How to Create your Own Conversation Flow

How to Create your Own Conversation Flow

Written by Grace Williamson
Last update: Вторник, Јул 18, 2023

This post gives you a detailed outline of how you can build your own conversation flow. If you would like to see information on the general conversation flow settings, click here: Take control of your customer conversations with Conversation Flows

Okay, so you want to create your own conversation flow from scratch. What happens next? Well, no worries as we're here to help!

Read on and follow these guidelines so you can set-up your own conversation flows like a pro!

Quick Intro

In summary, you want to start by defining the messages and questions you want your bot to display to your contact.

Next, you have to set-up hidden steps for your bot to follow and then chain or split your messages into different "tree branches" based on your contact input, their attributes and many other conditions. You can also create steps to activate Slaask’s different features (e.g. Pre-qualification Questions, Topics and Knowledge Base) ensuring a seamless flow of conversation between you, the chatbot and your customers.

Plus, you can set-up messages in different languages too! (It’s not Slaask if it's not multilingual, right?)

Creating a new Conversation Flow

Okay, now the intro's finished, let's move on to the gritty details.

To get started, select the option "Create a flow":

The "START" step implies that a contact has initiated a conversation with you.

Next, select a step by clicking on the (+) sign.

Tooltip: Throughout the whole process, you will be accompanied by three tiny buttons at the bottom of your page. This will give you three "magical" commands to make this daunting task so much easier.

Flow Actions and Elements

Still with me so far? You should know, before creating a conversation flow tree, you need to be familiar with the elements and actions you can connect to one another. Here we're gonna start to introduce to you the different "steps" you can add to your conversation flow. They are divided into two different categories: displayed steps and hidden steps. More information below:

Displayed Steps (steps appearing in green)

These are messages and elements that will be visible to your contact during the conversation. Here are the available elements that you can show to your customers during the conversation flow:

  • Send a Message
    Sends a simple message to the contact. The text editor also offers more formatting options including bold, italic and strikethrough. You can now also add hyperlinks to your texts and add variable data such as your contact’s first name, email address or any other contact information so you can provide the best customer experience possible!

    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger, Twitter, SMS

The Save contact input option allows you to give a name to this step and save the contact's answer to your database so you can then reuse the same answer later on in the conversation flow. This option only works when the step includes buttons or inputs.

  • Send a Message followed by buttons
    Offer your contacts one or more choices via actionable buttons. You can then vary your conversation flow according to each button.
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

    There are two types of buttons available: standard button or link button. So which button to choose?

  • Send a message followed by a form field
    Sends an input field in which the contact can provide information. There three available field formats: text, number or e-mail address. You can change the title of the input depending on the information desired (e.g. age, gender, customer number, etc.).
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

  • Send an image

    You can now display an image to your contacts if the conversation calls for it! Useful if you want to share screenshots or graphic materials to your contacts.

    Formats supported: .jpg, .png or .gif

  • Send an email form

    Lets you show a form that will allow the Contact to send an email to your brand email address.

  • Search Knowledge base
    Allows the contact to browse your knowledge base in a conversational way. You can also choose how many search results you want to display to your contacts (minimum of two).

    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

  • Single qualification question
    Sends a specific qualification question.
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

  • Send all qualification questions
    Ask all your qualification questions one after the other. Customize the order of appearance of your questions by customizing the Order of appearance field in each of your questions.
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

  • Ask to select the topic
    Sends a message with multiple buttons allowing the Contact to choose one of the configured Topics. You can allocate your team members to a corresponding conversation topic from Routing > Topics.
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

  • Email form
    Displays a form that will allow the Contact to send an email to your brand email address.
    Compatibility: Chatbox, FB Messenger

Note: Should you ever experience a screensaver timeout or your window closed unexpectedly, do not worry! The built-in auto-save feature lets you get back to where you left off.

Hidden Steps (steps appearing in blue)

I will now introduce you to the hidden steps. Hidden? Why is it hidden, you may ask? Well, basically, these are the instructions that you give to your bot so it will know what to do on your behalf. These are not visible to your contacts and will only be visible to you (and your bot while it works behind the scenes). Pretty cool, right?

  • Invite a team member

    Invites a specific team member to join the conversation.

  • Invite team
    This step invites all team members who are assigned to the previously selected topic.
    *Pro-tip: Combine with "Set the topic" step to call team members from a specific topic.

  • Send Internal message
    Send an internal message only visible to your team (displayed in yellow).

  • Select topic
    Defines a specific conversation topic, affecting which team members will be invited when you add the step "Invite team."

    Note: You must allocate your team members, beforehand, to your conversation topics from Routing > Topics.

  • Split a flow using a condition
    Split the flow into two different flows based on a specific condition.

Once you click on “add a condition” it will pop-up a new window:

Note: The first column represents the data to compare. It can either be a piece of Contact Information (such as their name), or data from the Conversation Context.

Steps previously created may generate information in the Conversation context, allowing you to create a condition based on any information available beforehand in the flow. Some information is created implicitly, but you can also tag a Message Step or an Input Step to utilize user input accordingly.

To check what kind of conditions you can add, please read our post here.

  • Reconcile and save the contact data collected
    This step will save contact attributes into Xeno's contact database based on collected data from previous steps.

  • Pause the flow to receive a message
    The flow will pause at this step to allow the contact to send a message. The flow will resume immediately after receiving the contact's message.

  • Add a straight line
    More of a graphic aid than a bot step but it helps to improve your flow's readability. Has no other effect.

Stop Steps

If you reached this part, congratulations! This means you're about to get finished. We'll close this guide by showing you how to end your conversation flow.

  • Stop the flow
    Declares that the flow will stop from here.

  • Stop the flow and close the conversation
    Ends the flow and closes the conversation. Can be followed by surveys if you have already set them up previously.

  • Start another flow

    Stops the existing flow and starts another one. This can be useful when you would like to connect two conversation flows to make way for different customer scenarios!

Endnotes: Whew! That was really long! But as you can see, we put a lot of effort into developing this powerful feature so you can automize your conversations in the long run. Yes, it requires a bit of patience setting it up the first time, but once it's done, you're all set! You can sit back, relax and let your bot do most of the work! Till next time! :-)

Conversation Flows

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Written by Kévin DONIN DE ROSIERE, Grace Williamson and Grace Williamson.