan, it can process between 100 and 10,000 pages.

Click Add New to add new URLs and ensure they’re Enabled.


Note:

AI Assist only analyzes the text in the websites you list here. Images won’t be analyzed. Some information in tables may not be covered, too. 

Additional information

In addition to the data sources, AI Assist also refers to:

  • The Base Prompt

  • API integration


The Base Prompt

The Base Prompt is your personalized instructions for AI Assist. You can provide clear instructions and information in the Base Prompt to set the ground rules for AI Assist. This helps AI Assist understand your specific needs and priorities.


The Base Prompt typically contains default instructions, which you can modify anytime. Your changes are effective as soon as you hit Save.

API calls

You can integrate AI Assist with external platforms through API calls, allowing AI Assist to pull data from other systems and formulate relevant responses to your customers.

To learn more about integrating AI Assist with other platforms, check out these articles:

How to set up a custom API integration with Apollo AI

How to integrate AI Assist with Shopify

Your data sources in action

AI Assist grabs information from up to 5 relevant sources to answer your customers’ inquiries.


When testing your widget using the preview, you’ll see the following icon next to each response generated by AI Assist:

Click this icon to see which sources were used for each response.

By providing a variety of data sources and prioritizing them strategically, you can empower AI Assist to become a true customer service champion for your business.


Important: Keep your data sources up-to-date. As your business evolves, so should the information available to AI Assist. This ensures your customers always receive the most accurate and helpful responses.

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